Mayawati gets mandate from UP

MAYAWATI TAKES THRONE: The BSP wins power after seven rounds of polling spread over a month.

              

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BSP chief Mayawati, a former teacher, has won the battle for Uttar Pradesh. She has won 208 seats in the Assembly and will form the new government—the first time in 14 years that a single party will rule the state.

The BSP’s coming to power is the result of an experiment in social democracy and caste mathematics. What is the secret of BSP’s victory? Where did SP err? Why didn’t BJP’s Hindutva work and will the Congress ever regain its glory days in UP? CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose analysed the election results with Yogendra Yadav, of the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, and CNN-IBN’s Editor-in-Chief Rajdeep Sardesai.

The politicians on the panel were BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley, whose party got 48 seats and Congress leaders Salman Khursheed and Kabil Sibal, who got 21 seats.

CNN-IBN had predicted that the BSP would get 158+ seats—it got the trends rights but not the seats. Yogendra Yadav was not discouraged with his predictions. “The expectations people have from psephology, of seat forecast in a first-past the post system, with four parties competing, is rather unrealistic,” he said.

BSP bridges caste divide

Nobody though could have predicted that BSP’s Sarvasmaj Abhiyan policy—upper castes working with Dalits—would be so successful. Does BSP’s success prove that Mayawati has finally managed to break the caste barriers?

The BJP, which got its worst defeat in UP since 1991, stands in complete contrast to the BSP. The party was identified with Kalyan Singh, a Lodh. Did this imprison the party in a lower-caste identity, while the BSP earned wider appeal by selecting candidates from all castes?

Arun Jaitley said the BJP tried a “rainbow coalition” in UP. “We tried to get the upper castes and OBCs, and since 1991 we have been working systematically on caste alliances. We succeeded at times and didn’t another but this election was not about the traditional kind of social alliance. This election had one large idea behind it: who was in the best position to replace Mulayam Singh Yadav.

“The SP had its own support base: of Yadavs and part minority community. That base enabled it to end up at a mid-way position but outside that support base there was a huge desire for change and this desire cut across caste lines,’ said Jaitley.

Final results of the UP polls

“The social alliance, which he had forged in 15-16 years, started cracking down because our own voters found that the BSP was better suited to replace the SP and Mulayam Singh Yadav. The anti- Mulayam vote didn’t want to radically divide itself.”

The BJP projected Kalyan Singh as its chief ministerial candidate—a man who is associated with the Ram temple movement and who is regarded as the OBC warrior for Hindutva. Was he the right choice? Should the BJP have projected a younger leader?

“Nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure,” said Jaitley. The BJP has won in Assembly and in the Lok Sabha with the same alliance but this time it didn’t work. “The BJP didn’t have any reason to change track in this election.”

The BSP’s caste alliance is a replica of what the Congress did in the early years of Independence. The Congress has failed to provide the opportunities Mayawati is providing to young aspiring sections.

“You can find 100 explanations for Mayawati’s success. We congratulate her—she succeeded in making a strategic alliance. But her alliance will have to face pulls and pressures from all directions because each community will have its own expectations. That’s a big challenge for her,” said Khursheed, who is the Congress president in UP.

“We had something similar to the BSP’s alliance in the days gone by and it were conflicts and confrontations that pushed us into the corner. There is no reason why the same conflicts and confrontations won’t happen to them,” said Khursheed.

Vote change in percentage

Managing a caste coalition

How is Mayawati going to manage her coalition? How will she distribute ministries among Dalits, Brahmins and Thakurs? Will she be able to do a balancing act?

Yogendra Yadav said all disputes and differences in the BSP are solved in a simple way—“one person speaks from the top, and the disputes are resolved.”

“What has happened in UP is that apart from her solid Dalit votes, Mayawati has managed to get votes cutting across all castes. This includes lower OBCs, who until yesterday were the BJP’s backbone. She has got the votes of the poor.”

Rajdeep Sardesai agreed with Khursheed that Mayawati would face a problem because of her varied alliance. “Lalu Prasad Yadav won a massive victory in 1995 in Bihar on the basis of a social coalition. But once the coalition won, people said where is the development, where is the governance. This election was about the BSP+ but the next election could be about the other BSP of Indian politics: bijli, sadak, pani. How will Mayawati deliver on that?” said Sardesai.

