The composition of the caste coalition, the relative space it offers to its various constituents alongside the dalits, will determine the political and policy latitude that Chief Minister Mayawati will have in the next five years. Though she has more room than other political actors to court a “plus” constituency, yet it will define the constraints upon her every time she reaches beyond the concerns of her core base. Of course, Mayawati can transform her strategic patchwork into a true rainbow of castes and communities in the coming years. If she does that, she would be changing the course of politics in UP — and in India — in lasting ways.

Chief Minister Mayawati must also resist and overcome the habits and syndromes in UP’s story so far. In contrast to states like Tamil Nadu or Kerala, the politics of backward caste mobilisation in UP has confined itself mostly to symbolic gains.

Though backward caste parties have occupied the state since the 1990s in UP, they have shown little ability or willingness to shrug off the “burden of inertia” that bogs down the state as dispenser of basic public services, or to draw up an emancipatory economic agenda. This failure affects castes and communities unequally — the historically disprivileged suffer more.

During the periods that the BSP has been in power in UP, Mayawati focused on a few pet programmes. But be it the Ambedkar Village Scheme, hostels for dalit students, or assistance to dalit families for weddings and other contingencies, these initiatives were not embedded in a larger reform of the state. As a result, they suffered from poor implementation. More crucially, their potential was crippled by their own narrow ambition. The benefits of these programmes went to the small and already better-off sections of the dalits and alienated the non-dalit rural poor — the MBCs — who in some areas are even poorer than the dalits.

... contd.