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calculation being that her base dalit vote would be a magnet to attract the votes of a candidate’s caste or community almost en bloc. Besides, even her loudest traducers would not fault Mayawati for restoring that semblance of law and order that was shredded apart during the preceding Samajwadi Party (SP) regime of Mulayam Singh Yadav. An oft heard refrain, especially from young women, was they could move freely even at night without fear of being accosted and molested.

The Opposition to the BSP

The SP’s campaign was spearheaded by Yadav’s young scion, Akhilesh Yadav. The father came into the scene much later. Understated and publicity shy to start with, Akhilesh had started signalling clearly that he would take his father’s 20-year-old party from its stereotypical mould as a “casteist and predominantly rural” entity and recast it as a “non-sectarian and forward-looking” one in the hope that the makeover might click with Uttar Pradesh’s young voters in the cities and towns. The urban votes had eluded the SP for decades despite Yadav senior’s persistent efforts to woo the traders (the generically named Bania or Vaish) away from their fi rst choice, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But the label of a leader disinclined to rein in the “hotheads” and the criminal elements he was known to patronise put off the upper classes who at least had to appear socially kosher even if they employed the same networks of musclemen to foster their business interests. However, Yadav senior was reluctant to unveil his son as the chief ministerial candidate at that point. Even the SP’s cadres could not say whether Akhilesh would assume the leadership mantle except in a situation in which it commanded a majority of its own: in early January, that seemed like a pipe dream. Or did it?

Following Akhilesh on his “Jan Chetna” motorised rath through the uneven roads of Rohilkhand – a swathe of agrarian verdancy extending from Jyotiba Phule Nagar (erstwhile Amroha) in the west close to Delhi to Shahjahanpur in west-central – it was evident that the leader-follower chemistry was transforming on the ground. The 60 seats of Rohilkhand were to poll in the fi rst phase on 4 February. The date was rescheduled and put off to the last round because it coincided with prophet Mohammed’s birth anniversary. Rohil khand has the highest concentration of Muslims, ranging from 55% in Sambhal and Amroha to close to 60% in Moradabad and Bijnore. So the peregrination was useful to gauge the mood among the minorities.

To contextualise the text: Congress general secretary and Member of Parliament from Amethi, Rahul Gandhi – who made the Uttar Pradesh polls a test of his political franchise and popularity – had toured Rohilkhand in December 2011. Journalists on his trail had uniformly reported about a “perceptible tilt” in the Muslim votes towards the Congress. They projected the contest as a straight fight between the BSP, “reeling under serious anti-incumbency”, and the Congress, implying thereby that the Congress was advantageously placed to unseat the incumbent government.

The Congress had hoped to maximise the “goodwill” it had purportedly earned from the Muslims by announcing a 4.5% reservation slot in education and jobs from the overall 27% backward caste quota on the eve of the election. Instead, the move was straightaway denounced as a “lollipop” that Muslims alleged had become second nature with a “sop-disburser” like the Congress. Murtaza Iqbal, a Moradabad journalist and a Congress sympathiser, likened it to “putting jeera (cumin) seeds inside a camel’s mouth”, denoting the futility of parcelling off a small quota percentage between five designated minority communities, including the Muslims. “It is disproportionate to the size of our population”, said Iqbal.

The announcement touched a raw nerve in other ways. Muslims accused the Congress of exploiting an “artifi cial” divide between the backward castes and the upper castes to its advantage and of doing nothing to amend a presidential order of 1950 that prevents those professing and practising religions other than Hinduism from being included as scheduled castes (Sikhs and Buddhists were). In contrast, Yadav senior’s “promise” to push for the Ranganath Mishra Commission’s recommendation of a 10% quota was hailed as “bold”, with not a single Muslim willing to question its tenability to stand the scrutiny of law. It was obvious that the SP’s credibility among the Muslims – that took a beating in 2009 when Yadav senior had teamed up with the former BJP chief minister, Kalyan Singh, whose dispensation had presided over the Babri demolition – was soaring again while that of the Congress had begun dipping.

From Rohilkhand as one travelled to the east of Lucknow in Barabanki, Gonda, Faizabad and Bahraich – that fall in the Avadh region and polled in the fi rst phase on 8 February – the trends one tentatively captured in Rohilkhand were confi rmed. Not only were the Muslims gravitating slowly but surely towards the SP, the Yadavs – the original source of its sustenance – displayed the kind of determination to rally around the Yadav father-son duo that was seldom glimpsed in the past.

