by CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT
If elections in UP always matter more than any other given the unmatchable number of seats of this nearly 200 million-strong state, the stakes were especially high this time for other reasons. It was probably the last electoral fight for Mulayam Singh Yadav and a chance to ensure his succession. For Mayawati, it was a real opportunity to entrench her Dalit party after completing a full term on her own. The BJP—with only seven NDA members left around it—had to prove that it could stage a convincing comeback in the crucible of the Hindu civilisation two years before the Lok Sabha elections. And for the Congress, the UP elections were supposed to validate Rahul Gandhi’s long-term transformative political vision, and to pave the way towards prime ministership.
These parties may yet dare to eke out some redemptive elements from the results. But in vain— save, of course, for the SP. The BSP hoped to remain top dog, but has lost an unprecedentedly large number of seats. The BJP will remain on the fringe—and can only feel relieved about not having to debate over the divisive issue of another alliance with the BSP. And if the Congress has increased its number of seats, it remains fourth anyway.
Ambedkar’s dilemma
Mayawati’s defeat will probably be explained—again—by her megalomania, corruption, bad governance and so on. But the pundits who kept telling us that she was bound to lose because she was only paying attention to her core constituency, the Dalits, will have to think of some other grouse. The party has lost 27 percentage points among the Jatavs, according to a csds post-poll survey (which excludes the last phase of voting). The Jatavs and other SCs (down 15 percentage points) deserted the party, while the Brahmins have remained with it. The Rajputs (who had ignored it in 2007) are now on board. Twelve per cent have rallied around the BSP.
The BSP has to cope with the same dilemma as the parties founded by Babasaheb Ambedkar in the 1940s and 1950s: with the scheduled castes representing less than one-fifth of the votebank in most states, a Dalit party needs to reach out to other groups. In 2007, the bsp’s electoral calculus delivered an absolute majority because the Brahmins were looking for a more tolerable alternative to Mulayam’s ‘goonda raj’. But this tenuous coalition of extremes alienated the bsp’s Dalit base. Local party units and non-Dalit MLAs were often at odds with each other—a state of conflict that interfered with the sound organisation that usually backed her nomination decisions. This dissonance became all the more glaring because Mayawati had snubbed both old party cadres and ‘her’ MLAs, as evidenced by the ticket distribution. Apart from the BJP in Gujarat under Modi, no party had ever denied tickets to such a large number of MLAs.
After this traumatic defeat, the BSP will have to return to its ‘Ambedkarite’ roots and build its party apparatus in line with the formula its founder Kanshi Ram had evolved. On the one hand, the BSP leaders need to acknowledge that the Bahujan Samaj is made of ascriptive groups suffering from domination and cannot be diluted indefinitely for tactical reasons; on the other, its cadres (and especially the BAMCEF ones) need to be looked at as the party’s most precious resource.
The return of the old socialist?
Mulayam’s victory is, to put it modestly, impressive. Except for the BSP in 2007, no other party had reached the 200-seat figure since the 1980s. To get to that magic number, the SP has attracted new voters from across the board. Muslims—who had been infuriated by Mulayam’s alliance with Kalyan Singh in 2007—are now back in the fold. But the Kurmis (+21 per cent), Jatavs (+17 per cent), Brahmins (+11 per cent) and the Rajputs (+9 per cent) have also rallied around a party that cannot be associated only with the Yadavs, and even the OBCs, any more.
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