After statue, Maya's deity fancy

A week is a long time in politics. Harold Wilson's one line wisdom has stood test of time for decades. That the political commentators are swayed by events to make predictions are commentaries on fallacy of being forgetful of what Wilson had so succinctly surmised.  

Only a few weeks back the Mayawati led BSP was rattled. The prominent face of the party in Uttar Pradesh Swamy Prasad Mourya had quit. He was followed by two more in quick succession. They all went out by alleging Mayawati's penchant for "money for tickets". Mayawati was seen defensive and waiting to see how many more would bolt her stable. She was apparently faced with a script of sabotage from within her party even before she launched the campaign to wrest the power back in the next year's elections in the state.

Mayawati

The BJP dropped a rope to Mayawati to swing back from the zone of self-doubt to that where she could street-fight her battle for Lucknow. The vice president of the state unit of the BJP Dayashankar Singh had a momentary loss of sanity to believe a public place as his private abode to abuse Mayawati. He succumbed to profanity. The Rajya Sabha was rocked. Leader of the House Arun Jaitely apologised. The BJP sacked Dayashankar Singh. He went into hiding, as the Akhilesh Yadav government went after him with full might.

The cadre of the BSP came on the street. The party battered in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections found the veins swelling with energy. The blue flag embossed with image of an elephant spurted on Lucknow streets. The verdict in New Delhi was out, that the BJP had handed the seat of power in Lucknow to Mayawati on a platter. The verdict was not misplaced either, for the BJP chief Amit Shah had been feasting and bathing with Dalits to win them over in the run up to the UP elections. The BJP story seemed over in UP. 

Dalits were bashed up in faraway Gujrat as well. They were flogged allegedly for skinning dead cows. The cow vigilantes have mushroomed north of Vidhyanchal strongly. The Narendra Modi government's ministry of agriculture and farmer welfare has rolled out ambitious plans for protection of cows. But the cow-worshipers choose not to remember that a few Dalits eke out their livings out of the skins of dead bovines. And, thus, the plan of feasting and bathing with Dalits by Amit Shah met with its anti-thesis in Una in Gujrat. The story which began with the suicide of Rohith Vemula on the Hyderabad University campus spread far and wide, that the BJP's love for Dalits was farcical. And, the BJP should forget taking a bite of the 20 per cent Dalit vote base pie in the electoral demography of Uttar Pradesh.

But politics is not stagnant waters. It's rather a flowing river. It absorbs the upheavals and goes on. And,

Dayashankar Singh

thus, the feast of abuse hosted by Dayashankar Singh was not the last one. Mayawati chose to become a deity from a wily politician. She sensed she could be the J Jayalaitha of Uttar Pradesh. And, she unleashed the hooligans upon the wife and minor daughter of Dayashankar Singh. Her crowd wanted his minor daughter. The woman and the girl were hurled choicest abuses. The battered women took shelter with the law of the land against the lynch mob set on them by Mayawati. They lodged an FIR against the BSP supremo. The score is now level. Akhilesh Yadav can now have the last laugh.

Mayawati's rise to political prominence in Uttar Pradesh had never been on account of militant Dalit politics. She had in contrast been the beneficiary of the Brahamanical uprising against the Mandal politics of the state. The BJP liberated her from the shadow of the BSP founder Kanshi Ram. The wily lawyer-turned-politician Satish Chandra Mishra made her the "Iron lady" of Uttar Pradesh. She practiced the mantra of "Bahujan Hitay, Bahujan Sukhay". Mishra helped her in scripting unprecedented social engineering in the run up to the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. She won support of upper castes, most backward castes, extremely backward castes, and, thus, became the queen of the UP politics. She built her political castle whose base was the 20 per cent Dalit vote constituency but the structure was provided by non-Yadav castes. 

Mayawati now appears to have overturned her mantra. Now, she threatens caste polarization. By fueling militant Dalit politics, her castle stands the risk to crumble with other castes likely to polarize against her. Uttar Pradesh is not a Tamil Nadu. The cow-belt is hardly congenial to militant Dalit politics. The past has shown that Dalits alone can not send Mayawati to the seat of power in Lucknow. She appears far from scripting the repeat of the magic of 2007. Much waters have flown in the Ganges in the last one decade.

