Mahesh Rangarajan in The Hindustan Times, 22 March, 1998
The BJP had been halted by the OBC-led parties of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Laloo Prasad Yadav. While the Hindutva led forces are the major force in the Hindi heartland, their dominance is far from total.
The implications of these fractures in the polity are far-reaching. Until 1991, it was an axiom of Indian politics that which ever party won the most Lok Sabha seats in UP ruled India. With 85 seats, the State was swept by every single non-Congress formation that came to power as in 1977 and 1989. But the rise of the BJP to the position of the premier party in UP in 1991 was paralleled by the emergence of not one but two alternative platforms. One was the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led group with a base among the minorities and the Mandal classes; the other was the Dalit-oriented Bahujan Samaj Party. In 1996, the two together accounted for over 40 per cent of the popular vote.
The verdict of 1998 is indeed a notable one. The BJP has marginally improved upon its tally of seats. Its share of the vote had been stagnant at about one third since 1991, but this year it increased to 36 per cent. The promise of a new regime helped increase its support.
What is significant is that the OBCs and Dalits, both newly assertive groups have other viable options they can vote for. The Samajwadi Party, while clearly centring its appeal on its secular credentials and its championing of the Mandal platform, has been trying to broaden its social base. Its tally of Lok Sabha seats increased from 16 in 1996 to 20 in 1998. What was significant was that its share of the votes rose from 21 to 30% over the same period. Further ... SP attempted to reach out to the upper castes. It has been helped by the extinction of both the Janata Dal whose base he has largely captured and the Congress.
The Bahujan Samaj Party retained most of its support but still lost in terms of seats ... A narrow base, however solid, is not enough to propel it to power. As a result, the BSP has even lost out in terms of its ability to play power broker. Yet, the aspirations of Dalit voters who make up 23 per cent of the electorate in UP are still closely identified with the party. India's most populous State is locked into a situation where the major party still has to contend with two rival formations.
Former Bajrang Dal chief Vinay Katiyar's defeat in Faizabad is perhaps a small sign that the politics of militancy will not pay. Governor Romesh Bhandari's interference in the legislature before the second round of voting helped create a 'swing' of over 7% of the votes for the BJP in the 33 seats in that round. Mulayam Singh Yadav was actually the loser in the aborted palace coup.
In several constituencies the SP and the BSP combined now poll over 55 to 60% of the votes. UP remains a house divided. An unstable polity finds its counterpart in a highly fragmented society. The Mandal classes while organised in terms of political clout and ... productive assets ... lack a strong base in the bureaucracy. The Dalits who have gained access to public sector jobs due to decades of affirmative action still remain a deprived social group in terms of income and land ownership. The tensions between these two groups in the political arena find their counterpart in the agrarian sector. Combined they would probably reduce the Hindutva party to a mere shadow of its present self, but at this moment an alliance is highly unlikely.
In this sense, Bihar had witnessed the emergence of a broad based coalition of the Mandal classes, the Scheduled Castes and minorities by 1991 when the Janata Dal and its allies won as many as 43 of 54 seats in the Lok Sabha. Since then the coalition has been breaking up. The first fissure was among the Other Backward Classes in 1995 when the Kurmis who have a lead over other such groups in access to higher education broke with Laloo Prasad Yadav. The combination of the Samata Party and the BJP had wrested 24 seats in 1996 and was widely expected to do much better. The fragmentation of the JD pointed to a sweep for the BJP-Samata alliance this year. But the bulk of the old JD coalition remained with the former Chief Minister, enabling his alliance to win 23 seats.
... Two major trends are at work in Bihar. one is the continuing consolidation of the large majority of the OBCs and minorities with the RJD. The eclipse of the Congress has made it much easier for these forces to openly align with it. But the reverse trend is equally important. For the first time, the BJP and its ally have emerged as the largest single vote-getter in the State. They polled nearly 40% of the votes. This includes a section of the OBCs in northern Bihar and a large number of non-Christian adivasis in the Chotanagpur plateau ... Clearly, tribal movements ... need to reassess their strategies in the struggle for statehood.
The broader implications of the verdict of 1998 in both States is clear. The BJP and allies are in the lead but face dogged opposition. The Mandal ... groups in turn may need a (broader) social agenda than one of reservation ... Dalits are able to mobilise as voters but not succeed in gaining a share of power on a stable basis.
The explosive potential of social relations, both in communal and caste terms, remains a matter of deep concern. The Hindi speaking region in general and eastern UP and Bihar in particular, are behind most other parts of India in terms of social indices of development ... Such issues are not central to politics today ... Mobilisation is largely, though not wholly, in terms of cultural symbols and group identities. What is positive is the increasing assertion of hitherto marginal social groups including the Dalits and in southern Bihar, of the tribals. But affirmative action can only become the first step for social justice in a wider sense if it embraces an economic agenda and goes beyond the struggle to control the body politic. The struggle for supremacy is yet to reach a decisive stage ....
