Mayawati ousted her nephew from BSP. Reasons are confusing. But her electoral irrelevance won’t change
What a fall it has been. Once pundits used to speculate that Mayawati could become India’s first Dalit PM. Dust is still thin on those columns and already everyone has to be reminded that she was the first UP CM to complete a full term. If she had grander ambitions, it was with reason. 2014 LS results, in retrospect, signalled how new political waves would instead carry her in the opposite direction. BSP held on to a 20% vote share in UP, but scored 0/80 seats. By 2024, even the vote share dropped to 10%. Today, Mayawati is making headlines for political house ‘cleaning’. But the kind of revival BSP well-wishers desperately wish for, isn’t to be seen.
Not for the first time, she’s fired nephew Akash Anand, otherwise understood as her heir apparent. Opinion’s divided on whether this is because he was too big for his boots or too undersized. What’s fact is that a series of BSP politicians have taken the exit, to grow out of Mayawati’s shadow. As defeat has followed defeat, she’s put the blame not only on her political rivals but also, variously, Jats, EVMs, Muslims…Most plaintively, she’s observed “apne log”, own people, drifting away. Much of the drift has been BJP-wards – a social engineering success prefigured via a Dalit laying the first brick at the 1989 foundation ceremony for Ram temple.
It’s also true that no Dalit politician currently commands the political space like Mayawati once did, or Kanshi Ram. In other parties, they’re arguably mere cogs in the wheel, no matter how important. For some experts, experimenting with various parties and politicians speaks to increased self-confidence among Dalits, a deepening of democracy. For others, such segmentation of Dalit representation and vote, amounts to a weakening. They hope a new Mayawati will rise from the new generation of Dalit-Bahujan politicians.
This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
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