FROM THE TELEGRAPH OF 14 JANUARY 2006
Eight years
later
Eight years ago,
the Bahujan Samaj Party celebrated the 75th birthday of Kanshi Ram,
its founder. He was presented with a purse of Rs 75 lakh; Mayawati, who
organized the ceremony, was given Rs 42 lakh – Rs 1 lakh for each of her
completed years. Newspapers carried full-page advertisements; roads of Delhi
were festooned.
Eight years
later, newspapers again carried big advertisements last Sunday congratulating Mayawati
on her 50th birthday. As usual, they pictured her in finery and
jewellery. But there was something wrong at the bottom: the organizers had
surnames like Goyal, Agarwal and Gupta – typically traders’ names. Even more
shocking was the slogan: Bahujan, Mahajan
Bhai Bhai.
What was
happening to this party, built up on confrontation with upper castes – Tilak Tarazu aur Talwar as portrayed in
its picturesque slogan? It is abandoning its cause, slowly but surely. Early
last year, Mayawati set up district brotherhood committees in UP headed by
Brahmins; the courtship ended in a Brahmin rally. She promised them
proportional representation in her caste coalition. But Brahmins are not
enough. BSP needs money. In UP money goes to whoever is in power.
Power went once
to organized castes. BSP organized Dalits in UP, and turned them into a political
force. But organization was not enough; a coalition had to be built up to
attain a majority. After her betrayal of the Socialist Party in 1995 and the
BJP in 2003, Mayawati finds allies hard to come by. A bit lonely now, she has
decided to make friends with her chosen enemies, the upper castes. And none is
more important than the moneyed trader castes.
However, there
is another lesson Mulayam Singh has learnt: that politics frames the image of a
state. The rise of the Communists and their endless demonstrations scared
industry away from West Bengal. In UP it was the insatiable greed of
politicians. Whenever a politician is short of cash, he turns to the nearest
sugar mill. The business of collection has been centralized and private extortion
curbed by recent governments; but the informal taxation continues. It has
reached its limits; Mulayam Singh has learnt that the slice cannot get bigger
unless the cake expands. He is not the most charming of salesmen; but Amar
Singh has made some influential friends on his behalf. Hence their disquiet at
the tapping of Amar Singh’s phone: the secret of a superb new political
technology is at stake.
The first thing
Nitish Kumar did on becoming chief minister of Bihar was to go on television
and, in an advertisement, to invite industrialists to invest in Bihar. Slowly,
North Indian politicians have become aware that the South has left the North
far behind in the past 25 years, and that their dirty politics is part of the
reason. Can Mayawati do a makeover and present a clean image? That will be a
prospect worth watching.
