Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati is often a victim of bad press, much of which, to be fair, is due to her own difficult relationship with what she terms the ?upper caste bias in the Indian media.? Let?s face it, she is not telegenic, byte-friendly or at all accessible to the press and people. She also makes most people uneasy in her presence and is not the cosy ?aunt? that Sheila Dikshit is, nor articulate about her reforms ? la Nitish Kumar.
In fact, the chief minister to whom she can be compared to the most is the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who after the riots in the state in 2002 has had an unmitigatedly bad relationship with the English press, yet has no problems communicating with his core constituency. Even a cursory look at what Mayawati has been up to in the last three years in Uttar Pradesh will also show that she has picked up more than her share of governance tips from Gujarat.
When she first rode to power in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati?s rule was characterised by confrontations with upper caste groups and controversies related to collecting funds for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The bitterness of this conflict prevented her from gaining absolute majority and a lack of vision in governance stopped that from being taken seriously. All that changed in 2007. She had the numbers, and the support of a wide caste alliance spanning Brahmins and Dalits, the two ends of the caste spectrum.
Her time in political wilderness also convinced her, it seems, that although having significant caste groups behind her was good enough to win elections, brand Mayawati needed some big ticket development reforms to be considered a serious challenger in Delhi.
Like Modi, Mayawati has cut out her political hangers on from being at all influential in government. Bureaucrats and policemen are moved around at the orders of the secretariat ruled over by the Chief Minister?s Office (CMO). The dabbangi, or influence peddling of party workers and ministers seen in previous regimes in UP, is absent in today?s Lucknow.
Things that matter to ordinary voters, like roads and power, are being concentrated upon. Like Modi in his first full term as chief minister, power reforms are huge in UP. Thousands of crores are being spent on these very visible symbols of development. Like Modi, allegations of crony capitalism are routinely laid at her door by the disgruntled Opposition. Ordinary people are just happy that even if money is being made, they do not end up paying out.
Much of the development debate in the country hinges on whether any political traction can be had from it. Caste ridden politics in India has often tilted the argument against development. In the last few years, however, as elections in Delhi, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have shown, development coupled with a reasonably clean government, or even a not so clean one, will get you leverage. The reordering of state finances in the last few years has meant that state governments now have a bit left over for developmental populism. Mayawati?s Rs 4,000 Mukhyamantri Mahamaya Arthik Mamdad Yojana, a direct cash subsidy of Rs 300 to BPL families is a case in point.
Caste will even now get you elected, but as Lalu Prasad Yadav discovered, at some point it will not be enough to get re-elected. Mayawati, like Modi, seems to have realised this. Modi, after the polarisation of 2002, has been quiet on the communal question. Mayawati has left Raja Bhaiyya strictly alone in this term.
What the English press and People Like Us (PLU) fear from Mayawati is not a lack of vision, but that she seems to be going about her business without paying the least bit of attention to anyone. She is speaking the developmental language made fashionable by the English press, but addressing herself to a completely different audience.
Finally, just like Modi, however, her next set of elections will determine whether all this will propel her to the centrestage Delhi. She?s done all that, but will it be enough?
?nistulla.hebbar@expressindia.com