This blogger had pointedly asked the then president of a national party how much money he had spent in the 2012 UP Assembly elections. He had paused, and then said "Rs 200 crores". He had apparently told the half truth. The amount was much higher. A cash starved political party stands no chance to win the UP elections. This is known to most of the political players. After leaving office in 2012, Mayawati has been out of power for more than four years now. She badly lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections not only because the Modi magic was blowing like a whirlwind, but also for the fact that her party had been financially drained. Even now she is said to be struggling to lay her hand into the deep pockets of her likely financiers. Those who allegedly benefited during her tenure in the office are either financially bankrupt or have passed away. 

No one raises a slogan on the street of Uttar Pradesh without laying hands on the green notes. Mayawati's show of strength on the Lucknow street may be her attempts to win the support of those who have deep pockets. But they are sitting on the fence. They believe in the words of Harold Wilson, that a week is a long time in politics.

And, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are still 10 months away. 

Autocrat, who?

Fortified people are mostly prone to script strategies, which end in self-goals. 

Uniqueness of 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, running into over two months, is about too many self-goals by the Congress. And, if a self-goal is scored in the very beginning of a game, most likely players become panicky to run helter-skelter thereafter.

And first such self-goal came off in unleashing of a propaganda campaign by Congress to target Narendra Modi as an autocrat and dictator. That came off first from Union minister Jairam Ramesh, who is a key member of "war room" of the Congress and also in-charge of manifesto making committee.

Jairam Ramesh

Ramesh would tell to all ears tuned in to him, that "Modi is a Hitler and that Yashwant Sinha has told him, that he would not be part of Union Cabinet if Gujrat CM became PM". Some journalists fell for the propaganda, who would later say in hushed voices: "Boss, even Hitler ran a very successful campaign to rise to power in Germany."

Propaganda by its very nature impacts minds. And some of them last for decades and some for centuries.  

If not for successful British and American propaganda, history may have recorded Adolf Hitler as a warmonger, who was drunk on colonial envy, and as a megalomaniac and a racist. But the world knows him as a dictator and autocrat. 

Incidentally, dictators seek to prolong their rules even at the cost of national interests. They do not gamble with wars, which could eclipse them. And, Hitler was clearly a gambler, who used people as pawn to play the war game of chess with the British and French colonial powers.  

Arguably, Modi's comparison and even an attempt to bracket him with Hitler should have been dismissed by matured minds as deeds of idiots of the worst order. But, hold and behold, this outrageous propaganda was latched on by the Congress leaders with electric speed. And that laid bare the bankruptcy of ideas in the "war room" of the Congress.

Incidentally, world history has seen most autocrats in the African continent. That clearly reveals a linkage between extreme poverty and authoritarian rule. Some came up in West Asia where power flows from the oil wells. And China is a story of an institutionalized one party rule, which sprang up also because of excessive poverty in the rural areas.

But India does not fit into any of the above mentioned pattern to produce autocrats. Indian culture is too strong a bulwark to allow any such autocrats to gain foothold in the highly fertile lands nourished by so many rivers, that poverty of the kind seen in Africa could be here. That gives an ideological framework to India, which, incidentally, is the most vibrant democracy in the world.

Authoritarian and authoritative are words with contrasting meanings. And Indian political system did produce leaders who were or are authoritative in nature. Two contemporary examples will suffice to explain the subject.

First is that the BSP chief Mayawati. The last press conference of Mayawati was held in her majestic bungalow in New Delhi. Before she came into the conference hall, two men in blue blazers roamed around to see all arrangements were perfect. They were Satish Chandra Mishra and Dara Singh Chouhan (leader of the party in Lok Sabha). 

Mishra would tell camera persons of TV channels to remove the wires attached to loud-speakers, because "Behen ji's sandle could get stuck in". Chouhan also did similar things. While Mayawati spoke for an hour, these two men stood besides reporters as guards. That's the style of functioning of Mayawati, which one can term as that of an authoritative leader.