Rahul Gandhi’s charm fails

Rahul Gandhi, the young Congress MP, was supposed to revive his party in the UP. His road shows got crowds, but the party got fewer seats than in 2002. Did Rahul fail to deliver?

Sibal, Union Science and Technology Minister, said the Congress didn’t expect a miracle so he couldn’t blame Rahul. “We are disappointed with our 21 seats but Rahul is here to stay and he will stay such time that the Congress is revived in UP.”

“Miracles don’t happen overnight. Mayawati lost her deposit in her first elections and now is the Chief Minister, so the Congress shouldn’t be expected to work a miracle,” said Khursheed.

Is the BJP going the Congress way in UP?

The BJP portrays itself as the only national alternative to the Congress, but does the rout in UP hamper its ambitions?

Will the BJP also get wiped out of the UP map like the Congress? Should the massive mobilisation that took place after the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in 1991 be evaporated so quickly that by 2004, Pramod Mahajan had to say things likes “I didn’t have in karyakartas in UP so I had to get 10,000 karyakartas from Maharashtra.”

Why did the BJP get deserted by its karyakartas?

However, BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley argued that the issue is not about the desertion by BJP’s karyakartas.

“Post-1991, the emergence of SP in UP is in itself a phenomena. The hardening of social and cast identity also to a great extent is a post-’91 phenomena. As a result the UP elections has become quadrangular with the Congress as a distant fourth,” Jaitley said.

He further argued that, “in the initial elections BJP did well and had a larger rainbow coalition. We have carried on that experiment but the one factor, which has taken place is that national parties like the Congress and the BJP normally do not have an identified caste base. So, anti-incumbency against a caste-base party also gives rise to certain reactions. We don’t seem to be benefiting from that phenomena.”

According to Jaitley, Mulayam Singh had a support base, which helped him to maintain a reasonable position. “The hostile position to him was substantially captured by BSP and a large part of our social base also moved on to the BSP,” he said.

BJP's performance in the last 15 years.

But where are the local leaders, Sardesai asked the two leaders. As these elections get more and more municipalised, people expect a local leadership to emerge. Now Rahul Gandhi and Rajnath Singh are all Delhi-based leaders, so isn’t that the problem?

Agreeing with sardesai, Kapil Sibal said, “Yes, this is the right reason. As far as the organisation is concerned this is the reality in UP. We don’t have the strong organisations that cadre-based parties have. But you cannot explain the lack of a local leader with the BSP win. BSP’s win occurred on the count of the peculiar quadrangular contest. Mayawati was very smart in putting up Thakurs and Brahmins from the BSP and then transferring all the Dalit votes to them. So, no local leader would have succeeded in such an alliance.”

Sibal, however, was wary of the longevity of the new state government.

:The real question is how she is going to sustain this alliance because the inherent differences will show in the times to come,” Sibal said.

But Yogendra Yadav indicated that it seems both the national parties are completely missing an important point that quadrangular contest has existed in UP since 1989-91. Now, that is the time that the BJP scored its big victories, so then how does the same contest become an explanation of its failure today.

Agreeing with Yadav, Ghose said that BJP doesn’t have an issue that it can project. “It’s echoing in UP that BJP ke pass mudda nahi hai and that is because Ram Mandir is a spent force,” she said.

But Jaitley believes that this is simplifying the problem itself.

“It is not that BJP doesn’t have an issue. Every election has a key issue and in this one the key issue was who is best suited to get rid of the SP and Mulayam Singh Yadav. And the voters thought that BSP’s credentials were perhaps a little better than ours,” he said.

As the debate gathered steam, Yadav explained that the decline of a party begins not when they lose elections after governing for five years.

“It is when they miss the turn to come back to power shows its downfall. The point is that people wanted to get rid of Mulayam Singh Yadav and there were two parties in contention. And it’s evident now that the voters did not choose the BJP,” Yadav said.

So, why was the BJP not the preferred party to defeat SP and why did people choose the BSP?

“Well, the answer is no longer a secret. The BSP and SP have been traditional rivals in UP. Now the electorate found out that our credentials in anti-SP were sharpened up in the last six months. And they found that perhaps the BSP had going at SP for a far longer time. It’s not that we are not aware of the reality,” Jaitley retorted.

