The Last Lok Sabha polls were in no way a setback to the BSP though they quite appeared to be doing so. The BSP and won just one Lok Sabha seat more than the previous LS election but polled 27% of the vote. However what is important is not the vote share of the party but its seat to vote ratio which has been amongst the lowest among all parties. The party won 0.73 Lok Sabha seats for every percentage of vote it polled. The Congress on the other hand won 1.14 Lok Sabha seats for every percentage of vote that it polled. This means that it is the strongest party in the state with the widest support base. In 2004, the BSP won all its 19 seats from Uttar Pradesh with a state vote-share of 24.67 percent

More important if not less is the fact that the party won handsomely the bye-elections held immediately after the 2009 LS elections proving that it was no pushover and had consolidated enough on the ground. A study of the policies of the BSP indicates that the party has focused on all round consolidation among various constituencies of the poor across different caste groupings in the state.

For the urban house¬less poor, the BSP introduced the Kanshi Ram Sahari Gareeb Awaas Yojana (KSGAY), which actually benefits the poor in the general category. For city dwellers, the BSP government intends to construct 1.01 lakh houses and until now 96,418 houses have been constructed. Another housing scheme for urban poor is the Malikana Haq Yojana which gives ownership to those below poverty line (BPL) families who have been living in the slums on the government’s land. The government is providing ownership of this land to the habitants but with a condition that they cannot sell it. Here the OBCs get 23% of the benefits and the SC community gets 27% of total benefits.

Mayawati must be regarded as one of the smartest Psephologists in the guise of a politician.  She is one of the few to have effectively worked on social engineering in her state and implemented girl child schemes with utmost care.

In the first three years of the BSP’s rule in UP, the government has constructed 10.3 lakh houses by expending Rs 3,316 crore. In addition to the IAY, the BSP government has introduced two more schemes – MAY and MSAY for the rural poor. The MAY provides housing security exclusively for SC/ST communities in rural areas. Under MAY, 3.06 lakh SC/ST families have been benefited at a cost of Rs 949 crore. Similarly, the MSAY is a scheme for the non-SC/ST poor families. Under MSAY, 50,000 non-SC/ST families got housing benefits at a cost of Rs 180 crore in the last three years.

The BSP has for the first time managed to create a constituency of the poor cementing Dalits, upper caste poor, poor amongst the backwards, and importantly Muslims with the promise of security. The poor across castes and the Muslims are going to be the two largest voting blocs that will consolidate the growth of the BSP.

A marginal dip of about three percent of the votes in 2009 led to the BSP leading in only about 100 odd assembly seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. This outcome has a number of implications. It means that the BSP has the largest and most uniform spread of votes across the state and therefore this sort of a class consolidation amongst the poor could spell bad news for all other parties in the state. A small swing could produce a drastic result in its favour. Thus a poll earlier in the year projecting about 260 assembly seats for the BSP in the event of an election should not be discounted. Some of the best performances of the BSP could come from Ruhelkhand, Western UP, Avadh, and parts of Poorvanchal, where the BSP could reap an unprecedented advantage by virtue of presence of Muslim voters and the poor. It is going to be a case of two firsts:

First a party led by the Scheduled Castes and the poor having cobbled up a coalition of a section of the Upper Castes and Muslims. Second, an unprecedented consolidation of the poor behind one formation, which is quite like the Dravdian phenomenon in Tamil Nadu where most poor consolidated behind the AIADMK in the times of MGR. The party that was severely impacted by that consolidation was a national party like the Congress. A similar situation could occur in UP if the Congress cannot aggregate the anti-incumbent vote and develop a fortified leadership against the BSP.

Two very important facts need to be remembered when preparing for an eventual battle with the BSP in UP. It is the first government in two decades to complete its entire five year term, and that too under a single chief minister. This gives it a de facto benefit of promising stability – and that is a promise that will appeal to all sections of the society. Secondly it is one of the few governments to have consciously worked on consolidating the poor. This will ensure that anti-incumbency is largely negated or even turned on its head.

Mayawati must be regarded as one of the smartest Psephologists in the guise of a politician. She is one of the few to have effectively worked on social engineering in her state and implemented girl child schemes with utmost care. The election results if not handing here a thumping victory will also not hand her an ignominious drubbing. In a nutshell the BSP will not be a pushover. It will be for the opposition to reconfigure itself to take effectively on the BSP.

(Writer Jai Mrug is a psephologist with twelve years of experience in the field of electronic and print media, he has been an avid tracker of elections in India and has worked with leading Television houses in the country and has analysed elections for a number of leading newspapers in the country.)

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