Abstract
The failure of the Bahujan Samaj Party to win a single Lok Sabha seat from Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general elections, the only state in India, where the party had earlier secured power, came as a shocking surprise to many. Most analyses of the results claimed that the party lost because its core support base among the Dalits, and particularly, among the Jatav community, had drifted away from it. The article argues that while it is true that support to the Bahujan Samaj Party from its core constituency has shrunk in the 2014 elections, the party has managed to secure the allegiance of a majority of the Jatavs, as also the Dalits. It further points out that the defeat of the Bahujan Samaj Party was largely due to its failure to retain the support of those communities, other than the Dalits, who had extended substantial support to it in the past, as well as due to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s campaign strategy.
The results of the 2014 national elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP) present a complete departure from electoral results in the state in recent decades. A surprising development has been the failure of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a well-established party with a distinct social base, which obtained a majority in the assembly elections of 2007, to win a single Lok Sabha seat. The Samajwadi Party (SP), another strong state-level party with a solid base among the other backward classes (OBCs) which, since the late 1990s, had experienced a constant turnover of power with the BSP and won a victory in the 2012 assembly election, obtained only five seats, won by its leader Mulayam Singh and his family members. The Congress party reached a historic low, gaining only the two family seats of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. It is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), out of power in UP since the late 1990s, which obtained 71 of the 85 seats mopping up the Hindu vote, effectively decimating the Congress and penetrating the Dalit and backward base of the BSP and the SP.
This article addresses the reasons for the poor performance of the BSP in the 2014 national elections. At the same time, it grapples with a larger and more significant issue that has affected UP politics namely, the electoral limitations faced by a single-identity party and its implications for the process of Dalit mobilization. The BSP, as a party with a specific social base, has faced the dilemma of having both a loyal core but a limited constituency which supports it in every election, and the need to widen its social base in order to obtain a significant number of seats and capture power. It has attempted many experiments to achieve this goal and was able to capture power alone in the 2007 assembly elections, obtained as many as 20 Lok Sabha seats in the 2009 national elections, but was badly defeated by the SP in the 2012 assembly elections. In this context, this article addresses the question as to whether the results of the 2014 elections indicate that Dalits, particularly the Chamar–Jatavs, 1 who form the core support base of the BSP voted for the BJP, signalling the weakening of caste-based politics. Our analysis shows that the BSP obtained more votes than in the 2009 elections and retained the support of a substantial amount of its core base, but could not translate them into seats.
Based on an analysis of the results, the campaign and changing UP politics in recent years, our study argues that both longer term and immediate reasons have contributed to the BSP’s humiliating defeat. The BSP is a party with a specific social base and the Sarvajan strategy adopted by it since the mid 2000s, which required the building of a ‘rainbow’ caste coalition, has made sections of the Dalits as well as upper castes and backward castes, who supported it in earlier elections, unhappy; leading to their shift to the BJP. More immediately, Dalits and other supporters of the BSP were attracted by the Modi electoral ‘wave’ in UP which was a combination of Narendra Modi’s well-organized, effective campaign promising faster development and good governance and second, the communal mobilization strategies undertaken by the BJP, and at times by Modi also. In sum, both the framework of democracy and development can be employed to understand the defeat of the BSP in the 2014 national elections.
Analyzing the Results
The BSP, since its inception in 1985, by effectively harnessing rising Dalit assertion has been able to establish itself as a strong Dalit-based movement-cum-party in UP. 2 As Table 1 shows, in national elections since 1989, the seat and vote share of the BSP in UP has been rising from 9.93 per cent of the vote in 1989 to a minimum level of 20 per cent since the 1996 elections. However, being based mainly in one state—UP—the strength of the BSP is visible in seats and the vote share in assembly elections, which, as Table 2 shows has risen from 13 seats and 9.42 per cent of the vote in 1989 to 206 seats and 30.43 per cent in 2007; it dropped to 86 seats in 2012 but retained a high vote share of 25.91 per cent. By the middle of 1990s the party was able to consolidate Dalit support behind it, obtain support of sections of the backwards and the upper castes and in the 2007 assembly elections obtain a majority on its own.