Second is that of Mamata Banerjee, the mercurial and gutsy leader, who ended 34 long years of Left rule in West Bengal. When Parliament is in session, she is glued to TV channels to keep a watch on performances of her MPs in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Bhartruhari Mahatab

While Lok Sabha was discussing Lokpal Bill, Banerjee was glued to TV channels in her office

in Kolkata. Her party was supporting Lokpal Bill. Then she heard Bhartruhari Mahatab, a learned MP of Biju Janata Dal (BJD), punching holes in the Lokpal Bill by highlighting the adverse impact on federal structure. She found merits in his arguments. 

And, so, she rang up Ratan Mukherjee, her pointsman, to connect her to Kalyan Banerjee. But he could not do so, as Lok Sabha was in session and thus the message was not passed, that there was a change of heart in Kolkata. And to her dismay, Kalyan Banerjee passionately Lokpal Bill. But in the evening all hell broke against Kalyan Banerjee. 

The next day when Lokpal Bill was taken up in Rajya Sabha, Ms Banerjee's command was followed by her MPs, who most viciously opposed the legislative proposal. 

Interestingly, Ratan Mukherjee (Ratan Da for Bengali reporters), who had been man-friday of Mamata for over a decade, could not survive mood swings of his leader and is now virtually out of the power equation and staying in New Delhi.  

The first one has never won elections in Uttar Pradesh in succession and the second is struggling to keep her popularity intact just after three years of historic win in West Bengal.

But Modi has won three elections in succession. And, majority of the six crore Gujrati voters are quite educated and well off to elect an "autocrat" for the past 15 years. 

Autocrats can not be popular. Popularity inherently demands appeal among the followers. And people in democracy punishes arrogant politicians with quite ease. That also explains why Nitish Kumar even after delivering reasonably well for first six years of his rule in Bihar seems to have lost the favour of the people in the state. But Modi by all accounts remain a popular leader of Gujrat even after 15 years at the helm of the affairs. 

Flag-bearer of BJP at Buxar

Indians, who take fluency in English for their status symbol, also happens to be most abusive when it comes to usages of words. And, we use terms like "dictator", "Hitler", "autocrat" in a manner as if none other than us know English. 

The 2014 election campaign is seemingly turning out to be the most engaging electoral exercise in India's democratic history. And there will surely be lessons for all of us, besides the Congress and its fortified strategists.  

Mainstreamed

Last two decades of Indian politics undeniably belonged to regional parties. The phenomenon, which began from south of Vindhyanchal, swept through North and East India after 1990s.  And the political march of regional parties gained force with weakening of the Congress was another tale of a weaker Centre in New Delhi.  

Arguably, massive surge in negativism in Indian politics should be singularly blamed on the weak Centre. A politically weak Prime Minister in Manmohan Singh for 10 years derailed the India story, which a surging youth population yearned for. 

But it will be short-sightedness if only Manmohan Singh was singled out for all the ills of the country. Because, regional parties largely remained slave to their poverty of ideas too. 

The story of Tamil Nadu is that of shoddy governance irrespective of the fact whether DMK or the AIADMK ruled the state. In Andhra Pradesh, beneficiaries of "good governance" of former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu were, arguably, entrepreneurs and landed gentries. Later, YSR Rajshekhar Reddy, with his thrust on foodgrains dole out, took the state further backward even though lakhs of engineering and medical graduates yearned for better lives.     

In North, Bihar under the rule of Lalu Prasad saw "dark age" for two decades. In Odisha, Navin Patnaik, enjoying legacy of his father Biju Patnaik, took refuge in cheap foodgrains dole out for his political security. In Jharkhand, misdeeds of regional parties took the state to worse days.

And the tales of Uttar Pradesh, which accounts for 80 Lok Sabha seats with a population close to 22 crore, are utterly saddening. "Mulayam ne londo (Akhilesh Yadav) no saara sadak kha gawo (Mulayam's son eat away all the roads". This is what the people in UP tell about the Samajwadi Party government, which came to power with massive mandate in 2012.

