Maya’s style and substance

A humble Mayawati is hard to picture but after her party’s shock defeat in last month’s bye-election for the Bhadohi assembly seat in UP, the Queen Bee of Dalit politics has been trying for an image correction. She reacted in trademark style when she first got the news that her candidate had lost to bete noir Mulayam Singh Yadav’s SP nominee.

She summoned her close aides and gave them a verbal battering. But anger is a bad tactic in a high stakes game. As she plots her way to the prime minister’s chair, Mayawati has abandoned playing queen and is reordering her act. Those who’ve met her recently say she’s taken to being courteous and hospitable, welcoming visitors with tea and snacks, even apologizing to party old-timers for her aloofness and inaccessibility. It won’t happen again, she told some of them recently, tagging on a promise of regular meetings and consultations.

Not just style, she’s changed substance as well. Mayawati’s chief failure after the BSP won a majority in the 2007 assembly polls was to retreat into an ivory tower. With only her Brahmin poster boy Satish Mishra, her Muslim face Naseemuddin Siddiqi and a handful of trusted bureaucrats for company, she has spent the past two years in serene isolation, totally cut off from her party and other Dalit organizations that powered her rise. The most important of these is BAMCEF or the All Indian Backward and Minority Communities Employees Federation. Founded by Kanshi Ram and D K Kharpade in 1973, BAMCEF has grown over the years into a huge network of government employees drawn largely from the SC/ST categories. Its members form the BSP’s silent cadre who fan out to drum up support for the Dalit party. After the Badhoi defeat, BAMCEF leaders are back in Mayawati’s inner circle as advisors and strategists.

While Mishra and Siddiqi are still part of her core team, the re-entry of BAMCEF has diluted their influence considerably. Mayawati is believed to have admitted to some of her old supporters that she made a big mistake by relying on non-politicians and bureaucrats for political advice instead of consulting those in the field. The question is whether she’s left it too late. Or can she salvage some of the damage? She is definitely trying. She has changed four of her candidates on advice from BSP workers in those constituencies, overturning decisions taken by Mishra and Siddiqi. She is also holding meetings every day with BSP and BAMCEF members from all over the state and other parts of the country too. It means abandoning governance for the time being. But hey, UP can wait when Delhi beckons!

Tailpiece
The Congress party’s pointsman for Kerala, defence minister A K Antony, has managed one notch on his belt. He’s got AICC media cell secretary Tom Vadakkan knocked out of the poll race. But much to his chagrin, there are three more ``outsiders’’ vying for a Congress ticket, former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor, IAS officer Gigi Thomson and Karunakaran’s ex-aide Sreenivasan. Antony has put his foot down against nominating non-politicos who haven’t done a day’s politics in Kerala. But he seems to be fighting a losing battle because all three aspirants have pulled out a connection to 10 Janpath and are lobbying frantically. With the Left on the downswing, a Congress ticket is a highly sought prize in Kerala. It’s the only chance non-politicians on the Congress circuit have to break into Parliament, provided Antony doesn’t succeed in his mission to keep them out.