Seats and Votes Gained by Major Parties in National Elections in UP (1989–2009)
Seats and Votes Gained by Major Parties in National Elections in UP (1989–2009)
Performance of the BSP
In the 2014 national elections, despite emerging as the third-largest party in the country in terms of vote share (4.1 per cent) and gaining almost 20 per cent of the votes in UP, the BSP surprised even BJP leader Amit Shah—who had predicted that it would be the second-largest party in the state—by not winning a single seat. 3 The Election Commission has served a show-cause notice on the BSP seeking an explanation on why its national party status should not be withdrawn following its poor performance in the 2014 elections (Chopra, 2014). 4 Compared to the 2009 polls it gained 7.22 lakh more votes in UP and increased its votes in as many as 46 seats including 12 it had won last time (R. Singh, 2014a). The election witnessed numerous multi-cornered contests and converting seats to votes is difficult in such a situation in a first past the post system (Chopra, 2014). 5 Further fragmentation of the non-BJP vote undermined the ability of state level parties, both BSP and SP, to turn votes into seats. The presence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) also meant a division of votes which helped the BJP and was a spoiler for the BSP and SP in many places.
Position of Parties in the Assembly Elections in UP since 1989
An important reason for the poor performance of the BSP was the shift of support by social groups which had voted for it during the 2000s particularly in the 2007 assembly and 2009 national elections towards the BJP and its ally the Apna Dal. As Table 3 shows, the BJP gained the support of a high percentage of Brahmins, Rajputs, other upper castes and the other backward classes (OBCs) which enabled a swing of votes and seats towards it. While the BJP could not gain the support of more than 27 per cent of the Yadavs and 10 per cent of the Muslims, it managed to grab 18 per cent of the Jatavs and 45 per cent of the votes of the other Dalits. As much as 51 per cent of other groups, which do not fall into any of these social groups also voted for the BJP. The National Election Study (NES, 2014) conducted by Lokniti–CSDS suggests that no clear class factor seems to emerge; voters of all ages, educational backgrounds, economic statuses and genders supported the BJP and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. The highest support (47 per cent) came from the first time voters (18–22 years) (Verma et al., 2014). Moreover, all the seven BJP candidates who were defeated stood second in the constituencies they lost.
Support to Various Political Parties from Caste Groups in the 2014 Elections
The social base of the BSP consists of three ‘layers’: the core consisting of the Jatavs, the second the other Dalits and third other social groups such as sections of the Backwards, Muslims and the upper castes. As Table 3 shows as much as 68 per cent of the Jatavs supported the BSP but there was a drop of 16 per cent over the 2009 elections; only 29 per cent of the other Dalits supported the party there being a drop of as much as 35 per cent since 2009. The BSP lost the support of all other social groups most particularly the Most Backward Classes (MBCs) from whom it obtained only 11 per cent support which is less than what the party gained in 2012 (19 per cent) and in 2007 (28 per cent) (Verma, 2012, p. 19). However, as Table 2 shows, the BSP obtained 18 per cent of the Muslim votes, which is almost the same as in 2009 and only 2 per cent less than in 2012 (Verma, 2012). The high voter turnout in favour of the BJP contributed to the BSP’s defeat as it is a party with a limited caste appeal. The average margin of loss for BSP candidates was high, above 2.5 lakh votes, comparing poorly with the BJP (1.69 lakh) with the margin of loss falling to less than 1.4 lakh for the BJP if we remove the constituency Rae Bareli where its candidate lost by more than 3.5 lakh against Sonia Gandhi (Election Commission of India, 2014).
