Piyush Srivastava
Lucknow, April 3, 2010
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Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati is switching the caste variables in her political calculus, replacing Brahmins with non-Yadav backward castes to consolidate her Dalit vote bank.
The early signs of a game-changing formula were visible in the sacking of 68 Brahmin public prosecutors and the appointment of 20 new Dalit ones a couple of days ago.
Call it the Rahul Gandhi effect on Dalit hamlets across the dusty countryside or the sobering impact of the 2009 parliamentary elections when 56 per cent of the Dalit electorate in UP did not vote. Mayawati first sidelined Satish Chandra Mishra, the Brahmin face of her Bahujan Samaj Party ( BSP). Top sources in the party insist she may not field most of her 42 Brahmin MLAs in the assembly polls two years from now.
A BSP coordinator for eastern UP said party workers had finally made Mayawati see the reality of an eroding mass base. "Behenji has realised that she has alienated about 50 percent of the Dalits by letting Brahmins run away with power and pelf. The Dalit-Brahmin combination which had helped her to ride to power in 2007 failed in 2009. We had complained to her after the Lok Sabha polls that though five out of 20 Brahmin BSP candidates won with Dalit votes, 15 out of our 17 Dalit candidates lost because they didn't get Brahmin votes," he alleged.
The BSP supremo had put up 86 Brahmin candidates in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.
Two years later, after the shock victory of 21 Congress candidates in the Lok Sabha elections, the BSP has reportedly come to the conclusion that Brahmins have refused to transfer their votes to the Dalit party and have gone back to the community's original icons, the Gandhis.
In this politics of diminishing returns, Mayawati seems to be dumping the Brahmins and seeking a new caste alliance.
Uttar Pradesh Congress spokesman Akhilesh Pratap Singh said Mayawati was angry with the Brahmins for shifting their allegiance to the Congress. "She is deserting the Brahmins because they are moving towards the Congress," he said.
Of the 145 public prosecutors she sacked on Tuesday, 68 were Brahmins and only three Dalits.
When she appointed 75 new prosecutors the next day, she made sure that 20 of them were Dalits. The number of Brahmins was just 18. Though she has brought in only 10 backward caste prosecutors, party insiders said she was searching for more.
Mayawati had earlier let Mishra farm out these jobs, which command immense local clout and social prestige to Brahmins, as a thanksgiving gesture for their support in 2007. But not any longer.
From the role of prime troubleshooter, Mishra has now been reduced to monitoring her cases in the Supreme Court. Additional cabinet secretary Vijay Shanker Pandey, the man who ran her bureaucracy, was shifted from the state capital to Allahabad as member of the revenue board.
Instead, Netram, a Dalit additional cabinet secretary, is now assigned to tame errant bureaucrats.
Mishra has been replaced by four second-rung leaders - PWD minister and party general secretary Nasimuddin Siddiqui, the party's Muslim face, mining minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, a backward caste leader, social welfare minister Indrajit Saroj and rural development minister Daddu Prasad, both Dalits.
Mayawati even sacked her Karnataka unit spokesman Y.N. Sharma, alleging that he let the details of her "cash garland" out by speaking out of turn. Sharma insists his dismissal too is part of a pattern.
"She used me as a Brahmin face in Karnataka during the Lok Sabha polls because I am a member of the All-India Brahmin Federation. She expelled me when she realised that the Brahmin-Dalit combination would not succeed in my state. She has decided to dump about 40 Brahmin MLAs in 2012 and increase the ratio of Dalits, Muslims and backward castes," Sharma claimed.
Dalits form approximately 21 per cent of the state's population, but the BSP cannot win polls with just Dalit votes. It will need the support of at least two more communities. If the Brahmins, supposed to be about 13 per cent, abandon her, she needs to look at the conglomeration of non-Yadav backward castes like Lodhs, Kurmis, Kushwahas and others, who add up to 20 per cent.
Sharma said Mayawati has been "terrified" of Rahul's visit to Dalit houses because this could lead to Dalits abandoning her and the Brahmins shifting to the Congress. Political analyst A.K. Verma said her only option now is to forge a Dalit-Mulsim-backward alliance.
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