India may vote for untouchable leader Mayawati Kumari
Amanda Hodge, New Delhi | March 16, 2009
IT is one of the world's most class-conscious societies, but is India on the verge of having its first "untouchable" leader?
As the country prepares to stage its 15th general election since independence in 1947, all eyes are on Mayawati Kumari, the powerful Chief Minister of the country's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.
The ambitious 53-year-old from the Dalit (untouchables) caste was poised last night to make her first major play for the country's prime ministership by hosting a dinner for leaders of an emerging third force in the country's political landscape.
The loose collection of nine leftist and regional parties launched their new alliance last week, declaring themselves the Third Front in Indian politics, which has traditionally been dominated by the 123-year-old Gandhian Congress Party and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
The bloc, which includes the Communist Party of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Janata Dal (Secular) party, as well as several influential regional parties from the south, has maintained it will not nominate a prime ministerial candidate until after the elections, which run from April 16 to May 13.
Indian media was abuzz with speculation ahead of last night's dinner that the alliance would agree to field Mayawati as its prime ministerial candidate in return for the support of her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Mayawati's own party helped stoke the rumours at the weekend with BSP president Swami Prasad Maurya claiming several parties within the Third Front favoured the Dalit leader for Prime Minister.
But Mayawati herself, who has made no secret of her prime ministerial ambitions since coming to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2007, scotched those rumours yesterday at a press conference where she ruled out making any pre-election alliances.
With her party holding an outright majority in UP, and election analysts predicting she could bring as many as 50 seats to any alliance, the trained lawyer has opted instead to go it alone during the election.
With a ruling alliance needing an outright majority of 272 seats, in India's 543 seat Lok Sabha (lower house), Mayawati is looking increasingly like the kingmaker for any new government.
Political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan said the rise in political activism of India's so-called backwards and scheduled castes, coupled with a decline in the fortunes of the India's two national parties, worked to Mayawati's advantage.
More than 60per cent of India's population live on less than $2 a day, so it is hardly surprising the poor and disenfranchised are politically motivated. Dalits - who sit at the bottom of India's rigid caste system - represent 16 per cent of the population, 175million out of a total 1.1 billion people.
"Mayawati is Chief Minister of a state which has as many people as Brazil (190 million) so we should look at her party seriously," Professor Rangarajan told The Australian.
The fact the national Congress and BJP parties were now forced to rely on shaky alliances to form government was a potent symbol of India's changing political landscape. That a leader such as Mayawati was able to rule the country's largest state with a clear majority was further evidence of that trend, he added.
Political author and analyst Rasheed Kidwai attributed the change to the national parties' failure "to meet the growing aspirations of communities that have been on the periphery for decades".
He predicted that "for the first time in these polls, we will see two or even three loose coalitions facing off against each other". He said the key to success for Mayawati lay in how successfully she could reach out to other sections of Indian society.
"I think the Uttar Pradesh coalition reaching out to upper caste (Brahmin) and other religious minorities is the beginning of a process but it's early days yet," he said. "Is India ready for a Dalit to lead? It's on the cusp of that change. I just don't know if it has made it yet."
