2022 Assembly polls sound death knell for BSP

Mayawati had created a template of a transferable vote bank but barely campaigned in the recent poll. No groundwork, no mobilisation through rallies, just some tweeting followed by ticket distribution. Even her signalling indicated greater comfort with the BJP than with an expanding SP. She understands transactional politics, right from ticket distribution to government formation. Many of her voters are simply striking a better bargain with the BJP.

Dissolution: Dalits in large numbers have abandoned Mayawati in UP. PTI

Saba Naqvi

Senior journalist

The decimation of the Mayawati-led BSP in Uttar Pradesh could signify the end of the subaltern stream of Dalit Bahujan politics. For all the criticism of recent actions (or inaction) of the BSP chief and four-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, there is a tragic element to the disempowerment of a political force that had raised Dalit consciousness and played a transformative role in the social justice politics of the Mandal era. In the 2022 Assembly elections, the BSP won just one seat in the UP House of 403, its vote share crashed to 12.9 per cent and 290 party candidates lost their deposits, which happens when they fail to get one-sixth of the votes.

There are other contours to the result. Mayawati’s principal deputy is a Brahmin, Satish Chandra Mishra, and the sole candidate who won on a BSP ticket, Uma Shankar Singh, is a Thakur, who was elected on his own local standing. The party founded by the late Kanshi Ram must now live with the ignominy of failing to get even a single Dalit elected in Uttar Pradesh. It is left with a small rump of Dalit votes, and CSDS data shows that no other social group has chosen BSP, even as 21 per cent of the party’s core Jatav voters migrated to the BJP in this election. Dalits constitute 21 per cent of the state’s population, of whom 54 per cent belong to the Jatav sub-caste of Mayawati. CSDS data shows that among non-Jatav Dalits, 41 per cent chose BJP, 23 per cent SP and 27 per cent BSP.

It seems that the elephant (the BSP symbol) is no longer in the room. Simultaneously, the other young force, touted as representing young Dalit aspiration, has crashed and burned in the 2022 elections. Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan, chief of the Bhim Army, tested himself in what he must have hoped would be a high-profile campaign against Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur Urban and came fourth, losing his deposit and getting only 7,640 votes. So, as the nascent Dalit force has not taken off even as the traditional power house collapsed, we have to conclude that subaltern parties that describe themselves as Ambedkarites have failed spectacularly in Uttar Pradesh.

Zoom out of Uttar Pradesh and the BSP’s decline has actually been happening across states where the party had built small incremental vote-shares since its foundation in 1984. In Delhi, for instance, the BSP would get over 10 per cent of votes till AAP arrived and in the 2015 election claimed the entire Bahujan section of society; the BSP’s vote dropped to just over 1 per cent from which it has never recovered. In Punjab, where BSP’s founder Kanshi Ram was born and where SCs make up 32 per cent of the population, the BSP was the junior partner in an alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) that performed very poorly. If we go by the Delhi experience, the emphatic arrival of AAP in Punjab could suggest the BSP henceforth sinking deeper in the mire. The more striking feature of the Punjab result is that the Congress choice of a Dalit CM for the first time in the state’s history failed and the victor AAP, according to CSDS data, got greater support from SCs. This reveals that other factors besides caste identification often determine voter choices.

This certainly happened in Uttar Pradesh as Dalits in large numbers abandoned Mayawati. The question now is whether increased Dalit support for the BJP is due to Hindutva consciousness or welfare consciousness, as they were beneficiaries of several welfare schemes that involved direct cash transfers, ration and in some instances, free housing. The ‘welfare consciousness’ seems to be decisive and it would be a mistake to see Dalits, except for the tiny Valmiki sub-caste, as foot soldiers of Hindutva due to their voting in larger numbers for the BJP. The transfer of Dalit votes to the BJP in pockets where the dominant peasant communities were Yadavs and Jats also bears this out. The SP-led front’s performance fell below expectations in these areas, which suggests a counter-polarisation among Dalits against aggressive agrarian communities. The shift of Dalit votes to the BJP can therefore be due to a very practical assessment of gain and loss such as avoiding potential future disempowerment.

Because the SP got a very healthy vote share of 32.6 per cent and with allies, the front touched over 36 per cent, one cannot write off Mandal era politics per se, but note its limitations when the BJP is building a rainbow. But all movement to the SP-led front took place among the middle castes and Muslims, while those at the top or bottom of the caste ladder remained with the BJP that recorded a vote-share of 41.3 per cent. The BJP’s social base now extends like a bridge, top to bottom, from an overwhelming allegiance of the upper castes, to divided loyalties among OBCs and now, increased acceptance among Dalits. From the Bahujan or Ambedkarite perspective, this also places Dalits in a hegemonic and hierarchical structure and that is problematic. More so, as shrinking of reservation through the privatisation of PSUs, not filling quotas and transferring government jobs to private contractors, was widely discussed among educated Dalits.

The responsibility for her decline must lie with Mayawati. She had created a template of a transferable vote bank but barely campaigned in this poll. No groundwork, no mobilisation through rallies, just some tweeting followed by ticket distribution. Even her signalling indicated greater comfort with the BJP than with an expanding SP. There is speculation about whether she did so deliberately or she’s just a leader who is losing her touch and along with it, her voting bloc. She understands transactional politics, right from ticket distribution to government formation. Currently, many of her voters are simply striking a better bargain with the BJP.

As Mayawati is a metaphor for Dalit resurgence and power, there is a great tragedy in her dissolution. There is wild speculation about her being considered by the BJP as a candidate for the President’s post, but it’s hard to see the party trusting her. If that happens, it would actually be a ceremonial end.