Can the SP-BSP really work as a political grouping to oust the BJP?

What was a political alliance between SP and BSP is now almost a social alliance

Is the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party (SP-BSP) alliance that Prime Minister Narendra Modi mockingly refers to as the ‘maha-milawati’ (grand jumble) coalition really going to work as a political grouping to oust the BJP? 

The contradictions are obvious. Why would the Dalits, by far the most oppressed social group in Indian society today, make common cause with the Yadavs, the group that is responsible for their oppression? In Lucknow, the answer is a no-brainer. The two will come together because there is an even bigger oppressor: the Narendra Modi-Yogi Adityanath government. 

“Of the five years that he has been elected to govern, Yogi Adityanath will spend four and a half being a Thakur. For the remaining six months, just before the elections, he will turn into a CM, pledging to do justice to all castes. How can such a person have credibility?” asks Ram Kumar of the Dynamic Action Group (DAG), a Dalit activist. What does this mean materially, on the ground? While the Adityanath regime is praised for its record on bringing law and order back on course largely by empowering the police force, Dalits, Muslims and even Yadavs, see themselves as victims. 

It started with the Allahabad High Court order on the Scheduled Castes and Schedule Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, known quite simply as the Atrocities Act. The High Court ordered that unless the police record “elaborate reasons” for the need of an arrest (conviction can result in a jail term of up to seven years), a person booked for assaulting a Dalit under the act could not be arrested. This was seen as a dilution of the act — if the police were obliged to conduct an enquiry before arrest, the accused could easily return to the village in the intervening period and simply eliminate the complainant. 

The court ordered the state issue a Government Order (GO) to this effect. Copies were sent to all police stations, providing the upper caste-dominated police force with a statutory alibi to not act in cases of atrocities against the Dalits. 

In April 2018, there was a spontaneous all-India strike by the Dalits. The effects of this continue to linger. “It was Mulayam Singh Yadav who first brought out the reality of the compact of upper castes in a way that brought the middle castes together. The same thing was done by Mayawati in relation to the Dalits. Now, the Narendra Modi-Yogi Adityanath government is trying to reclaim that lost ground and show the lower castes their place. The reaction is there for all to see,” Ramkumar says. 

The net result is: what was a political alliance between the SP and the BSP is now almost a social alliance. On their own, distrust and lingering caste arrogance might have prevented Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav from coming together. An NSSO survey has put the OBC population in the country at 40.94 per cent, the Scheduled Caste population at 19.59 per cent the ST population at 8.63 per cent and the rest at 30.80 per cent. UP’s demographics roughly reflect this proportion. 

In this situation, says Ramkumar, out of 80 Lok Sabha seats, the SP-BSP alliance could get up to 40 with 30 going to the BJP and 10 to the Congress. 

“What the BJP should ask itself is: what did it do wrong to bring together forces that wouldn’t talk to each other till five years ago?” he says.