Too little to show for the top slot

The idea of Mayawati becoming prime minister — it may not yet be as likely as people are making it out to be — is a guaranteed room divider. The line tends to be predictable  —  as if not being an enormous Mayawati fan immediately makes you against Dalits, women, backward classes and so on. It’s a specious line and a specious divider. The fact is that Mayawati is not a new entity in Indian politics. She has been the CM of Uttar Pradesh three times before this current stint. Therefore, the fact that a Dalit woman can become chief minister of India’s most populous state has been known since 1995.

In 2007, the greater success was for the Bahujan Samajwadi Party which managed to win a majority in the state election. According to analysts this was in part because she managed to appeal to a larger constituency than just Dalits —which included Brahmins, Thakurs, Muslims and OBCs. The first two categories at least had so far been presented as the natural enemies of the Dalits (the early BSP slogans were against the Tilak, Trishul and Talwar, all symbols of
upper caste domination).

Indira Gandhi became prime minister of India in 1966. So the woman card has no resonance as far as Mayawati’s rise is concerned.
Besides, much as women are under-represented in India’s legislatures, Indian politics has a fair sprinkling of powerful female politicians. For more than a decade, the doings of Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati and Sonia Gandhi, among a few others, have dominated our headlines.

That leaves Mayawati’s Dalit card. It sounds horrible, but it has to be asked: is that enough? The Barack Obama comparison is also specious. Obama did not ride on a Black for Blacks card, and although his becoming president of the United States is enormous in his symbolism and black people rightly celebrated, his message was of change. He will be judged on that. You could say that Obama was too smart to win on a Black ticket: He knew well enough the great damage it would do to Black people in a racist society if or when he failed. Instead, he ran on hope, much more effective and potent.

Has Mayawati, in her four turns as UP CM, brought about any effective change in her home state? The answer, sadly, is no. That word, ‘governance’ tends to creep in. UP and Bihar are seen as India’s most ungovernable states. Yet Nitish Kumar — it is no longer a matter of discussion that he is an OBC — has managed to make effective and visible changes in Bihar. Lalu Prasad, also an OBC, has brought great positive changes to the Indian Railways. We all know that being a Dalit or an OBC or a Brahmin or a White or a Black or even a man does not make you any better or worse qualified to do a job.

What then does Mayawati bring to the table as a potential prime minister? Building statues of Dr Ambedkar may bring great pride to downtrodden Dalits, and no harm in that, but does little credit to the great man’s memory beyond that. Power at any cost — Kanshiram’s rousing cry when he started the BSP — has been achieved. We have had the diamonds, the birthday parties, the celebrations of a Dalit woman fighting caste biases and it’s all fine. Now what?

So if some of us have reservations about Mayawati as prime minister, it is not because we are anti-Dalit, anti-women or anti anything at all. It is because Mayawati does not appear to have moved beyond those labels. She brings to the argument no more than a number of seats, access to a certain demographic and good bargaining skills. Meanwhile, social indicators in UP have not improved since May 2007.

To be fair to her, Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party has not managed much during his terms as chief minister so one could facetiously assume that the problems posed by the state are so huge that politicking is the only true occupation for an elected official.

But when it comes to India, we need a little more than that.
Mayawati, so far, doesn’t cut it.