The mercurial Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee had scripted history after decimating the 32 long years of Left rule in West Bengal. But she, after three years of being sworn in as chief minister, knows only one thing of her administration, that blame all for the ills of the state. For backwardness, the Centre and Left are responsible; for rapes women are responsible; for crime Left "goons" are to be blamed and so on.  

But these regional satraps are now feeling the heat as the 2014 Lok Sabha elections are near their last leg. They are finding much to their discomfort, that people in their states are expressing openly their views to vote for "Modi Sarkar". 

"Sab ko mauka diya...ek mauka to Modi ji ko bhi milna chahiye...Behenji to PM nahi banengi (Mayawati) naa...(all have got opportunities...Modi too should get one...Mayawati can't become PM," said a Jatav woman in Mathura, who gave her name as Dolly. Incidentally, Jatavs (Dalit) are the core constituency of BSP.   

Jatavs in Mathura

The road to the political power in New Delhi surely passes through the rugged terrain of UP. And this will be better known to no other but Manmohan Singh, who lasted two full terms on the magnanimous support of both Mulayam and Mayawati.

Incidentally, Akhilesh Yadav rode on massive support of all castes, barring Dalits, to power in Lucknow in 2012. He carried the hope, that he would bring in a change in "backward-oriented" politics of Samajwadis. And, hints in the form of distribution of laptops, tablets were there. But he lost all zeal for governance or may be just got overawed in the presence of too many party stalwarts very soon. 

So, children in Mainpuri study squatting on the floor, because they do not have government schools near their villages. Those who got laptop are still learning MS Office even after one year in the hope of getting a data entry job. A course worth Rs 2,000 would have trained them for the job they appear to be seeking.

A pvt school in Mainpuri

In Puri, an executive engineer of the state rural development department lamented that the poor just did not want to work, as they got almost free rice, and even there were no zeal among them to work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). 

"Modi PM banega to Gujrat ke tarah yahan bhi tarakki hoga...yahan candidate se hamen matlab nahi...vote Modi ke naam par denge (If Modi becomes PM, even our place will develop like Gujrat. Candidates are not important, as we will vote for Modi only," said Vinod Ghiyar in Mainpuri in UP. Ghiyar was not alone, as most people on the campaign trails in UP, Bihar and Jharkhand, AP, etc., have to say the same about the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Incidentally, it was the Congress, which brought "welfarist" mode of politics at the fore of its governance model. Regional parties gleefully aped the Congress, for that made them to reap the windfalls by tapping into pilferage and seepage. Many ministers in Mayawati government were booked for National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scams by the CBI. The MGNREGA is a much bigger pilferage funded by tax-payers. 

"We are about 1,000 families here and none get jobs under MGNREGA, nor any elderly get pension," said Sarvar Khan in Konchhi village near Etawa in UP.

Muslims in Konchhi village in Mainpuri (UP)

The Modi campaign surrounding development easily swept through length and breadth of the country, as people grew tired of "welfarist" politics of the Congress and regional parties. And, so, Mamata Banerjee seems losing her nerves in West Bengal, while Navin Patnaik was pushed to the wall in Odisha. Mulayam is fighting for survival, while Mayawati seems clueless to the march of Modi bandwagon in her backyard. 

Even though Nitish Kumar did some amount of development works in Bihar during his first term, complacency took over him in the second term. And that set in an anti-incumbency wave in Bihar to the extent that it's a puzzle to find out which Lok Sabha seat in the state has his party, JD (U), in real contention. 

After the JD (U) had parted ways with BJP last year, Sharad Yadav beamed with confidence that regional parties would win half of the 545 Lok Sabha seats in 2014. In the winter of his political career, Yadav seems pushed to third position in his Madhepura Lok Sabha seat. 

And, writing on the wall is that regional parties are no more in a position to stop the Modi juggernaut. 

Narendra Modi bike rally in Etah (UP)

While the Congress went into the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign in a defeatist manner, larger story is the wilting of regional parties. And that augurs well for Indian democracy, as the country appears set to leave behind the political legacy of the last two decades, that of the caste and linguistic identities weakening the march of the India story. 

