At her rally in Mumbai recently, participants were calling Mayawati “mother”, a status the poor amongst the Dalits had till now reserved for Indira Gandhi.

But Maya’s constituency is not just limited to poor Dalits who lament over upper caste oppression. As its population gets increasingly younger, Dalit aspiration too has changed in recent years. “The younger lot is seeing Mayawati as the peak of Dalit success and look up to her,” says Pai. “A large, articulate Dalit middle class is being formed. They are unwilling to accede to a Congress-style accommodation,” says Chandrabhan Prasad, a commentator on Dalit affairs.

But the BSP’s march has not been without its limitations. In UP, the party’s big leap forward to capturing power was enabled by expanding its social base, particularly through an alliance with the Brahmins. The party had initially based its politics on a confrontationist agenda against the upper caste and after consolidating its hold over the Dalits, had moved on to an overarching alliance with the Brahmins.

Elsewhere in the country Mayawati cannot act on the confrontationist agenda before moving on to a rainbow coalition. So, Mayawati’s attempts in Kerala, for instance, to stitch an alliance between Dalits and backwards may not be easily digestible.

Second, Mayawati is not willing to create and hand over command to strong state leaders. In Karnataka, she has poached P.G.R Scindhia from the Janata Dal (Secular) and he is a leader of prominence. In other states, the BSP state president is faceless and she likes to keep it that way. But this could cut both ways, analysts feel. “Kanshi Ram created a Mayawati but she has created none,” Pai points out.

... contd.