It Takes More To Tango
In UP, it takes four to tango. First, there’s Mayawati, champion of dalits sending “sarvajan” signals to Muslims and Brahmins. Next comes Samajwadi Party, claiming monopoly over OBCs and custody over Muslim interests. Third, the Congress, which dangles sub-quotas hoping for a good minority report. It also courts “Mahadalits” to split a group Maya considers her groupie. Finally, there’s BJP, eyeing upper caste pique against “minority appeasement”. It’s also praying BSP’s Ex-Men – now BJP buddies – ensure OBCs vote saffron. Wow. Few poll dramas have this multi-star caste of social engineers.
Only three phases of UP elections are over, and each side has already declared Victory. All because the electorate’s been robustly booth-bound so far. Too bad for the awesome foursome that grabbing UP’s gaddi doesn’t seem a caste-iron guarantee. Vote-bankers see castes and communities as ‘blocs’. But, in practice, patronage politics doesn’t follow bloc-headed logic. Rather, it ensures cracks within the very groups targeted
for Take ‘benefi ciaries’. They fragment ad infinitum by invariably cooking up creamy layers, the better-off getting the creamiest of benefits. Naturally those lower down resent skimming of the milk of casteist kindness. They then demand whipped-up cream: benefits-within-benefits. No wonder Rajasthan’s Gujjars – OBCs demanding ‘special’ reservation – once planned to disrupt doodh supply to Delhi and other places! Clearly, if you milk caste too much, it’ll curdle.
No wonder fortune-telling psephologists can’t tell which caste of characters – SC, BC, OBC, MBC, EBC, etc – will go whose way. Poll pundits have been left utterly baffled, leading some netas to make contingency plans. Take the SP chief, seemingly mulayam on the Congress. With Maya pledging to defeat her rivals along with their ‘pet dogs’ and saffron majoritarians prematurely claiming a majority, it helps to send feelers to a potential ally. Even if that means ignoring the latter’s provocations. So what if Rahul tears up a purported list of SP’s poll promises? Everyone knows that, in post-poll coalitional numbers games, it may take foe to tango.
Yet what if voters decide that netas’ poll gambits – promised sarkari paternalism with an eye to electoral arithmetic – should be caste off ? Imagine if they show less interest in kasme-vaade than everybody’s track records. Or want talentpropelled upward mobility, not a quota-powered race to the bottom. Or ask less for memorials to community pride than spurs to individual effort, the individual being the ultimate minority. Darn! What if all this explains the large numbers on polling days till now? If robust voter turnouts signal antiincumbency, that’s usually an aspirational mandate – from aam janta who don’t want to be the cat that got the cream, but puss in self-made boots. What if, yet again, yeh dil maange more?
Well, if it does take more for voters to tango, vote-bankers should start worrying about getting creamed. Call it electoral chastening, malai maar ke.
