Friday, March 29, 2024
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Elephant hurt but walking

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By Jagdish Dwivedi

 

It seems quite uncertain whether by sacking ten ministers in ten days the UP chief minister, Ms. Mayawati will regain the trust of the voters to get her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) a majority in the UP Assembly which goes to polls in coming February.

There is more: she has denied renomination to 60 per cent of sitting MLAs. The key idea behind all this is to send out a message to the voter that “Behenji” cannot tolerate corruption and non-performance and she is going to have a new, honest, efficient team. However, it would be hard to believe as several men perceived to be corrupt are holding posts in her ministry. Naseemuddin Siddiqui, who is seen as the most corrupt minister, has been holding as many as 18 portfolios. The BSP’s Brahmin face, Satish Chandra Mishra, who Ms. Mayawati patronises for consolidating her Dalit-Brahmin alliance, faces serious allegations of misusing his power to promote his family members, but she has turned a blind eye to them.

Ms. Mayawati came to power in 2007 with the promise to end crime and corruption by winning 206 seats out of 403. Within two years, at the Lok Sabha elections in 2009, her BSP lost ground everywhere in the state. It could take lead only in 100 of the 206 constituencies it had won in 2007, and the defeat was across all the five regions of the state – Eastern UP, Western UP, Central UP, Bundelkhand and Rohilkhand. The major setback to BSP came in eastern and central UP. In 2007 BSP had won 81 seats in eastern UP but in 2009 it could take lead only in 55. In central UP where it had won 31 seats in 2007, it led only in 8. In western UP, the party’s strength was down by half. In 2007, it won 47 seats but in 2009 it could take lead only in 26. In Muslim-dominated Rohilkhand, the party could take lead in only 5 assembly segments in comparison to 26 assembly seats it won in 2007. In Bundelkhand, known for its poverty, BSP won 14 seats in 2007 but could take lead in only 6 in 2009.

Ms. Mayawati faces serious erosion in people’s trust in her ability to run a clean and efficient government. Her name has been individually associated with scams, extravagance and high rhetoric not followed by action. The dismissals of ten ministers in ten days – and of a score of others during her tenure – have only strengthened the popular perception that Ms. Mayawati does not have control over her ministers who are indulging in corruption, rape, murder and other crimes without any fear. A major part of the reason is that she has not set herself as a model to her ministers.

Even and equitable development has eluded UP during the Mayawati tenure. Her government has failed to make use of the huge special package given for Bundelkhand by the Planning Commission to deliver poverty alleviation benefits to the Dalits and tribals and lower backward castes in the backward hilly region. In eastern UP, poor water management has led to ruin of chilli farming for which many areas were famous. The potato farmers of western UP have had to witness bags of their produce thrown out of godowns by warehouse owners because the Mayawati government did not come to their support owing to sudden slump in potato prices.

There are cracks in her Dalit-upper caste alliance, because the Brahmins and Rajputs feel they have not got what the alliance promised to them. Ms. Mayawati has been accused by them to use the alliance only for electoral purposes and not allow to be translated into actual benefits in terms of jobs, contracts, businesses or infrastructure development. There is also a strong grievance among the upper castes that a few leaders of their communities have siphoned off the cream by virtue of their proximity to Ms. Mayawati.

Despite all these negative factors however, early reports suggest BSP emerging as the single largest party in the election. An intelligent guess is that its strength in the Assembly may be reduced from 206 to 150, but that would still make it the single largest party. That means the scams, anti-incumbency, rising crime graph and slow, uneven and inequitable growth could together cause a loss of about 25 per cent seats from 2007. That Ms. Mayawati still looks to be the single biggest winner can be credited largely to the BSP’s traditional Dalit vote bank remaining intact.

But other parties are also helping Ms. Mayawati by default. Mulayam Singh Yadav, who leads the Samajwadi Party (SP) that is going to be the second most important player in the February elections, is finding it hard to convince people that his party will not give open patronage to criminals and the corrupt, because this was one of the key grounds on which he lost power to Ms. Mayawati in 2007. And despite Rahul Gandhi’s relentless campaign with “Utho, Jago, Badlo” slogan, the Congress is still weighed down by past negatives of misgovernance and upper-caste oligarchy to remain a minor player. Even the BJP faces too many odds to emerge as a major player. That would suggest a scenario in which Ms. Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav are going to woo Congress or BJP to form government, with Behenji enjoying an edge. INAV

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