Red ant eaters

Late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi did not believe that a lot of people were eating red ants in many districts of Orissa in 1980s during famine. 

Three decades later, there are still people in parts of West Bengal and Orissa who eat red ants and their eggs. That, off course, is not a delicacy. but extreme human survival compromises. 

And these men and women are mostly Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCs & STs). That they remain at the bottom of the development pyramid is a telling blow to the road-map, which Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi had laid as part of the "Poona Pact". The duo may not have imagined that their road-map would be hijacked by pseudo leaders, who in later decades, would exploit their castes to build fortunes for themselves.

On the outskirts of Lucknow and in the midst of a paddy field, three men were idling away their time with beedi. That was on the eve of the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Two of them sat on a raised cemented platform, while the third squatted at a distance on the ground. The two were Yadavs and the squatter was a Dalit. But they all worked for the state government and were fourth grade employees. For over two weeks, they all did the same job; that of covering larger than life size statues of "Behen" Mayawati in and around Lucknow.

"We will vote for Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav), but he will vote for Mayawati. You can ask him. He will vote for her despite covering her statues himself for over a fortnight," said one of the Yadavs. The squatter shyly confirmed. That he will do so, because, he said, Mayawati is the honour of his caste.

In five years that she ruled Uttar Pradesh with an iron fist, all that Dalits got have largely been impressive BSP party offices in their villages. Dalits in UP villages, while living in mud-hut like shelters, take pride in these double storey offices of the BSP. Even though Mayawati ran a scheme called Dr Ambedkar Gram Jyoti Yojana in which the state government gave Rs one crore for a village's development, the sorry tale of embezzlement is there for all to see. 

In the close neighbourhood, wily Nitish Kumar attempted his grand plan to politically insure his party by stratifying Dalits into Mahadalist. Though there was nothing Maha (great) about this political move, what he did was weaning away the support base from another Dalit political contractor Ram Vilas Paswan.  

Sugriv Harijan

But nine years after Nitish carved out Mahadalit for his political stability, lot of these people look much worse on the ground. "All that we have got in the name of Mahadalit is one radio set for a family. We were better off till government made us Mahadalit," quipped Sugreev Harijan, 65, of Kulharia Mahadalit village in Banka district of Bihar.

Incidentally, Nitish claimed that he distributed land to Mahadalit but in two villages of such people none had got either land or job. And they mostly work as labourers for which MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) comes handy.

Arguably, Nitish Kumar in the name of Mahadalit proved a bigger villain for them, as he allowed country liquor shops to be opened up in their villages. So, Mahadalit youths, who have got education till school, will not work on farm field and in the absence of regular jobs they will idle away their times during days and by dusk will be high on country liquor. And, while the most productive age group has arguably become a lazy class, senior citizens among them toil hard on the hard land.

Mahadalit MGNREGA labourers 

So, a little walk through a farm field full of human defecation takes one to about two dozen Mahadalits working to dig land for minor irrigation. And they reveal the paradox in their lives, as men are mostly 60+ working with their daughters-in-law. None of them are Mahadalit male youth.

"My son is a graduate but is jobless and a drunkard. At this age, I work as a labourer to feed him and his family. If the liquor shop was not opened so near our homes, he may have worked for livelihood," said Bharat Das, 65.

In another Mahadalit village in Bhagalpur district of Bihar, Manoj Kumar, after having returned from Delhi where he worked as compounder, has opened a clinic and prescribes medicines to villagers, who have no access yet to trained doctors. Local BJP MP Putul Devi believes at least there is someone to give medicines for minor ailments.

If these Dalits still struggle with their livelihoods, one can not resist to admit the fact that they have been victims of Nehruvian politics perpetuated by his daughter Indira Gandhi by turning them into a herd for votes. And to ensure that they remained a herd, they have just been given enough doles in last six decades just to survive. Nehru-Indira model was later hijacked by the likes of Mayawati, Nitish Kumar but no change took place in their real motives.

That if Dalits break off from their sub-poverty level, their aspirations could split the herd, which makes a poor political sense. But there lies the failure of the nation to allow a great number of people to live sub-human lives. And so the red ant eaters live in India.