Lesson of Mayawati's Coalition

‘Mayawati’s Sandwich Coalition’(June 2) is really a brilliant article. Mayawati made a wonderful political stroke by not officially participating in the municipal elections of 2006. It was a period of incubation for her project of stitching together “Tilak, Taraju, Talawar” and layers of OBCs and SCs/STs. Her deliberate cultivating of the Muslims in their dual incarnations – UDF and PDF – in the meanwhile during 2006 gave her the desired dividends. It is also expected that she would be able to maintain the coalition, particularly in the present context of electoral space sharing that is gradually being limited between the two big national parties – Congress and the BJP. This well-written article reflects the author’s grasp of the contemporary politics of UP. I presume Verma himself carried out the UP election survey and the data generated were unique, which certainly helped him to build up the structure and content of the article. It is really not the question of the lowliest OBCs’ and SCs/STs’ sanskritisation but the important lesson is that this coalition may pave the way for a politically existential mosaic of the different caste identities with social accommodations.