The opponents Mayawati has vanquished agree on at least one thing: that she won because she built a rainbow coalition of castes, notably drawing Brahmins and Banias into her fold, besides splitting some of Mulayam’s Muslim vote. The important question is, why did these castes vote on her call? Brahmins and Banias have been her traditional targets. They also constitute the bulk of the state bureaucracy that she has given no reason to love her in the past. But if the Banias and Brahmins have turned the very logic of caste and vote-bank politics on its head, they must have had serious reasons for doing so. Let me suggest the following:

• Anti-incumbency is not an irrational whim. In each election, voters choose a predominant factor on which anti-incumbency rides. In Bihar, it was non-governance, in Madhya Pradesh in 2003 it was roads and power, in Uttar Pradesh this time, it was law and order. A population desperate to rid itself of “goonda-raj” saw in Mayawati the one leader capable of delivering. The one positive achievement of her last reign — upper castes and Muslims acknowledged right through the state — was better law and order.

Muslims vote tactically to defeat the BJP because they want security. But when a state is engulfed in lawlessness, even the majority community, even the upper castes, feel insecure. They need more than Amitabh Bachchan’s baritone to reassure them. Congress was not going to get anywhere near power. BJP did not project a strong enough leader and also sullied its book with the CD and with its failure to prevent its middling campaigners from running a communal campaign even as its top leaders stayed in the middle.

... contd.