COVER STORY
non-BJP parties — Samajwadi Party , Bahujan Samaj Party and Congress — added up to just a wee short of 50 per cent of all votes cast . And seats gained ? Just 7 / 80 . Everyone saw the logic , but no one could surmount the entrenched political antagonisms to make it happen .
It did happen , over a year later , in Bihar . A ‘ mahagathbandhan ’ or grand alliance of two forces that had lived in mutual antipathy since the mid-1990s . The Nitish-Laloo entente didn ’ t endure , but it demonstrated the viability of the formula . That is , when faced with an otherwise unstoppable force , enemies can join hands to become one immoveable object — for sheer survival . The thought has been intermittently floated as a trial balloon ever since , especially after the assembly polls in early 2017 once again reiterated the BJP ’ s utter domination of the field in UP . What if Mayawati , still an icon for Dalits in her reduced state , and still the proud owner of a near-captive vote , comes together with the newly maturing talents of the second-generation Samajwadi , Akhilesh , with his party ’ s solid earth connection back in Yadav country ?
Now it has come to pass . Even as the BJP was savouring the glad tidings from the Northeast , news wafted in from UP of the SP and BSP getting together to try and overcome the saffron challenge jointly in Gorakhpur and Phulpur , two Lok Sabha constituencies that will vote on March 11 to fill the vacancies left behind by UP CM Yogi Adityanath and his deputy . It ’ s blind date Sunday : no one is quite sure how it will turn out . But its effect will be parsed , interpreted and acted upon for months to come . Not just by the present dramatis personae , and way beyond these two heartland constituencies .
Undoubtedly , despite the surface braggadocio , there is nervousness within the BJP that Akhilesh and Mayawati may have found a winning formula . Whatever the outcome in Gorakhpur and Phulpur , both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice smaller gains for a larger purpose — a new tactical playmaking that opens up the chessboard . In the immediate context , the BSP will get priority over contenders from the SP for Rajya Sabha nomination . In return , the BSP , which anyway does not contest bypolls when it is out of power , has asked its supporters to back SP candidates in both places . If this mutual accommodation works to their advantage , it cries out to be applied across the state to try and beat the hefty margins BJP has been scoring since 2014 .
Some observers are bullish about the prospects of this political tango . “ For sure , if this alliance takes place , it can be a real game-changer in UP , the first empirical evidence of which is how CM Yogi has reacted to the news . His choice of words ,
The limited tie-up will allow Mayawati to test her old ability to get BSP votes transferred at her command and to show she ’ s in the game .
comparing animals with individuals , says everything . Dalits across the state are waiting for a chance to replace the BJP and this could be the moment ,” says Vivek Kumar , who teaches sociology at JNU in Delhi and is an expert on Dalit movements in UP . Mayawati had hastened to qualify this as a mere understanding over two seats , not an alliance . “ But the fact that anecdotes are suddenly being pulled up , of how Mayawati was once gheraoed by Yadavs during a previous stint when they ran the government together , indicates the BJP ’ s nervousness and the power of this association ,” he says .
AT any rate , a controlled lab experiment will be handy . A limited ‘ alliance ’ will allow Mayawati to test the extent to which her voters will migrate at her command — before she seeks to apply that on a larger scale . Her problem is an old , well-recognised one : BSP voters are more loyal to the party line and have been known to vote for alliance partners almost en bloc . But the reverse flow of benefits used to be always more meagre — savarna voters kept a disdainful distance from a Dalit candidate / party . That phenomenon had dimmed the BSP ’ s enthusiasm for alliances and , in the last decade , Mayawati has relied more on expanding her votebase to other castes — winning an absolute majority in 2007 and exceeding 27 per cent votes in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls .
Now , after over a decade , she has to see if her voters — 19.7 per cent in 2014 and 22.23 per cent in 2017 — will still migrate . Akhilesh , too , faces a kind of trial : can Dalit , Yadav and Muslim votes come together , and accommodate other OBCs as well ? If successful , Akhilesh , with his 22 per cent vote in both previous elections , would herald a new politics in UP where the elite castes — around 20 per cent of the population — could lose some of their salience .
The numbers are a bit iffy in Gorakhpur . Here , the figure of Yogi looms — five-time MP , Rajput , CM — with his 5.3 lakh
24 OUTLOOK 19 March 2018