The BSP also lost all the 17 reserved seats in UP to the BJP. As Figure 1 shows, as compared with Lok Sabha elections 2009, BSP increased its vote share in 14 out of 17 reserved constituencies and was the trailing party at 11 seats. More importantly, in five of these districts that have over 30 per cent Scheduled Caste population (Kaushambi, Sitapur, Hardoi, Unnao and Rai Barely; three were won by SP and two by the Congress in 2009), BSP increased its absolute votes in all but one (namely Rai Bareli, won by Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi) by significant margins (for example, 1.25 lakh in Sitapur). In comparison to SC population in percentage terms, the data suggests that the BSP polled significantly below the SC population. On the contrary, the SP which had won 11 out of 17 reserved seats in 2009 witnessed a decline in its vote share in 2014 in as many as 10 seats and finished as the number two party only at five seats. This clearly indicates a consolidation of non-Dalit voters (earlier supporting the SP) in favour of the BJP, which simply was non-existent in these constituencies in 2009.
However, analysis of parliamentary and assembly constituencies in which BSP candidates stood second in 2014 as Table 4 shows, the BSP despite some loss, has retained its larger Dalit base. There were a total of 34 parliamentary constituencies in UP where BSP candidates stood second, compared to 31 where SP candidates came second. Despite this the SP won five seats in UP while the BSP obtained none. When we examine the position of parties in assembly constituencies as given in Table 4, the BSP stood first in only nine, the SP in 42, the Congress in 15 and the BJP in 328. However, the BSP stood second in 155 assembly constituencies as against the SP in 141 and the Congress in 40. Out of the 80 assembly constituencies in which the BSP has MLAs in the current Assembly, it is only in one (Laharpur assembly constituency in the Sitapur parliamentary constituency) where the BSP has retained its first position. The other eight assembly constituencies in which the BSP has got maximum number of votes are SP’s constituencies (five of which are reserved constituencies).
Analysis of the spatial spread of the BSP in terms of assembly constituencies across the state in the 2014 elections points to change over earlier elections. The assembly constituencies where the BSP stood first in the 2014 elections are very few and fall in the central districts of the state, while those where it stood second are distributed across the state and not confined to any region. If we compare the spread of the BSP across parliamentary constituencies in 2014 over the 2009 national election, we find a large swath in the northern districts of central UP where the BSP’s vote increased while it fell in the southern districts of central UP. In eastern UP which has been the base of the BSP it lost votes in districts contiguous to Bihar. Due to the Modi sweep the regional bases of parties such as the BSP which has traditionally had strongholds in Purvanchal and Bundelkhand, lost any meaning in this election.
First and Second Position in Parliamentary and Assembly Constituencies for all Parties
Shrinking of the Core Base of the BSP
Against this backdrop arises the seminal question whether there has been a weakening of the core base of the BSP—the Jatavs. One way of analysing this issue is to look at the percentage of votes gained by the BSP from Jatavs over the 2007 and 2012 assembly and 2009 national elections. The 2007 elections constitute ‘a high water mark of Jatav support for the BSP’ witnessing an ‘extraordinary polarisation’ (Verma et al., 2014) of 86 per cent points after which it began to decline. In the 2012 assembly elections the support from the Jatavs as the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) sample study shows, was 62 per cent, a drop of 24 per cent from 2007; for other Dalits the drop being from 58 per cent to 45 per cent. The BSP’s votes declined by 29 per cent among Balmikis and 19 per cent among Dhobis, the gainer in all cases being the SP (Economic and Political Weekly, 2012, p. 83). The BSP lost seats and votes in every region in 2012 except western UP where it got support from the Jatavs (Verma, 2012, p. 18). Verma’s study shows that the BSP registered accretions in vote share of almost all social groups in 2012, but it lost 24 per cent of the Jatav vote against a gain of 6 per cent in 2007 together with a loss of 15 per cent of MBC votes (Verma, 2012).The drop in Jatav votes continued in the 2014 national elections though it has been less; while in the 2012 assembly elections it was the SP which was the major gainer, in the 2014 national elections it has been the BJP. This loss of Jatav votes since 2007 has meant that the core constituency of the party has shrunk, but the BSP has continued to get an overwhelming proportion of its total votes in the 2009, 2012 and even in the 2014 elections from this section, but it could not retain its 2007 dominance among them. The reasons for the decline of Jatav support and the massive swing of the other Dalits and upper castes and backwards towards the BJP and its implications for the BSP are analysed below.
