Poke Me: Defeat forced Mayawati to reinvent herself

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Ajoy Bose

Are we seeing a new image makeover by Mayawati after her party got decimated in the recent Lok Sabha polls? Her threat to go on an indefinite dharna if justice was denied to the family of the rape and murder victims in Badaun is a rare display of aggression by the BSP supremo who has for long personally stayed away from the hurly burly of agitational politics.

Even her trip to the remote village in Uttar Pradesh is quite a departure for a leader who has assiduously avoided visiting trouble spots in recent years even if they were scenes of horrific atrocities against members of her Dalit community. Indeed this is a remarkable turnaround for a leader who spends most of the time confabulating with a few chosen aides within her mansions in New Delhi and Lucknow and occasionally emerging behind an elaborate security ring of bodyguards to address a congregation at mega-rallies from a distant podium.

Clearly the humiliation of drawing a complete blank in the Lok Sabha polls – a record low for the party ever since it started contesting on its official elephant symbol – has jolted Mayawati out of her growing apathy to directly connect with people. Dalit activists in Uttar Pradesh who still regard her as the tallest icon of the community are hoping that the electoral rout would spur their leader to get back her personal touch even if she is unable to return to her earlier avatar of a firebrand activist.

Along with her mentor, Kanshiram, Mayawati relentlessly toured the villages of Uttar Pradesh to mobilize and agitate. One of them recalled that it was this ability to reach out to people and draw them close as if they were family that had made her popular as Behenji. He lamented that she had in recent years stopped being a flesh and blood leader and become just an inanimate idol similar to the many stone statues of her that dot the landscape of the state.

Significantly, her return to a more direct style of politics after several years, in the wake of the Badaun atrocity seems to have already evoked an encouraging response. The parents and kin of the two Badaun victims are reported to have been overwhelmed by Mayawati’s visit. In a huge gesture, the parents who had earlier refused to take money from both the local Samajwadi Party Member of Parliament Dharmendra Yadav and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, accepted Rs 10 lakh from the Dalit leader. Apparently the father said that he could not refuse after she told him to consider the money as an offer from a member of his own family.

The political impact of Mayawati’s Badaun sojourn should not be underestimated, particularly since the brutalized community there was not her own Jatav sub-caste or even strictly Scheduled Caste but one of the many most backward castes (MBC) who can be described as Dalits, since their lot is as woeful as the untouchables. In fact, the local Badaun legislator Sinod Shakya is a member of the BSP and also belongs to a MBC. He was the first politician to raise an uproar about the rapes and murders and persuaded Mayawati to visit the traumatized village, earning considerable goodwill for the party.

There is now talk within Dalit and BSP circles in Uttar Pradesh that Behenji will be personally spearheading a campaign across the state to highlight the breakdown of law and order with special emphasis on the mounting attacks on Dalits, particularly their womenfolk. Mayawati is also likely to mount pressure on the new Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, a senior BJP leader from Uttar Pradesh who is regarded as close to Samajwadi Party boss Mulayam Singh Yadav, for harsh measures against the Akhilesh Yadav administration. As speculation grows about the new BJP-led central government contemplating a drastic move, she has already demanded the imposition of President’s Rule in the state and also asked her party activists to prepare for a mid-term poll.

Mayawati is fighting with her back to the wall. Her party’s vote share has been sliding rapidly since she swept to power in Lucknow in 2007, with 30.4% votes. This went down to 27.4% in the 2009 parliamentary polls.

This then slumped further to 25.9% when she lost her chief ministership in 2012 and now has plunged to 19.6%. This substantial loss of almost 11 percentage points in vote share could be fatal in terms of seats because the BSP’s core Jatav base is evenly spread across Uttar Pradesh and has to be bolstered with the support of other social segments in virtually every single constituency for a win in the first past the post system. With a section of even her core vote bank reportedly defecting to the BJP in the Modi wave, the BSP supremo has to lead her party from the ground if she is to regain the political initiative.

(The author is a biographer of Mayawati)