One needs to state such a positive view of Mayawati as a possibility before one examines the obstacles, the tension, the downside.

Hers is a politics of resentment which needs to recognise that justice is neither monologic nor monolithic. Her entry could amplify other forms of violence. We would move from the communal and the religious violence to the economic. Dominant castes would express a politics of anxiety that could magnify caste atrocities. Her rainbow coalition could face tensions between dalit and tribal demands. For example, dalits could celebrate the arrival of Narmada waters which might have threatened tribal livelihoods. Gujarat possesses three great flows of population which mark it culturally — the tribal, the pastoral and the diasporic. Mayawati needs a theory of modernisation which balances competing demands. She would need a new tribal policy and a theory for the renewal of crafts which understands caste-based communities of skill without being casteist.

What she lacks is a theory of ecology, which an erratic objection to privatisation cannot solve. One wonders whether she would have allowed the privatisation of 40 ports or the creation of the SEZ. Unfortunately one does not clearly see her model of development, her strategy for confronting dominant castes, sects or private corporations, or even how she would involve lower castes in the economics of globalisation.

In an odd way, civil society would have to be in creative tension with her. One is not referring to defunct Gandhian groups but to NGOs. Gujarat has some of the most creative NGOs, many of which are tribal or gender focused. They would have to remind her about democracy as a diversity of justice, a role not easy to play with a regime that could be holier than thou about its politics.

... contd.