The success of the BSP, which established itself within a short period of time as a strong, identity-based, state-level party, has lain in its ability to constantly change its mobilizational strategies to suit the rapidly changing political situation in UP since the late 1980s (Pai, 2002). Both the 2012 assembly and 2014 national elections when the BSP performed badly constitute periods when its mobilizational strategies have not worked and it is necessary to understand the reasons for the same. The answers lie in the manner in which the BSP’s mobilizational and electoral strategies have evolved during recent years.
BSP’s Sarvajan Experiment and the 2014 Elections
In the 1980s the BSP as a radical lower caste movement stridently challenged upper caste discrimination and mainstream parties as manuvadi in order to carve out space as a Dalit movement. During the 1990s it transformed itself into a party whose major aim was to capture power (It did capture power first in 1993 with the support of the SP and three times between 1995 and 2002 with the support of the BJP) (Pai, 2002). During the 2000s when the Congress and the BJP were in decline, the BSP and SP were involved in a bi-polar contest to capture power in the state. A basic principle of the party following Dr B.R. Ambedkar has been that political power is the key which opens all doors and by capturing state power it can, ‘from above’, introduce transformatory change which can provide Dalits greater socio-economic and political equality. Consequently, a basic dilemma of the party has been that it has a specific and limited base as Dalits in the state form 22 per cent of the population, which is insufficient for it to capture power on the basis of Dalit vote alone.
In fact, the committed base of the BSP is narrower; it began and remains a party whose core, loyal constituency consists of the Jatavs. Initially derided by its critics as a Chamar party though it did attract, from the beginning, sections of the backwards; increasingly during the 1990s—a period of strengthening of Dalit identity and mobilization—Mayawati was able to unite many smaller and marginalized sub-castes ‘at least insofar as voting was concerned’. Other traditional sub-caste differences and rivalries and competition over reservation and jobs remain between the Jatavs and groups such as the Valmikis and Pasis (Pai, 2002).
Having succeeded in consolidating Dalit vote behind her reflected in the BSP’s rising vote-share, from the middle of 1990s Mayawati initiated a process of widening of the social base of the party. First, by giving tickets to OBCs, MBCs and upper castes and bringing them into the party organization; second, after the middle of 2000s, based on the Sarvajan strategy directly mobilizing the Brahmins and other upper castes together with the Muslims and MBCs to vote for the party, promising them a share both in positions of power and the benefits of economic development, which was responsible for the party obtaining a majority in the 2007 elections. Yet as one study has argued it was not an alliance solely based on caste, which did matter, but also on ‘innovative alliances’ at the grassroots that showed that the concerns of other communities mattered as much as those of the Dalits, which contributed to the victory of the BSP in 2012 (Gupta & Kumar, 2007).
Once in power, Mayawati announced in May 2007 that her government would take into consideration the needs and desires of all sections of the population and improve the backward regions of the state (Pai, 2011). The BSP attempted to implement an inclusive agenda of development covering the needs of all social groups instead of solely Dalit-oriented policies as in the past, particularly in areas such as infrastructure and housing (S. Singh, 2010). However, as the party had come to power on its own strength after many years of struggle, Dalits expected that their needs would be given priority, leading to serious problems: unhappiness among Dalits over benefits given to the upper castes and the inability to fulfil the developmental needs and aspirations of all sections of Dalits leading to divisions (S. Singh, 2010).
Mayawati found it difficult and challenging to balance these aspirations and to provide equal distribution of resources between upper and lower castes and between Dalit sub-castes. The economy of UP was still underdeveloped and the economic and human development levels of the two social groups were quite apart and would require much time and effort to overcome. Despite her efforts, the powerful Jatavs felt that they had not gained as Mayawati attempted to fulfil the desires of the upper castes that had helped vote her to power; while smaller groups such as the Balmiki, Basor, Dhanuk and Dom, felt that groups such as the former had benefitted while they were marginalized. The Balmiki community felt that many jobs were provided to Brahmins and other upper castes; as Verma’s study shows the vote share of this group has dropped 40 per cent since 2007 (Verma, 2012, p. 18). The upper castes expected their interests to be fulfilled; they do not accept the Dalits as their social equals even if they occupy high office as there is a vast economic and cultural gap between them. For most of the upper caste men/women (unless they were affiliated to or benefitting from the party directly), the party remained a party of Dalits, more specifically a party headed by a Dalit woman, Mayawati.
