Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati is no pushover. She will hit the road after all her political rivals. But it is clear that her election campaign will be a juggernaut. The leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), unlike most politicians, cares two hoots about the media, especially the English-language media. But she is conscious about building her public image as a no-nonsense administrator. After sacking 10 of her ministers in 10 days, she decided to deny half the sitting BSP MLAs tickets to contest the forthcoming polls.

Ms Mayawati’s critics claim she has acted rather late in the day, if indeed she was serious about tackling corruption in her party. But she believes this is one way she can counter possible anti-incumbency sentiment against her government. What is working to her advantage is that contrary to the political atmosphere that existed five years ago, there is apparently no pronounced anti-incumbency mood.
Ms Mayawati is trying hard to project her government’s so-called achievements — improved law and order conditions and an annual rate of economic growth of seven per cent. She hopes her intention to carve four small states out of Uttar Pradesh in the interest of improving governance will work in her favour. And her supporters are clearly of the view that the Election Commission’s decision to veil her statues, ostensibly to create a “level playing field”, will help (not hurt) their cause.
Critics claim that Ms Mayawati is aloof and that she has cocooned herself. They contend that she has cut herself off from the masses. But she is unperturbed. The bulk of the votes of the Scheduled Castes, especially those belonging to the Jatav community, are solidly behind her. But she will still need the support of sections of other castes (including the Brahmins) and communities (notably, the Muslims) to hold on to power. Waiting in the wings is the BJP which hopes that it will again share power with the BSP.
The impact of the outcome of the Uttar Pradesh elections will go beyond the country’s most populous state. After many years, what happens in Lucknow will shape national politics. Uttar Pradesh is not merely a state where one out of every six Indians lives. The province is the world’s most populous sub-national entity; had it been an independent country, it would have been the fifth largest nation in the world in terms of population after China, India, Indonesia and the United States. In fact, Brazil has fewer people than Uttar Pradesh though its land area is 35 times bigger. The importance of Uttar Pradesh in national politics goes way beyond the fact that it sends 80 MPs out of the 543 members of the Lok Sabha. Eight out of the 14 Prime Ministers of India have been from this state.
The results of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, which will be known on March 6, will exert an influence on the political future of Rahul Gandhi, the 41-year-old general secretary of the Congress who many see as a likely candidate for the top job in the country. The Congress is almost certain to improve its performance in comparison to the 2007 Assembly elections. In fact, the party hopes to play a key role in government formation in Lucknow irrespective of which of the two principal political parties in the state, the BSP and the Samajwadi Party (SP), performs better.
The outcome of the elections will be crucial for the SP’s Mulalyam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh Yadav who are trying very hard to regain lost ground. Their very political relevance is at stake. The stakes are also very high for Ms Mayawati, who will become Uttar Pradesh’s first chief minister in four decades to have completed a full term of five years. Although Ms Mayawati has trained her guns on Mr Gandhi, the main political battle in the state is clearly between the BSP and the SP.
Given the low 46 per cent voter turnout during the 2007 Assembly elections and the fragmentation of the polity, the performance of the country’s two largest political parties — the Congress and the BJP, which are vying with each other for the third position in the 403-member state Assembly — will have a bearing on the character and complexion of the new government in Lucknow. The Congress hopes to support the SP to form the new state government together with smaller parties like Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal.
(In 2007, the BSP obtained a majority in the Assembly on its own, that is, 206, with a 30.4 per cent share of the vote; the SP won 97 seats with a 25.4 per cent vote share; the BJP won 51 seats with a vote share just under 17 per cent; while the Congress, with a 8.6 per cent vote share, has 22 MLAs in the outgoing Assembly.)
If the dreams being dreamt by Congress supporters become reality, the Manmohan Singh government can hope to heave a sigh of relief as the UPA coalition will then be able to induct the SP’s 22 MPs into its fold. This, in turn, will make the Central government less vulnerable to the whims of Mamata Banerjee, whose Trinamul Congress has 19 MPs in the UPA. (Trinamul’s relations with the Congress in West Bengal are getting progressively strained and she would clearly welcome early general elections.)
Elections in Uttar Pradesh are difficult to predict. Contrary to what some political pundits claim, neither the Other Backward Classes, nor the Muslims nor the SCs are homogeneous in their electoral behaviour nor do they constitute “vote banks”. Caste groups and communities are not only internally divided, but sections among them invariably vote “tactically” depending on which candidate’s prospects are perceived to be the brightest. Candidates belonging to smaller parties act as spoilers. In 2007, in 25 constituencies, the victory margin was less than 1,000 votes and three out of four candidates won by obtaining votes of 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the total electorate in their respective constituencies.
The choice for the voter is never between the good and the not-so-good, between black and white. It is usually a toss-up between the bigger evil and the lesser one — so too on this occasion.

The writer is an educator and commentator