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The Congress party’s choice of Meira Kumar for the post of Speaker in the 15th Lok Sabha should be read in the context of its stated mission to recapture power in Uttar Pradesh by 2012 when the next assembly elections are due.

By pitching a Jatav woman, albeit from Bihar, into the sixth highest position in the government’s protocol list, the Congress has sought to send a signal to BSP chief Mayawati’s core voter base that it too can create space in the power hierarchy, if not at the very top, then at least near the top, for a Dalit ki beti.

Congress circles are quite kicked with the political imagery. It satisfies the party’s long standing penchant for tokenism. But a full-scale Congress revival in UP will require much more than symbolic gestures and a close look at the finer details of the 2009 Lok Sabha results for the state reveals the magnitude of the task ahead.

One of the big stories of these elections is the unexpected Congress performance in
UP. The party surprised everyone, including itself, by coming second, winning 21 of the 80 seats.

It was a whisker ahead of Mayawati’s BSP, which won 20 seats, and just two seats short of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. But behind the stunning surge is a skewed pattern that underlines how misleading bald statistics can be.

As many as 18 of the 21 seats won by the Congress form a swathe that cuts through the Avadh and eastern regions of UP. They are all contiguous constituencies and can loosely be described as the Brahmin belt.

While some victories were a result of individual effort by candidates who have worked hard in their constituencies for many months, the big push came from a pro-Congress sentiment created by the influential Brahmin community which made a strategic shift in favour of the national party that was best placed to lead the next government in New Delhi.

The swing of the Brahmin vote prompted other communities to shift loyalties too, notably the Muslims. A post-election survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies has revealed a 18.5 per cent swing towards the Congress of Brahmin vote, largely from the BSP, and a 14 per cent swing of Muslim vote, mostly from the SP, as compared to 2007.

Consequently, where the Brahmins and Muslims made a potent combination, the
Congress did well. But in the rest of UP, where the Brahmin population is insignificant, the party created no ripples at all. Here are some revealing figures. Congress candidates were runners-up in just seven constituencies, bagged lowly third and fourth places in 28 and lost their deposit in as many as 12 seats.

In contrast, BSP nominees lost their deposits in just two constituencies and came second in 48 while SP candidates forfeited their deposits in eight seats and were runners-up in 14. The BJP was a total write-off in UP with as many as 33 of its nominees losing their deposits.

The elections are only just over and the Congress understandably wants to rest on its laurels for a bit. But there is no room for complacency. As the election statistics show, the SP and BSP remain powerful forces in UP. Naturally, neither will be ready to surrenderpolitical space to the Congress.

There is much to hit Mayawati with interms of governance, choice of candidates, megalomaniac behaviour and so on, but her really big mistake was to plan her 2009
campaign using the template of the 2007 assembly polls.

A Lok Sabha election is fundamentally different from a state election and voters are discerning enough to nuance their choices accordingly. In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, the Congress swept the Lok Sabha seats by winning 33 out of 42 but it barely scraped through with a wafer thin majority in the assembly.

Two years ago, Mayawati was the preferred choice of Brahmins and other communities that wanted to boot out Mulayam’s goonda raj. This time, the Brahmins took a national view and mobilised public opinion wherever they could to help the Congress. In 2012, a whole new set of issues will emerge to influence the outcome of the assembly elections.

The Congress party’s success will depend on its capacity to tap into the voters’ mood at that point. Otherwise, the polls will again see a straight fight between UP’s two dominant parties, SP and the BSP, with the Congress and the BJP being reduced to also-rans.

Just like Mulayam’s core voters have stuck with him, Mayawati’s Jatav supporters have not deserted her despite feeling let down by her. It will take more than a Meira Kumar to wean this vote away from a woman who still symbolises the aspirations of a marginalised class.