Moreover, as a recent biography of Kanshi Ram has argued, the Sarvajan strategy adopted by Mayawati, has diluted the Bahujan identity (Narayan, 2014). Badri Narayan points out that Sarvajan cannot be viewed as based on Kanshi Ram’s notion of ‘Bhagidari’ which was meant to provide representation to social groups supporting the BSP ‘from within the Bahujan fold according to their strength’ (Narayan, 2014). Further, he feels that it goes against the original goal of the BSP-led movement of removing social hierarchies and discrimination against Dalits as it is inclusive of their oppressors, the upper castes. Hence, Mayawati’s attempt since the middle of 2000s to create a broad-based party with a Dalit core has become problematic. These factors were responsible for the anger against the BSP and sections of the Dalits from every class segment, irrespective of gender, age or educational levels voted against the BSP in 2012 and again in 2014. With the inability of Mayawati to uphold the Sarvajan experiment both in 2007 and again in 2012, as already mentioned earlier, the upper castes and large sections of the backwards moved away from the BSP towards the BJP.
Immediate Factors, Campaign Strategies
While these background factors are important, more proximate developments in UP politics also played a key role in facilitating the victory of the BJP. It was the weakening of state-level parties prior to the 2014 elections—the SP due to misgovernance and the BSP due to its experiment of Sarvajan—that provided the BJP political space in UP. The BJP was in decline, but aware that it had to perform well in UP if it was to capture power at the centre; the leadership began preparations almost a year in advance and certain steps taken by it in the second half of 2013 immediately affected the BSP. The announcement of Narendra Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate, his emphasis on development and the party’s attempt to revive its Hindutva agenda in UP—aided by the Muzaffarnagar riots—changed the nature of the competition with the BJP emerging as a major contestant. Caste-based identities and competition as in earlier elections centring on the SP and BSP no longer occupied centre stage which constituted a challenge to these parties. A second development closer to the elections was the decision by Narendra Modi to contest from Varanasi which made UP the key state in the elections (Pai, 2014b).
The success of the BJP, under a new leadership that was able to improve its organization and revive its base in UP, was to a great extent due to a two-pronged but closely interrelated campaign in the state. 6 While Modi emphasized in his rallies/speeches on development, raising the aspirations of the electorate in a backward state, the BJP undertook a covert and overt campaign of communal mobilization. In his speeches Modi constantly invoked the ‘Gujarat model’ and gave examples of migrant workers from UP who had prospered in Gujarat, which attracted many villagers, particularly in the eastern parts, unhappy with the constant violence, and lack of development and employment in the region.
However, Modi together with Amit Shah delivered charged communal speeches towards the end of the campaign to obtain the Hindu vote. Modi held 40 rallies in UP between 21 October 2013 and 10 May 2014, covering districts in almost all regions of the state and 12 3D (hologram) rallies in the country as a whole, including UP. There were six phases of voting in UP and media reports pointed to a marked communal campaign from the third phase onwards when the BJP leadership felt that the voting was not in their favour. There are ‘dark zones’, that is, areas where neither television nor newspaper are available, and Amit Shah personally visited these areas to mobilize Dalits and other disadvantaged groups in these areas. The competition between the BSP and the BJP was most intense in the 14 seats that went to the polls in the fourth phase on 30 April, in central UP and Bundelkhand (R. Singh, 2014). Another factor that helps explain the defeat of the BSP is that the BJP’s campaign was different in different parts of UP. In western UP districts where the Muzaffarnagar riots had an impact, a communally charged campaign was used while in eastern UP the developmental plank, neglect of the area and lack of employment was stressed by Modi and other leaders.
