Mayawati: Too clever by half?

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati seems to think that the proposal to split Uttar Pradesh into four states will help her win the 2012 elections. What she has not realised is that the four-way split will put the very existence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the dalit agenda that she has been carrying on in real danger.

Ms Mayawati’s announcement for a four-way split emerged out of two considerations. First, B.R. Ambedkar himself suggested in the early 1950s that small states would be in the interest of the Scheduled Castes. He opposed the formation of linguistic states as they were bound to be relatively big and would have a hegemony of the upper castes. He presumed that the scheduled castes, in alliance with other oppressed castes, had more scope to come to power in small states.
Secondly, splitting Uttar Pradesh into four states would mean that the Opposition in Uttar Pradesh would get divided. With such a division within the Opposition camp, Ms Mayawati would get the votes of the groups which are pro-small states along with those of dalits and Brahmins.
But she hasn’t understood that the division of a state could work either way. For instance, if all those who oppose such a division rally around the Samajwadi Party (SP), which has a diametrically opposite stand, the possibility of the SP emerging as the single largest party is very much there.
Though Ms Mayawati exposed the BJP’s double standard on the issue of small states, the Congress is a difficult nut to crack. It has managed to keeps its position safe on all fronts, and that is why it is proposing another States Reorganisation Commission.
On the first count, Ambedkar’s assumption did not prove to be correct because of certain unpredictable reasons. In no small state have dalits come to power in India during the last 64 years.
Haryana and Punjab are both very small states where the scheduled caste population is quite large. According to the 2001 Census, Punjab has a dalit population of 28.9 per cent and Haryana has 19.3 per cent.
Ms Mayawati’s mentor Kanshi Ram, who came from Punjab, realised that he would not be able to bring dalits to power in Punjab or Haryana. Though his cycle yatras would have been organised in Punjab or Haryana much more easily than in a massive state like Uttar Pradesh, he chose to work in the biggest state of the nation. And it is because the BSP managed to capture such a massive state that its ideology has impacted the nation. If Ms Mayawati was the chief minister of Haryana or Punjab, who would have bothered about her?
Assume that Uttar Pradesh is divided into four states and
Ms Mayawati is the chief minister of one of the small states and three leaders from her party are the chief ministers of other states (even with the present majority that is a difficult proposition). Even then, what would be her stature, and what would be the impact of the kind of projects she has undertaken around the dalit agenda on the nation? Would she build the kind of monuments that she did in a big state like Uttar Pradesh?
Ms Mayawati’s iron grip on the party is based on the political power that she keeps on using as “master key”, as Ambedkar proposed. But she should know that once a person from her party becomes the chief minister of even a small state, s/he would become assertive.
The BSP is not a well organised national party to be able to control and change chief ministers like the Congress or the BJP.
The idea that once Uttar Pradesh is split into four states, Ms Mayawati will move on to become the Prime Minister of the country is unrealistic. It is not the number of chief ministers one has that makes one the Prime Minister, but the number of MPs.
By proposing the division of the state Ms Mayawati has now lost the chance to rope in the CPI(M) into her national alliance. As is well known, the CPI(M) is not for small states. The Telugu Desam Party will not support the small-state agenda given the contentious discourse around Telangana.
The only friend Ms Mayawati can find with the proposition of small states is the corrupt regional outfit, Telangana Rashtra Samithi. But such an ally is a liability, not an asset.
Ms Mayawati has become a symbol of dalit political ideology. Even if she is the Opposition leader of a big state like Uttar Pradesh and seriously works to build up the party across the country, it would help in empowering the dalits more. The innovative and bold course that she has taken so far proves that she has tremendous common sense.
Though she is not a political thinker like Ambedkar or a master organiser like Kanshi Ram, Ms Mayawati has proved to be far more astute in drawing up strategies for electoral battles. In 2007, her slogan of “Sarvajan Samaj” worked well and she could win the elections on her own.
But this time she went out of that ideological framework and brought in an agenda that can cut the ground from under her feet. She must remember that this time she is facing the Congress with a better organisational base and political slogans of its own. Even if the BSP emerges as the single largest party with 150-160 seats, the SP and the Congress can join hands and see to it that she remains out of power. Her small states agenda, from all angles, seems to be a trap.

The writer is director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad