The unprecedented victory of Mayawati in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections is a new testimony in the leadership qualities of marginalised sections of our society. Dr. B.R.Ambdekar and Sri Kanshiram should have been alive today to share this moment of joy. This election result will definitely enhance the self confidence of millions of people across the country who are being persecuted due to their social origin by virtue of being born in a lower caste.
Hitherto people from all over the world were visiting New Delhi to meet the Minister Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav, to understand his turn around strategy in the Indian railway. Then some people suspected his credibility and questioned %u201Cif he is so smart why didn%u2019t he do the same trick in his impoverished state of Bihar during his 15 long years of power%u201D.
Now those who want to learn leadership skills need to go to Uttar Pradesh and study what did a lower caste Ms.Mayawati do well in a caste conscious state to defeat the strong upper castes and their national parties.
Mayawati does not have the glamour of Hema Malini (BJP), Jayaprada and Amitab Bachan (SP) or Rahul and Priyanka of Congress to woo the voters. She did not receive funds from Mumbai for contesting elections. But her opponents%u2019 anti SC/ST rule helped her to keep the 21% of dalit votes fully intact. Then she did a simple arithmetic that another six to seven percent votes from any other community can help her win the elections successfully.
She was alleged to have been involved in Taj corridor scam, and she is being accused of being a dictator in the party. But voters have rejected these allegations because the scams and dictatorship perpetuated by mainstream national party leaders are more notorious than that of Mayawati..
Inspite of Mulayam Singh government doing well in many fronts, it had earned the bad name for several reasons like total deterioration of law and order, alleged amassing of wealth beyond the known source of income and perpetuating atrocities against weaker sections of the society. The more his government worked against the interest of SC/STs the more they got united to teach him a lesson.
There are lot many greater lessons which needs to be learnt from this verdict. For example the age old myth that upper castes will never tolerate the progress of dalits has been disproved. Rather the verdict clearly indicates that upper castes are not averse to joining hands with dalits if the success is shared with them.
Then there are also beliefs that winning elections invariably requires funding by underworld dons from Mumbai and Delhi. BSP has rather built a different cadre of voters. Those want to vote for the party are also requested by the party to give notes in which ever denomination they can. The %u2018pay back to the society%u2019 programme managed by BSP cadres for collecting small sums of monthly contributions from employed dalits is a most successful method of internally funding the electoral expenditures rather than touching the feet of underworld mafia. No doubt Mayawati calls several groups like mass media, IAS bureaucracy and national political parties as %u2018Manuwaadis%u2019 who are said to be opposed to the well being of larger sections of the society but it is also true that she does not have double talk and stands by whatever she speaks.
Though her previous three tenures as the Chief Minister of U.P. were short periods of six months each many things of what she is good at as a head of the state are proved beyond doubt. In all her tenures law and order was given top priority which is the basic necessity for the fear stricken people of U.P., which unfortunately was lacking during the Mulayam tenure.
Mayawati was accused by mass media and her political detractors for indulging in caste politics like, renaming the districts after social reformers like Budha, Ambedkar, and Sahu Maharaj, spending public money for constructing Ambdkar park and strictly enforcing SC/ST prevention of atrocities Act. But the national parties have been indulging in more heinous practices like conducting world cow conferences when poor people are committing suicides, demolishing places of worship when the common man is begging for peace and killing thousands of people belonging to other religions to consolidate Hindu votes.
As much as it is an occasion of great celebration for the people of U.P and the cadres of BSP there are imminent risks associated with moving forward. Creating defection among BSP MLAs, endangering the lives of Mayawati and activating the Taj corridor case to force her resignation are the strategies being planned by her political detractors.
As its name suggest it is a true Bhahujan party this time where the communities of divergent ideologies like Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims have joined hands to experiment with a novel social engineering process. _____________________________________ Dr.G.Pandu Naik is a Bangalore based professor. He can be reached at drgpn@yahoo.com