The BJP, in order to obtain Dalit votes, especially that of non-Jatavs (namely Balmiki, Pasi, Dhobi, Koris, etc., who constitute 9 per cent of the total population of UP), adopted a strategy for appropriating the legacies of B.R. Ambedkar and other Dalit icons. Modi, while addressing his second 3D rally on 14 April 2014, garlanded the statue of B.R. Ambedkar; Shah organized meetings in several Dalit villages and promised the Bharat Ratna for the Dalit leader and BSP founder, Kanshi Ram. However, the prime focus of the party remained on capturing backward caste votes, particularly the large number of the Extremely Backward Castes (EBCs); the alliance with the Apna Dal (AD) was to gain the support of this social group. Importance was also given to OBC leaders such as Kalyan Singh, Uma Bharti, Satyendra Kushwaha, Rameshwar Chaurasia and Rajveer Singh.
Attempts by the BJP, with the support of the RSS, to create communal discord were helped by some events that created a favourable political situation (Pai, 2014a). After the SP assumed power in 2012, UP experienced a series of low-intensity but serious communal incidents leading to large-scale riots in Muzaffarnagar in September 2013. The SP government failed to control the riots leading to prolonged violence; while the BJP, unable to engineer state-wide communal polarization, attempted to use these incidents to orchestrate Hindu–Muslim tension wherever possible. The BJP’s decision, in late 2013, to bring back, with the help of the RSS, its agenda of Hindutva in the campaign; the shifting of Amit Shah, close aide of Modi from Gujarat to UP; and the stage-managed confrontation over the Chaurasi Parikrama Yatra, brought back a communally charged atmosphere in UP for the first time since 1991. As several Hindus lost their lives in the riots, the BJP used this to rally the community through slogans of ‘Hindu religion and Hindu communities in danger’. The state had already witnessed—encouraged by the SP after its victory—aggressive assertion of Muslim power, which increased during the campaign. Through such moves the SP and BJP hoped to build communal vote banks, the former to keep the Muslims in its fold, the latter to revive Hindu communal forces and benefit in 2014 (Pai, 2014a).
These developments impacted on Dalits in UP, particularly in the western districts. The BJP used the campaign to try and incorporate the Dalit identity into their larger Hindutva project and thereby gain their electoral support. While the BJP has earlier attempted social engineering to widen its base, in 2014 smaller individual Dalit groups were approached and mobilized rather than the community as a whole. Following the Muzaffarnagar riots, media reports held that Dalits in western UP villages showed sympathy with riot-affected Hindus and supported the BJP. Amit Shah’s communally-charged speeches were aimed at bringing Dalits and other lower caste groups into the ‘Hindu’ fold. A third strategy by the BJP was to focus attention on Modi belonging to a backward caste; it also gave 27 tickets to backward castes due to which sections of this group which had earlier supported the BSP moved towards the BJP.
The BSP campaign, unlike in earlier elections, was both low-key and started late. The party contested over 500 seats across the country, though the focus remained on UP. The Sarvajan strategy impacted on the intense competition between the BJP and BSP in some parts of UP. Aware of the unhappiness among Dalits over this strategy, since her defeat in 2012 Mayawati had been quietly working to bring all sub-castes, particularly the non-Jatavs and the lower backwards, back into the BSP’s fold, trying to convey that the party was still committed to its original path of social transformation. But an attempt was made prior to the election to construct, in selected constituencies, a Dalit–Brahmin–Muslim alliance based on the ideology of Sarvajan (Pai, 2014c). She hoped to unite Dalits by giving tickets to not only Jatavs but other sub-castes, and also to Muslims and Brahmin leaders ignored by the BJP. Accordingly, in contrast to earlier elections, only 15 OBCs were given tickets while the rest went to 22 Brahmins, 18 Muslims, 8 Thakurs and 17 Dalits.
