New Delhi: The script has gone awry for Mayawati, with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leading on just 17 seats. Aptly referred to as the BSP’s supremo; in every sense of the word. Many believe that of India’s many political parties, BSP is the only one with a Dalit leader having absolute control over her party.
Tales about her short temper, inaccessibility, handbags, statues, zero tolerance to crime, using the state’s aircraft to ferry sandals and a penchant for suspending government officials on a whim abound; not necessarily in the same order.
Controversy has never been far away from Mayawati, popularly referred to as Behen-ji or sister, who was born in New Delhi to Prabhu Das and Ram Rathi on 15 January 1956. The latest controversy being the Enforcement Directorate finding cash deposits over Rs104 crore in an account belonging to the BSP and Rs1.43 crore in an account belonging to her brother, Anand Kumar, amid Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive.
“If M.G. Ramachandran had his fur cap in the Chennai heat, Mayawati has her hand bag. However, sartorially she has changed over the years,” said a former top UP state government official who has worked with her requesting anonymity.
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In the political jousting, the sartorial burden somehow falls more heavily on women. However, Mayawati has been able to brush it aside to emerge as a Dalit icon; credited with the success of schemes such as Ambedkar Gram Vikas Yojana, wherein villages having a majority of scheduled cast and scheduled tribe population were selected to have all the developmental programmes to work in tandem. Also projects such as Yamuna Expressway, Noida–Greater Noida Expressway, Ganga Expressway, Noida Metro and first F1 Indian Grand Prix were her initiatives.
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As anticipated, she didn’t get the bureaucracy’s popular vote.
“Her concept of administration was limited to law and order. Perhaps it was a reflection of the excesses of the SP’s rule and the atrocities committed by the middle castes on the lower castes. Her regime was of fear psychosis and ruling through a coterie,” added the wizened retired bureaucrat.
Interestingly, Congress’s Panna Lal Punia, a 1970-batch Uttar Pradesh cadre Indian Administrative Service officer and a member of parliament (MP) to the Rajya Sabha, was her close confidante before he fell out of favour.
Mayawati has been Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister on four occasions. However, she was able to serve the full term only once in her fourth stint between May 2007-March 2012.
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She has many a first to her credit. From Uttar Pradesh (UP) becoming the first state in the country to have a cabinet secretary—late Shashank Shekhar Singh—a pilot to state chief ministers; who was also accorded the rank of a state cabinet minister in 2007; to centralizing the liquor vending licence dispensation which were awarded to Gurdeep Singh Chadha or Ponty Chadha, who was killed in a gun fight in November 2012.
“She had a strange behaviour with the bureaucracy. Perhaps, it was more for optics. Once, she suspended a state electricity department official at a public meeting in Gorakhpur over complaints about poor electricity in the area. It was later realized that the poor chap was sent from Lucknow as part of protocol specifically for her visit and had never worked in Gorakhpur,” said the first former UP government official quoted above.
Not one for the pre-poll alliances, Mayawati has been at the centre of the successful experiment by late Kanshi Ram and has scripted a meteoric rise on the Indian political stage. A law degree holder from Delhi University, she has been associated with the All India Backward And Minority Communities Employees Federation, also known as BAMCEF and Dalit Shoshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti or DS4, which was a precursor to BSP. She was noticed by Kanshi Ram for her oratorial skills at Delhi’s Constitution Club and never looked back since then.
“While Mayawati can be faulted at her excesses such as building her own statues, she successfully weaved in the Dalit icon’s imagery throughout her support base by creating new districts with names such as Gautama Buddha Nagar, Sant Kabir Nagar and Sant Ravidas Nagar which in a sense is reflective of the making of an alternative cultural public sphere challenging age old brahmanical hegemony that surrounds us,”said Dr. Arvind Kumar, assistant professor, Dr. K.R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minorities at Jamia Millia Islamia.
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“Notwithstanding her compromising attitude on BSP’s agenda as was originally envisioned by Kanshiram, Mayawati remains the sole Dalit leader in contemporary times who fearlessly raises her voice against Dalit atrocities,” added Dr. Kumar
She evolved along with her politics which made Sarvajan its pivot from Bahujan. Similarly, she has changed the terms of engagement on her communication. From reading prepared texts for her speeches she has started making impromptu comments, as was witnessed during the last campaign. Also, from being disdainful of the media, she has started fielding questions in her press conferences.
Never a pushover, Mayawati has resurfaced her idea for UP to be divided into four smaller units: Purvanchal, Bundelkhand, Awadh Pradesh and Paschim Pradesh.
As of 11.15am, the BSP has about 22% of vote share. Even in 2012, when BSP lost power to SP, the party’s vote share was 26%—enabling it to win 80 seats. In the 16th general election, when it failed to win a single Lok Sabha seat, it had a vote share of nearly 20%.
Perhaps this gives hope to her five MPs to the Rajya Sabha, who troop in and troop out after her from the house of the elders.
