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| Alienating effects of Maya’s old formula | | |
Kancha Ilaiah
This Lok Sabha election has given out very interesting results. Across the country people were convinced that the Congress Party alone was the best available option in the context of a global recession.
There was also the feeling that the welfare measures which the Congress initiated, and has been implementing over the last five years, must continue. Hence, the Congress got a better mandate than what it had got in 2004.
The poll results also stopped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from coming to power — the nation could not put up with more communal carnage and it could not have afforded the politics of unnecessarily provoking Pakistan.
But what surprised one were the setbacks suffered by Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the pro-Mandal forces in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. There are many lessons to be drawn from the near rout of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) in Bihar, the not-so-great performance of the Samajwadi Party (SP), the weakening of the BSP and the surprise victories of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh.
If the Congress gets revived in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Mandal forces get weakened, the agenda of social justice might get weakened further. Or, perhaps, it could be reworked through the Congress. We should not forget that the two top faces of the Congress Party — Mrs Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh — do not carry the tag of anti-dalit or anti-Mandal politics. The experience of the last five years has shown the masses that these leaders are concerned about them. They represent a cultural heritage contrary to that of the BJP’s L.K. Advani.
They have a positive attitude towards minorities and towards a large section of Scheduled Castes (SC), Schedule Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). They used Rahul Gandhi as their interlocutor with the masses and that seems to have worked to some extent — at least in Uttar Pradesh.
The Mandal forces and Ms Mayawati tried to work on the old principle that they get strengthened only when the Congress remains weak in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. But a different era of the Congress appears to be on the horizon.
The Mandal forces did not realise that Mrs Sonia Gandhi works patiently on problems on a long-term basis. She did not jump into politics as soon as her husband Rajiv Gandhi died. There is a simple but strong and determined approach of wait and watch. Her physical appearance expresses her mental make-up. There is spirituality about her politics; There is a political Teresa in her.
The Mandal leaders and Ms Mayawati did not understand the strength of her approach. They must realise that the SC, ST, OBC and minority masses like this kind of approach. In fact, this is what helped Mrs Sonia Gandhi survive all those who cried hoarse about her foreign origin.
The Mayawati factor got hyped ever since her party proposed her name for prime ministership in the Third Front. Thereafter she drew quite a bit of attention of the national and international media. But when the results came out it became evident that she had won just 20 seats and was not in the running.
The Left parties, that had vaguely proposed her name as a prime ministerial candidate, got crushed even more severely thanks to the mismanagement of CPI(M) leader Prakash Karat and the CPI leader A.B. Bardhan.
But the main question is why and how did Ms Mayawati get weakened in Uttar Pradesh when her formula of dalit-Brahmin unity was supposed to work for sarva samaj (the entire society) and increase her numbers?
What seems to have cost her very dearly in this election were her over-ambitious tours across the country, while neglecting her own state. It also seems that since the 2007 Assembly elections, the Muslims of Uttar Pradesh have got alienated from the BSP.
If these were the real causes she could overcome them by reworking her strategy.
But the elections results show that her fortunes will decline if Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s strategy of winning over dalits, Brahmins and Muslims with a welfare package, that keeps the poor at least on feeding levels in this recession period, works.
In Andhra Pradesh, for example, Muslims (who constitute about 11 per cent voters) and Christians (who constitute five per cent of voters and are mostly from dalit background) stood by the Congress.
Ms Mayawati’s scheme of dalit-Brahmin unity is going to face a severe test in the next Assembly elections. The "Sarva Samaj principle" should have been coupled with a high dose of welfare politics. Ms Mayawati did not do that. But the Congress seems to be working on that agenda. Mulayam Singh Yadav was also very weak on welfare. Take, for instance, his anti-English stand. People see the contradiction between what politicians say and what they do — when all SP leaders’ children are studying English, why are they keen to impose Hindi on the masses? In Andhra Pradesh, the introduction of 6,500 English-medium government schools has benefited the Congress.
Ms Mayawati does not have any serious education policy in her armour. This is a key factor which influences the voter. Ms Mayawati, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan were never serious about these issues. They should know that the Congress, under Mrs Sonia Gandhi, is a different entity.
If they want "Ambedkar" and "Mandal" to work with the masses, Mandalites and Ms Mayawati must rework their strategies in a manner that improves the daily lives of the masses. If the politics social justice has to survive, it must be combined with economic and educational justice.
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