And what lessons is the Congress taking from the UP polls and how is it planning to rejuvenate itself?

“We have to wait and watch how this government performs and then we should find the chinks in the armour and go for it,” Khursheed said revealing the party’s future strategies.

But the Congress ran this campaign as an anti-Mulayam one, so the party did not offer itself as an option but all it wanted was the CM out. But the Congress ended up benefiting Mayawati in a strange way.

Khursheed in the manner of a benefactor, which is typical to the Congress said, “It’s quite possible but the mess in UP had to be cleaned up. And once Mulayam goes we might have a chance of becoming an alternative.”

Muslim voters looking beyond Mulayam

One of the big losses that SP has suffered in the UP polls is in Rohilkhand, which is a region known for its Muslim dominance and was a big vote-bank for the party.

But post-elections BSP has taken over SP in Rohilkhand. Now, Doab is another place where Mulayam thought he was very strong but BSP has almost swept over this place too.

So, Mayawati’s vote is not restricted to certain areas but spread across UP. And this also shows that there is no Muslim vote bank anymore that votes for a particular party. Does it mean that the era of the minority vote bank and minority appeasement is a thing of the past?

“There is no question of vote bank politics. Wherever Mayawati has put up a Muslim candidate and people have believed that they want to defeat Mulayam then the Muslims have voted for Mayawati. She has a vote bank that she can transfer to any candidate, outside of the reserved constituencies. So, the Muslims have voted as strategically as the others,” Sibal said.

However, Sardesai explains that there is local anti-incumbency against the Yadavs as they were seen as a dominant community. And so the other communities decided to rebel. Now Mayawati was able to create that kind of coalition, which the Congress and BSP failed.

Thus, this election threw light on the fact that the Ram Mandir and Hindutva are no more issues because the Muslims are no more voting out of fear and they don’t have to rally behind a protector any more.

Mayawati, the kingmaker in national politics?

Mayawati is now sitting at the political high table but can she be the potential ally perhaps for the BJP in future?

Jaitley explained by saying that the situation is not such that the BJP has to go on to extreme propositions and become an ally.

“She is certainly relevant as a politician but going by our past we had a very bitter experience with her. I don’t see her going with any of the broader fronts because she is carving out a root of her own,” Jaitley said.

Deferring from the argument then does the Congress see her supporting the party in the presidential candidate?

Sibal said, “I can’t comment on that. It has to be worked out when a dialogue takes place. But she is an important player in national politics.”

Then what is the national relevance of Mayawati now?

Yogendra Yadav explained that parties, which are similar do not make a good alliance.

“Congress wants to get into Dalit votes so BSP in principle are basically poaching on each other’s votes. It’s Akali and BJP who make for a beautiful alliance,” Yadav said.

So, it’s a problem for either of the two national parties to come together with the BSP. However, Sardesai said that the BJP is a more natural ally of Mayawati.

Furthering the argument, Jaitley said, “Such a situation has not arisen and we don’t have a good record with Mayawati. She has chalked out a road map for herself and she will probably go alone and consolidate herself. And then maybe try and see if there is a hung house and then look for an ally.”

Now we are in the age of the media but the one politician who is not seen on news channels is Mayawati.

According to Sardesai, “She is not a terribly palatable politician. The social justice camps have always reached out to Mayawati. There are serious charges of corruption against her, so she cannot be treated with kid gloves. She is a serious politician but the media never tracked her in the manner that Rahul Gandhi was tracked. SP ran a media campaign through Amitabh Bachchan along with a trail of film stars. But at the end of the day SP doesn’t win and neither did Rahul Gandhi. Mayawati is a classic example of one who has used her hatred towards the media to build her image as a tough no-nonsense leader.”

So, Mayawati hates the media but the people love her. Agreeing Yadav said, “That precisely in an ironic way is what makes the people’s verdict so historic. This victory is like the 1957 EMS Kerala victory or the 1977 Janata Party victory.”

But what is the long-term historic effect? Is she as the BJP and Congress believe a long-term player who will reach far in national politics or she is someone who will diminish in stature over the years?

Concluding the debate, Yadav said in an open-ended manner, “As good historians say that a lot of things we will know only 10 years from now. This could be a transformative year in Indian politics.”

Vote share in percentage.