Support for the SP

An SP insider admitted that unlike Mayawati’s Jatavs – who famously vote the BSP “blindfolded” – the commitment of the Yadavs was “something we cannot take for granted”. “The Yadavs are generally economically empowered, barring some poor ones. Once they attain a certain level of prosperity, they fancy themselves as equal to Mulayam Singh Yadav. This was the reason why the betteroff Yadavs resented his propensity to promote his family members because some of them felt they were more deserving of the positions than Mulayam Singh’s brothers and cousins. They turned their backs on us in the last two elections out of resentment”, the insider said. State bureaucrats, who follow elections closely, said in 2007, “20 to 25%” of the Yadavs voted the BSP to “spite Mulayam Singh”.

The Mayawati administration’s alleged high-handedness towards the Yadavs apparently forced a rethink in the community’s commitment levels towards the SP. “We were harassed every which way. When we identified ourselves at police check-posts with our caste name, we were thrashed and locked up in custody on trumped-up charges. The cops would

Economic Political Weekly

COMMENTARY

say, you are a Mulayam man, you are a threat to ‘Behenji’ (Mayawati), you are out to kill her”, said Kailash Yadav, who owns a small construction company at Ziyapatti Mafi in the Azamgarh district.

The upshot was the community elders in every place where the Yadav vote counted fanned out into the villages and issued a diktat that if a kinsperson voted a party other than the SP, he or she would be socially ostracised. The SP had armed the elders with lists containing the names and caste antecedents of voters in almost every constituency in order to later identify the suspected “renegades”.

Of course, even the near-total backing of the Muslims and Yadavs could not have earned for the SP, its best ever showing to date. At the height of the Muslim-Yadav consolidation in 2002, it won only 143 seats despite emerging as the single largest party. The reason why its seats leapt up from 97 in 2007 to 224 in 2012 was that the SP appropriated the kind of socially inclusive coalition that the BSP had knitted for itself in the last election.

Ayodhya was a revelation. In the past assembly elections – indeed ever since 1989 – it was a foregone conclusion that the seat would go to Lalloo Singh of the BJP. For the first time, Singh was challenged by Tej Pandey alias Pawan Pandey, a former student leader, of the Samajwadi Party. The perceptions from across the generational divide were apparent at an informal sitting inside a florist’s shop in the main marketplace.

The older brahmins continued to profess loyalty to the BJP, stressing they would vote for Singh because the “prestige of Bhagwan Ram was at stake”. They said they could not forget the “brutalities” inflicted on the Ram bhakts (faithfuls) by Mulayam Singh Yadav when he was the chief minister in 1990. Under the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s tutelage, the bhakts had laid siege on the Babri mosque, hoping to demolish it. Yadav, who had fortified the complex with state and central security forces, ordered them to fire on the mobs. In the process, 13 were killed and glorified as “martyrs” in the Sangh “parivar’s” annals. Memories of Yadav senior’s goonda raj (rule by the hooligans) also rankled with the older lot.

A young insurance agent like Surya Kant Mishra maintained he carried no such baggage. He recalled:

I have faint memories of the Babri era. In any case, the BJP exposed its hypocrisy on the issue by failing to build a Ram temple even when opportunities came its way. Yes, there was hooliganism in Mulayam Singh’s time. But that is offset by the good work he did. He offered a monthly unemployment dole (Rs 500 then), freeships for high school pass girls, 18 hours of uninterrupted electricity, subsidised text books and stationery to school students.

The historical brahmin reserve against the SP – that at times manifested itself as visceral hatred – seemed to be breaking down. In the end, Pandey defeated Singh by nearly 6,000 votes. More than the margin, Ayodhya’s symbolic loss was something that the BJP would have to seriously ruminate over while introspecting on its poor performance in Uttar Pradesh.

