Democracy on the Road by Ruchir Sharma

Author:Ruchir Sharma
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241388082
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2019-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

26

Naked Power, Covered Statues

State Assembly Elections, Uttar Pradesh, February 2012

In the five years since we had seen Mayawati rise to become chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, she had grown more and more regal. Other chief ministers had encouraged a cult of personality but none on the same scale as Mayawati, who was building towering statues of herself and her party symbol, the elephant, all over the state and its capital. When she came to power, Lucknow was building the ambitious new Ambedkar Park, and she had added as its centrepiece a monument to herself and other Dalit leaders, surrounded by elephants.

Truth be told, the 38-hectare park was strikingly well designed and built, compared to typically haphazard Indian public spaces, especially given that it was built by the normally inept Public Works Department. But the statues had become a lightning rod. Opponents were attacking Mayawati for spending millions on self-glorification while her Dalit supporters were mired in poverty. The Election Commission had ruled that the elephants were effectively campaign ads, improperly financed by the state, and ordered Mayawati to cover them up. As we arrived, the Commission was debating what material and colour to use for the coverings, ultimately settling on pink plastic tarps—wrapped so tightly they ended up making the huge sandstone elephants look like huge pink plastic elephants. The fix was nearly as absurd as the problem.

As we drove through UP it became clear that the vote was once again dividing along caste and religious lines, and leaving the two national parties, the BJP and the Congress, fighting for third and fourth place. In 2007, Mayawati had won by courting Brahmin voters and became the first important Dalit leader to draw significant upper-caste votes. But the taboo-shattering alliance soon unravelled. Many of her Dalit supporters were angry at Mayawati for giving top posts to Brahmins, and by 2012, Mayawati had not only dumped the Brahmins as allies, she was blaming them for the corruption in her government.

We attended a Mayawati rally in Ghatampur, just outside the city of Kanpur, where the warm-up songs praised her as the Goddess of Justice, the Lioness of UP and the Iron Lady. Around 60,000 people poured into the rally grounds, most of them Dalits, waving the blue flag of the BSP and listening raptly to Mayawati’s every word, despite the fact that she was reading from a prepared text, barely making eye contact. Mayawati allowed very few other leaders on her stage, leaving the impression that she was accompanied mainly by a large fan that blew only on her.

Our search for lodging took us to the medieval village of Orchha, a tourist destination on the border of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh that had acceptably clean hotels, not far from critical battleground constituencies around the neighbouring city of Jhansi. Like many temple towns, Orchha had recently moved to confirm its holy authenticity by banning the sale of liquor and meat within town limits—a decision that clearly rankled some of the town’s non-vegetarian voters and tourists.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.