Lessons from UP

The pundits have spoken, about as much as they can. The term is traditionally used to denote Brahmins who perform rituals, but is now used to denote experts, not always accurately. In keeping with the tradition of the old-fashioned pundits being wrong about most things, the modern ones too have been proved wrong by Mayawati. She has won the election in UP. No one thought she would. Even those who had worked out the electoral importance of her caste coalition""Dalits, Brahmins and Muslims""were unable to predict the outcome. It was a collective failure on a scale comparable to the one in 2004, when no one thought the non-NDA coalition would win.

The other political parties are bound to draw their conclusions and, as with all successful strategies, copy Mayawati's. But blind copying won't do. The reason""in hindsight, of course""seems clear: although everyone seems to think so, it wasn't so much a caste coalition as an economic one. Caste was the instrument but poverty was the glue. Mayawati simply rounded up the poor on her side and got them to vote against the rich. The poor, whether they were Dalits, Brahmins or Muslims, saw the point. Most of her candidates were also this side of 45. That, too, made a difference. In a sense, this is what the Congress had done in the 2004 general election, with a similarly unexpected victory.

The long-term lesson, therefore, should be crystal clear: forget caste, focus on economic status because continued deprivation arising out of growing income disparities, and not caste alone, is now beginning to drive elections. Here, it is useful to state a hypothesis that will be tested several times over in the next three years: the political paradigm of the post-Mandal period has begun to yield ground to something less corrosive and socially divisive. This new paradigm is one based on economic issues. It is a sad comment on the "experts" that not one of them thought it necessary to examine the economic base of Mayawati's support. Instead, instant caste sociology mixed with elementary arithmetic dominated the discourse. Just as the major political parties failed to draw the correct inference from the 2004 general election, so did the pundits. No wonder Mayawati was so dismissive of them at her post-election Press conference. To win an election, it is not enough to rely on anti-incumbency. It is also important to work out why people want change. Mayawati got that absolutely right.

There are three immediate consequences of this. One is of course the consequence for the presidential election, due in July, and the impact it will have on the life of the UPA government. Second, the BJP, as the leader of the NDA, will do some introspection. The result will make it conclude that it is costly to give up your core agenda. Narendra Modi is driving home this point repeatedly in Gujarat""the latest episode being the arrest of an artist in Vadodara for offending Hindus. We can therefore expect an increase in communal temperatures over the next year or so. Third, there is the Congress. Of the 20-odd seats it won in UP, ten are from the Amethi-Rae Bareilly area. It has thus been reduced to a sub-regional party in UP. Someone has to take the blame. Everyone knows who that someone will not be.