http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1098131
Sunday, May 20, 2007 11:18:00 PM One at a time Ajoy Bose There are at least two unique aspects of the recent assembly poll victory by Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh that distinguishes it from most other electoral triumphs. Firstly, it did not depend on a huge anti-incumbency backlash against her main opponent Samajwadi Party (SP). The results clearly indicate that SP's vote share remained intact. Nor did the Dalit leader win her spurs riding on a wave of emotion triggered by a dramatic assassination, massacre or demolition as the Congress and BJP have done so in the past. Indeed, it is this remarkably positive nature of the BSP victory in UP that makes it a political landmark requiring closer examination. It opens the possibility of the party making further gains in India's largest state thus considerably swelling its numbers in Parliament. Most importantly, it raises key questions that will determine how far and how fast Mayawati's juggernaut will roll in the emerging national scenario as the country moves towards the next general elections. At the outset, it is necessary to demystify the hype about the magical rainbow coalition merging the uppermost and lowest rungs of society that the Dalit leader is supposed to have crafted. Nothing of that kind actually happened in UP. In fact the overwhelming majority of the BSP voteshare has come from the downtrodden sections of society in the state. This becomes palpable from the post poll survey done by the Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) that shows that it was the Dalits and poorer backward castes that formed the bulk of BSP voters to which there was incremental addition of poorer Muslims and upper castes. There is good reason to believe that clever choice of individual upper caste candidates of the BSP played a major role in their victory rather than upper castes voting in large numbers for the Bahujan Samaj. For instance, as many as 19 out of the 36 Thakur candidates of the BSP won, although the Thakurs voted in large numbers for the SP almost doubling their vote share for the party compared to 2002. The CSDS post-poll survey clearly draws the battle lines dividing UP. On the one side are arrayed a host of landed barons who wield social and economic hegemony — Yadav, Thakurs and Kurmis, all of whom voted in large numbers for the SP. These have been vanquished by a coalition of the Dalits and lower backward castes helped by a section of poorer Brahmins and Muslims who themselves were marginalised and threatened by the Yadav-Thakur-Kurmi combine. It is also significant that unlike the Congress in the 1984 parliamentary polls and the BJP in state assembly polls in UP, 1991 and Gujarat, 2002, the BSP winning formula was not the result of an emotional public upsurge dependant on a specific issue or event. Instead, there has been systematic work done over a number of years across Uttar Pradesh to implement an audacious strategy. Moreover, even the deal offered to the upper castes was a transparent political transaction quite different from the trickery played in the early nineties by the BJP to enlist the support of backward castes and Dalits in the name of religion. This is why the popular surge for the BSP may grow stronger. There is a strong possibility of a large influx of Muslims from the Samajwadi Party and a steady increment of poorer upper castes along with even deeper consolidation of the Dalit and lower backward caste vote. Considering that the BSP, apart from winning 206 seats, came second in over 100 seats losing some of them closely it will not be surprising if the party wins up to 50 to 60 seats in next Lok Sabha polls from the state. At the same time, it would be naïve to expect the BSP to replicate its success across the country. There will inevitably be some impact in adjoining states and in Maharashtra where the party has shown growth in recent years. However, it is difficult to envisage the BSP getting more than 15 Lok Sabha seats beyond UP in the next general elections, since it would take years and perhaps decades before the party spreads its wings all over India. Yet, a lack of a clear majority in Parliament need not hold back the BSP in its march forward. Sixty to seventy five Lok Sabha seats is bound to make the party a huge player in national politics particularly in the emerging scenario where both the Congress and BJP, for the first time, are declining together. The writer is a commentator on political affairs. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
