Uttar Pradesh is going to the polls for the third time in five years. The political instability in the state is the result of a social churning leading to a continuous shift in the balance of power from one social group to another.
The process was set in motion with the implementation of the Mandal report in 1990 and first clearly manifest at a political level in the next elections.
The Congress tried unsuccessfully in the eighties to take these changes into account, leading to its rapid decline, the emergence of new political outfits and the strengthening of existing ones who altogether replaced it. Mandal only recognised the social pressures and in its implementation accelerated the process of social change.
Legislation may have been enacted in 1990 but the feeling of oneness generated by Mandal took some time to assert itself. The result was evident in the 1993 assembly elections when the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine came to power. But soon the inherent contradictions broke the alliance, starting the process of political polarisation all over again.
In the rural areas of UP, caste and class boundaries touch at many places, which gives rise to social contradictions. Thus, the other backward communities (OBCs), broadly represented by the Samajwadi Party, are landowners and peasants. But the scheduled castes, the backbone of the BSP, are land-poor or landless. These contradictions ultimately broke the SP-BSP alliance and drained Mandal as a mobilising force.
More importantly, this led to a division of the polity into three clear-cut segments, with the BJP, SP and BSP broadly representating the three major castes. The upper castes deserted the Congress and joined the BJP. The latter's OBC supporters started a halting and slow migration, and the scheduled ulayam factor will affect the prospects of the Front in the state.