A discreet attempt was made by the Congress leadership to form a national alliance with the BSP in January 2014 which, it was hoped, would help secure the Dalit vote between them (Manoj, 2014). There were strong compulsions as both parties had not performed well in the state assembly elections in December 2013. Such an alliance, it was hoped, would help the Congress meet the challenge of the BJP, take advantage of the weakness of the SP together with the BSP and provide an ally after the elections. The alliance was not to be limited to UP but to cover other states as well; the logic being that it would help the Congress in UP and BSP in other states. However, Mayawati did not agree to the alliance suggested by the Congress party; beginning her electoral campaign from Lucknow in early 2014 she announced that the BSP would contest all seats alone.
Mayawati tried during her campaign to attract the Muslim community away from the SP by pointing out that the BSP was a secular, Dalit-based party with which they had much in common. Accusing the SP of fomenting a communal divide she argued that appointing Muslims as Director-General’s of Police (DGPs) and Chief Secretaries did not help and demanded imposition of President’s rule in the state. She pointed out that during the BSP’s period in power (2007–2012) there were no riots as Muslim–Hindu ‘Bhaichara’ (brotherhood) committees were set up in many constituencies and the Dalit–Brahmin–Muslim alliance was an attempt to take this concept further. Mayawati promised that, if supported, her party would prevent riots and honestly implement the Sachar Committee report. Her close aide Satish Mishra visited important Muslim clerics to solicit support of the community for the party (R. Singh, 2014b). While the BSP failed to gain the support of the upper castes, the CSDS sample study shows that she managed to maintain to gain votes from the Muslim community though it did not translate into seats.
During the campaign it was believed that some factors would help the BSP: its decision to give tickets to 18 Muslim candidates, high voting percentages in western UP, the return of riot victims to their villages to vote; which suggested that Muslims were considering the candidate most capable of defeating the BJP candidate, leading to a feeling that Dalits, backwards and Muslims, by uniting, could defeat Modi. Also the Muslim desire to defeat Jat candidates, it was felt, could affect the Congress–RLD alliance, benefitting the BSP (R. Singh, 2014b). But, while the BSP secured the Muslim vote, it faced fragmentation among Dalits and MBCs in western UP as they felt that the Kurmis and other OBCs had benefitted more during the Mayawati government period and shifted to the BJP.
However, while both the long-term and immediate issues discussed above are important, another significant contributory factor merits consideration. In UP, the 1990s experienced de-stabilizing identity-based politics leading to political instability, poor governance and lack of development. With the weakening of identity politics in the early 2000s it was believed that development would be back on the agenda of ruling political parties. Since the late 1990s the two national parties, the Congress and BJP, have been on the decline in UP and it is the SP and the BSP between whom a constant turnover of power had taken place during the 2000s. While both parties claimed that they had taken up issues of development seriously, during this period neither party had succeeded in addressing issues of backwardness or poverty to the satisfaction of the electorate. The BSP under Mayawati in 2007, did attempt to implement a developmental agenda and address the needs of all sections of the population (S. Singh, 2010). But ultimately both parties were more concerned with pursuing sectarian agendas by which they could strengthen their identity-based vote-banks and keep the other party out of power.
In contrast, to other states where leaders such as Shivraj Chauhan in MP, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh and Jayalalitha in TN have tried to move away from purely identity politics towards grappling with questions of development and governance. UP, trapped in traditional politics, has not been able to make use of the new opportunities provided by liberalization. The fate of UP is well illustrated by Craig Jeffrey’s study which shows how farmers in western UP who benefitted from the Green Revolution, provided their sons college/university education in the hope that they would obtain professional jobs. But the boys are still ‘waiting’ for such opportunities indulging in ‘purposeless time pass’ hanging around street corners and teashops, doing small jobs, leading to frustration and participation in petty politics (Jeffrey, 2010). Modi’s vigorous and sustained campaign and promises of good governance and development had tremendously raised expectations in a backward state where an aspirational younger generation, including a new generation of educated Dalits, is disturbed and the middle-class angry as the promised benefits of higher economic growth have proved elusive. This explains the overwhelming support to Modi perhaps as much as explanations of a purely communal divide and attraction of the Hindutva agenda of the BJP.
