MissiOnLine.org India Mayawati, the dalit's queen India, Mayawati A portrait of the new star in the indian politic

Everybody is talking of Mayawati, the lady who has become the most important leader in North India and is slowly edging her way to the Prime Ministers chair. While that scenario is still in the future, Mayawati remains the most charismatic leader to be thrown up on the Indian political scene in recent years.
She is ranked by political observers  as the most significant woman in politics after the former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi and the current president of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi.  
Will she continue her meteoritic rise in Indian politics?  Yes, feel these observers who point out that people are already queuing up to get her party tickets even though elections are due only early next year. 
Mayawati has come a long way since the days she attended Kalindi College in Delhi in the late 1970's, since then she has been a teacher, politician, and leader of the poor and now chief minister of India’s largest regional state, Uttar Pradesh.
Political observers  point out that if she plays her cards right, she might end up being part of the ruling coalition at the centre and grabbing the number two or three position in the country after the next general elections to be held next year.
Mayawati's rise to power and her large crowd of followers till now largely confined to the North is set to take  a leap in the Western region of the country, her influence is also being felt in the Southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. In Maharashtra, Western India's largest state  her Bhaujan Samaj Party(BSP) is making slow but steady inroads and is set to win several Parlimentary seats in any future poll. Aware of  her party’s importance several  prominent regional politicians are now courting her to ensure they get her support in the coming polls.
To understand her rise to power it is important to understand the socio -political scenario in the country and the position of the Dalits, which her party represents. 
India has an ancient class system in place which is called caste.The Sudras come at the bottom of the pyramid which is dominated by Brahmins(priestly class) Kshatriyas( warriors) Vaishyas(traders and businessmen) and Sudras( landless labour, small farmers and artisans) .The Dalits come at the bottom end of the Sudra caste, and they constitute roughly 30 to 35 per cent of the total population of the country. In some states their population goes upto 40 per cent.
It is the social and economic uplift of this this class that the Bhaujan Samaj party is fighting.
When a social reformist called  Kanshi Ram started a party to represent the Dalits in 1984, Mayawati was  one of his key aides, some say  she was his trusted friend as well.They did not win  seats in the first few elections they contested, this did not deter them, they continued to work at the ground level. In 1989 they won 9 per cent of the popular vote and 13 seats in Parliment. Realising that they could not win larger sections of the vote as the Dalits were thinly spread over the state of Uttar Pradesh and were divided into groups, the BSP leaders decided on aligning with other social and political groups. This brought them rewards.
This is the fourth time that Mayawati is the head of a local government in Uttar Pradesh and it has been made possible by a political alignment with the politically powerful upper caste Brahmin lobby. This alignment has the advantage of bringing the BSP to power but it also  has a counter side to it as it blunts the party’s  social commitment of serving the poor and the downtrodden.
When Mayawati first became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in June3, 1995, she began with a strong rhetoric against the upper castes and initiated programmes for the poor and the down trodden. Reservation for jobs in government at all levels, schemes for education for the poor and allotment of  land for the landless were all on the agenda.
However, while there was success for this initially Mayawati’s energies began to be consumed by her war against her political opposition. Political commentators observed that while her programmes to help the poor continued, her tirade against her opponents grew harsher.
After her first tenure in 1995 as part of a coalition, she again became chief minister for a short period in 1997, and then again in 2002 this time in a coalition with the Bhartiya Janata Party.This third tenure as chief minister  was somewhat controversial as she had aligned with a right wing Hindu party which many of her partymen were at loggerheads both at the political and social level. This coalition lasted from 2002 to 2003.
Realizing that aligning with the upper castes was essential for her to gain a large mandate she aligned with the upper caste Brahmins in 2007 and came to power by giving upper caste Hindus along with Muslims seats in her party. She made announcements of  ushering in social justice for the poor by changing unjust laws and promised to give jobs to lower classes. She also hit out at the previous government  and changed several top government officials in the state. Next came the turn of the police force, she transferred hundreds of middle and senior officials and dismissed many of them for corruption.
Along with the praise for there there is also growing criticism of her policies and the manner in which she operates. Her speeches are full of aggressive language against the upper castes but her ground level action to help the poor is running out  of steam. This is not only because of the fact that she has aligned with the upper castes but also because she has become embroiled in controversies in which allegations of corruption have been levelled against her.  
During her tenures as chief minister she has been known to appoint favorites to high positions. Her political opponents in 2003  made it known that they have a video recording of her asking her legislators to hand over money from their annual constituency funds which is provided by the government for constructive work in each constituency towards her party’s fund. Stung by this criticism Mayawati hit out at at her political detractors and  filed over 140 police cases against her main political opponent the head of the Samajwadi Party, former chief minister, Mulayam Singh Yadav accusing him of a whole range of illegalities.
In 2002, Mayawati  got involved in one of the biggest controversies of her career, something which made headlines in the newspapers and was talked about the length and breath of the country for weeks. This was the Heritage Corridor scam. It began as a project to upgrade the tourist facilities near the Taj Mahal in Agra. The corridor was supposed to boost the infrastructure around the monument  but there were allegations that huge funds for it were siphoned away. The probes filed against her in this regard are still going on.
The next year she again created waves by celebrating her 47th birthday with a big bang. She used government departments to help in the celebrations in which 30,000 guests were called for a huge feast over which she presided with her party colleagues. The media carried reports of the huge amounts of flower buquets and gifts which were showered on her by her admirers and friends. Television carried reports of Mayati dressed in a pink dress cutting a huge cake to loud cheering from her supporters all this while over 300 persons had died in the state thanks to the bitter cold which swept northern India  in January 2003.
It was during this time that there was criticism that she was an expert at gesture politics. Making gestures to help the poor to consolidate her position while doing very little to help them on the ground. He attempts at personal propaganda was also seen in a poor light by sections of the press. She put up statues of her mentor and party founder Kanshi Ram in prominent places in which she figured prominently as a backdrop. When asked to justify this self glorification she passed it off as being part of the sacred will of her mentor Kanshi Ram.   
But notwithstanding her faults she has emerged as the popular choice as she welds the strong arm of administration in India’s largest regional state which has long been plagued with political instability.
Prakash Joshi, a senior political commentator working for one of India’s leading newspaper said.``Look at her record of administration, she has not spared  some of the government  and police officials who were close to her. She has also reigned in her  own supporters in the party who were trying to garner economic benefits from the state administration. All this bodes well for her and will stand her in good stead when trying to move further up the political ladder ,’’  
If a biography of Mayawati is written, it will show a strong and determined person pushing ahead in the sea of sharks that is the Indian political system. However, it will also depict a woman who has a heart for the poor and the downtrodden.

