Why independent Dalit political outfits are failing to win elections

Badri Narayan explains why it has become harder to mobilise the Dalit community en bloc under the banner of Dalit political parties

Dalits need their own independent politics to fight against inequality and oppression. This thought has run strong in Indian politics — from B R Ambedkar to Kanshi Ram. It was this desire of having independent Dalit politics that led Ambedkar to start the Republican Party of India (RPI), and later led Kanshi Ram to set up the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in North India. The stream of Ambedkar's RPI got divided in the years that followed, with some getting merged or linked with the Congress politics. 

When Kanshi Ram started working on a political mobilisation of Dalits, he recognised that