As one moved eastward of Ayodhya to the Poorvanchal region – that spanned Allahabad, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Ballia, Azamgarh, Mau, Salempur and Deoria – the brahmin warm-up towards the SP had coalesced into an emerging political axis that was christened as the “B-Y-M” (brahmins-Yadavs-Muslims) coalition. Prakash Rana, the block “pramukh” (chief) of Buxa Bazar in Jaunpur (near Varanasi), explained,

In 2007, Brahmins went lump-sum to the BSP because they wanted the SP out. Satish Mishra (Mayawati’s political aide who crafted the Brahmin-Dalit combination) helped. Like Dhrithirashtra, he blinded himself to realities and began only patronizing his family. The Congress and BJP are not strong options to oust Mayawati. So Brahmins are experimenting with the SP this time.

Rajnish Shukla, who teaches comparative philosophy at Varanasi’s Sampurnanand Sanskrit University and is counted as a resource person on east Uttar Pradesh for Delhi’s best known psephologists, did a reality check and explained that the so-named B-Y-M coalition was post facto reasoning by the brahmins to justify what he said was a “one-election tactic to choose a lesser evil over a greater one” – in this case, the SP over the BSP. Shukla elaborated:

In the post-Mandal era, Brahmins are no longer a political vote bank. They have no fixed preferences, they are choosy. The SP has not given structures to integrate social groupings like the BSP had. The Brahmin rationale is if there is an SP candidate with a solid Muslim-Yadav vote bank, their votes would further polarise the electorate and help defeat the BSP candidate.

Of course, rationalisations are not always determined by mathematical configurations. There were other reasons why the upper castes rooted for the SP. First, Akhilesh’s “liberal” credentials went a long way in softening the rough “casteist” edges to the party. His marriage to a non-Yadav (a Rajput from Uttarakhand),

Senior Research Fellow/(Labour Market Analysis)

The Institute for Human Development, New Delhi intends to hire a Senior Research Fellow in the ſeld of labour market analysis. The successful candidates will initially work for two years on an IDRC-funded project on Labour market inequality in Brazil and India, which will be carried out in collaboration with CEBRAP, Brazil (Centro brasileiro de análise e planejamento). She or he will be responsible for implementation of the IHD component of the project under the direction of and in collaboration with Dr Gerry Rodgers, Visiting Professor at IHD and will be assisted by a Research Associate. The work involves both historical analysis of trends and determinants of labour market inequality over several decades, econometric analysis of NSS and other data sources and policy reviews.

Qualiſcations required include a Ph.D in Economics, preferably with a specialization in labour economics, and 10 years research experience in this or related ſelds, attested by a suitable publication record. Experience of analysing large survey data sets is required, as well as excellent writing skills and the ability to work effectively in an international team.

This post will be remunerated in the range Rs 70,000 to 80,000 per month, depending on qualiſcations and experience. Candidates should submit their candidatures to IHD at appointment@ihdindia.org, by April 16, 2012. Interviews of shortlisted candidates will be held soon thereafter.

april 7, 2012 vol xlviI no 14

EPW

COMMENTARY

The provocation, they alleged, was “anything”: from “daring” to ask a dalit why he or his animal trespassed private land to “entreating” them to work on the farms. Shivdhan Yadav, who heads the Bhadohi block teachers’ association, said, “One policeman advised me to keep off these Dalits. He said why do you want to touch 1,100 megawatt of live wire and then die of shock?” The graphic imagery encapsulated a sentiment few articulated unabashedly and most acknowledged tacitly: that under Mayawati, the dalits had become so “arrogant and headstrong” that they expected the upper castes to “genufl ect” before them. “They have to be put in their places”, was the feeling.

The BSP was certainly not put in its place. Even if its seats plummeted from 206 to 80, its vote share of 25.92 was 3.24% lower than the SP’s 29.16. In absolute terms, it was a stunning drop: from 30.43% in 2007 while the SP’s was a moderate gain from 26.07 in the same year.

For the SP, the tasks ahead are formidable: from containing its over-zealous

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cadres, ready to brandish their revolvers for reasons, celebratory and otherwise, to getting veterans and “Mulayam votaries” like senior minister Azam Khan on board the Akhilesh dispensation to putting in place systems to deliver on their manifesto “promises”. Its biggest challenge is coaxing the bureaucracy that was recalcitrant in Mulayam Singh’s previous regimes. If Mayawati had a pillar of support in the dalit bureaucracy – the officials equal those from the upper castes – the SP’s handicap is the lack of a “committed” offi cialdom.

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