Kanshi Ram founder of the Bhaujan Samaj Party
Kanshi Ram, the founder of the Bhaujan Samaj Party and the person who propelled Mayawati into national politics was born in 1934 to a family of  Hindu cobblers   who had converted to Sikhism several generations ago. He was influenced by the ideas of  the leader of the backward castes (also known as Dalits) Dr Babashaeb Ambedkarfrom the state of Maharashtra. Ambedkar  had carved a niche as leader of the backward castes in India and had at times even challenged Mahatama Gandhi on issues concerning emancipation of the poor. He converted to Buddhism in 1956 to escape the problems associated with caste.
Ambedkar used to work in a munitions factory and faced caste discrimination there to he began a welfare association in 1971. He adopted  Ambedkar’s motto for the backward castes.`` Educate, Organise and Agitate”. He began to realize that social organizations alone would not serve the purpose of emancipating the poor, so he formed a political party in  1984 and called it the Bhaujan Samaj Party. He was elected a member of Parliament and soon began to make his presence all over the country.
Kanshi Ram has a certain charisma about him.He  knew how to communicate effectively and was adept  at changing the  social organizations he founded into political ones. Never forgetting his mission, he lashed out strongly against the ruling political coalitions whenever he got a chance and formed informall alliances with groups which were connected with the poorer sections of society.
However, poor health drove him to take a backseat and he publicly announced Mayawati as his successor in 2004.
The last years of Kanshi Ram were  unhappy. He did not appear in public and was recuperating at Mayawati’s home. His family members alleged  that Mayawati was holding him captive at her home. On April 8, 2006, he died of a severe heart attack in New Delhi.   

Mayawati
Mayawati was born in  Delhi on January 15, 1956 in New Delhi.Her father Prabhu Das was a clerk in the government telecommunications department in Delhi. She holds a bachelors degree in education. Her first contact with Kanshi Ram was in  1977 when he was campaigning for the uplift of the backward classes. Soon she began helping him in his  campaigns and his projects going into the rural areas to help people through poverty allievation schemes.  When Kanshi Ram floated a political party in 1984, Mayawati got a chance to stand for  a seat in Parliament.The party did not win any seats that year but they continued their political work undeterred. It took Mayawati five years of work before she got a seat in Parliment in  1989.
In 1995, while a member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, she managed to cobble together a coalition and grab power in  Uttar Pradesh. She was chief minister but only for a few months and could not leave a mark on state administration. However, she had tasted power and hankered for it again. Her next two stints as chief minister were also brief but it paved the way for next phase which came in  May 13,2007.She is still in power and is now seen as being fit to be prime minister.