Mayawati may never have been to an architecture school nor, as far as we know, taken much interest in Marxist dialectics. But one striking feature of the complex Uttar Pradesh assembly elections that began today is the manner in which the Bahujan Samaj Party’s ‘‘base-superstructure’’ experiment is playing itself out in the most unlikely of places. Having built a solid Dalit support base, it is now skilfully trying to erect a multi-hued edifice which, if it succeeds, could recast age-old equations in UP.

Take this village, for instance. Basoli falls under the Chaprauli assembly segment of Baghpat district in western Uttar Pradesh — the very heart of ‘‘Jatland’’ which is as associated with Chaudhury Charan Singh as Rae Bareli-Amethi is with the Gandhis.

Charan Singh’s Lok Dal has commanded the loyalty of the dominant Jat community in this entire belt for decades, and Ajit Singh has so far benefited from his father’s legacy. Of the 14 seats the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) won in alliance with the BJP in 2002, eleven came from the Baghpat-Muzaffarnagar region.

But this time, in several of the ‘‘Jat seats’’, disillusionment with Ajit Singh is palpable. But more significant, many of them openly state that they will be voting for the BSP. Sanjiv Kumar Tomar, a former deputy pradhan of the village, confesses that the real fight in Chaprauli this time is between the BSP’s Gajendra Singh ‘‘Munna’’ and the RLD’s Ajay Tomar — and of the two Jat candidates, Munna has the edge.

... contd.