Misreading the Mayawati mandate

government in UP reflects a major turnaround in the political consciousness of the oppressed or the rise of “a poor man’s rainbow” over UP (‘Poor Man’s Rainbow’ by Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar, IE, May 17).

The latter conclusion is highly flawed. First, it glosses over the fact that the majority gained by Mayawati in Lucknow is only in terms of assembly seats. A party which has 70 per cent of the vote going against it cannot be described as the party of all the poor or even all dalits and minorities. That this may happen in the near future with good governance from the new dispensation is a shared and sincere hope. But to suggest that the 25 per cent of voters who remained loyal to the Samajwadi Party do not include the poor is highly erroneous.

More pertinently, the assertion that the poor were the principal force behind the triumphant march of ‘the elephant’ to Lucknow ignores the most significant feature of the UP election, namely, the shift of a significant chunk of upper caste (which also happens to be mainly upper and middle class) vote to the BSP seeking reprieve from the goonda raj and the perceived minorityism of the previous regime. Indeed, it is this 3-4 per cent vote swing from the BJP to the BSP which independently accounts for the turnaround in the seat share and the current mood in Uttar Pradesh also.

A micro study of a village in Meerut district through the election month shows a major chink in the notion of a single dalit voice. In interview after interview, for instance, we gathered that the so-called dalit vote is itself divided vertically between jatavs and valmikis in the region, the latter being much more loyal to the Congress than the BSP till today. Similarly, about 100 pre- and post-poll interviews in the village and a city slum also suggested to us that most Muslim respondents remained firmly loyal to the Samajwadi Party (or the newly founded United Democratic Front of Haji Yaqoob Qureshi). The suggestion of a marginal decline in the Muslim vote base of Mulayam Singh Yadav implied in the referred report needs further confirmation in our view.

Even if we were to accept the findings of the poll data, the reported 55 per cent of non-jatav-dalit vote and 83 per cent of Muslim vote going against the BSP itself questions the conclusion drawn by the optimists.

Another aspect of the recent UP battle which needs to be remembered was the re-election of some of the most dreaded mafiosi on the basis of both terror and community support in at least a dozen constituencies. Hopefully, the clear warnings from Mayawati to the bhaiyas in the underworld and the babus in the offices would improve things in days to come.

While we completely share the underlying sentiment of the enthusiasts, our worry is that the conflation of facts and hopes at this juncture is likely to disappoint us again (as in the case of some earlier authoritarian assertions in the name of the poor).

The writer teaches history at Zakir Husain College, Delhi