Conclusion
Our study points to two factors that were responsible for the poor performance of the BSP in the 2014 national elections. The BSP failed to gain the support of a section of its core constituency, the Jatavs and of the larger Dalit community as well as the backward and upper castes that had supported it in past elections. This was because of their unhappiness with the Sarvajan strategy adopted by Mayawati from the middle of 2000s, which she continued to use despite the defeat of the party in the 2012 assembly elections. Simultaneously, significant changes took place in UP namely revival of the organization and social base of the BJP by a new generation of leaders headed by Narendra Modi who used the plank of development together with a strident communal campaign organized by the party cadres, the RSS and, at times, by Modi himself during his campaign. Another factor arising out of the heightened competition were the multi-cornered contests, which replaced the largely bi-polar contests between the BSP and SP in the earlier elections during the 2000s all over the state, which did not allow the votes gained by the BSP and SP to translate into seats.
The huge victory of the BJP seems to suggest that caste-based politics is losing its centrality with the demand for development from the electorate, particularly the educated, younger generation, gradually becoming more important. If so, the space for identity-based lower-caste parties, which enjoyed a dominant position until recently, is shrinking. If on the one hand, the victory of the BJP is due to its communal campaign, then on the other hand, traditional identity-politics retains its hold on UP. In this situation if the BJP is able to sustain its new position of strength in UP its attempt to co-opt could communalize the Dalit identity, weakening the fight against the upper castes. Or alternatively, will the voting pattern for all parties, including the BSP, be different in an assembly election where identity politics might be more determining?
The electoral results have implications for the BSP and for the process of Dalit mobilization beyond the 2014 elections. In the changing political scenario can the BSP under the leadership of Mayawati unite all the Dalit sub-castes? The BSP’s strength in the past has been the leadership provided by the Jatavs, but unifying under their domination for the rising poorer sections seems no longer as acceptable. Obtaining support of other social groups, the backward and upper castes, is also required as the BSP has a specific social base due to which there are inherent limitations to the party obtaining a majority on its own. Dalits are a part of the social whole, at the same time they are a distinct social category because of the caste-based social hierarchy. Mayawati’s strategy of Sarvajan politics has also halted the process of democratization from moving downwards, incorporating the smaller, subaltern Dalit groups into the fold of the BSP and bringing them into mainstream politics. This could impact upon the base of the BSP which was expanding during the 1990s. Despite the poor performance of the BSP in the 2014 election Mayawati has argued that she will continue with her experiment of ‘social engineering’ to reach out to the Sarva Samaj. She believes that her Dalit supporters, particularly the Jatavs, solidly supported her and that the reason for the defeat was the OBCs and upper castes moving towards the BJP in this election.
More fundamentally, political experience in UP has demonstrated that caste coalitions cannot remain stable over time; the erstwhile Congress party provides perhaps the only example of such stability. The BSP’s ‘rainbow’ coalition based on the strategy of Sarvajan is inherently transitory because new developments can lead to breakdown or changes in the coalition resulting in electoral defeat. In the present election, from the Dalit–Brahmin–Muslim coalition that was sought to be forged based on the concept of Sarvajan, while the Brahmins deserted the BSP, the Muslim community continued to support her although not a single one of the 18 BSP minority candidates could win a seat. But the upper castes and backwards and even a section of Dalits moved away from the BSP, resulting in its poor performance. What can be said is that caste is not losing ground; rather a new relationship is emerging between democracy and development since the middle of 2000s, which increasingly gives room to the latter due to emergence of ideas and aspirations of rapid development while not eclipsing the former, that is, competitive, identity-based electoral politics.
In sum, the BSP’s core base has not deserted it, but its remaining social base could not withstand the electoral ‘wave’ created by the BJP. The BSP faced a paradoxical situation in this election: winning required incorporating more and more castes/sub-castes into its fold and getting their votes rather than making promises of development; but simultaneously, the aspiration for development among Dalits which was affected by Modi’s campaign seems to have overtaken identity politics. The question of whether identity politics is still important in UP and the BSP can retain its base intact will perhaps be clearer after the 2017 assembly elections.