A Fragmented Society

Does anyone care if there is no prospect of a viable government in UP? The voters, who failed to return a clear verdict, wouldnt be bothered in the least if Presidents rule were to continue. They cannot complain at the denial of popular rule, for in the final analysis the blame for it lies squarely with them. As for the newly-elected legislators, they can begin to exploit their perks and privileges as soon as the House is constituted and then kept in suspended animation. What then is the big deal? Why should anyone shed tears at the absence of a popular government, when the newly-elected representatives of the people are not ready to shed their prejudices, for the sake of forging a workable arrangement? That the governance in the most populous state in the country is a cinch even without a representative administration, ought to be clear from the conduct of its governor, Romesh Bhandari. He still manages to tee off regularly on the Lucknow golf course, regardless of the grave constitutional crisis that confronts him and the entire polity!

Even at the pain of inviting the wrath of the most democratic-spirited, I would suggest that the cause of UP wouldnt suffer for want of popular rule. For, a stillborn House can produce only a stillborn government. The fresh spell of central rule would only give further fillip to the process of trafficking in MLAs, so that Mr Bhandari can be convinced at a later date that his favoured side has indeed mustered the requisite majority. But there can be little doubt that a government resulting from such trade-offs would collapse sooner or later. A government formed after cobbling together such an opportunistic alliance would pursue its casteist agenda, with an eye on the next election, which cannot be far away. The newly-constituted Assembly can only throw up a government which will continue the process of further dividing the states bureaucracy and police on caste lines, from where the administrations of Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav had left off.

Maybe canvassing for the continuation of central rule does hurt democratic sensibilities. Maybe it is not the best way to blunt the malady of caste and maladministration. But what if the electoral verdict mirrors the sharp divisions in the society? And sectional leaders make the Constitution of a democratic government almost impossible by their insistence on treating the rival contenders as untouchables. The framers of the Constitution offered no solution to break the logjam of numbers, precisely because they had innate faith in the goodness of the entire political class. They clearly hadnt reckoned with the Mulayam Singh Yadavs and Mayawatis, for whom India is a sub-division of mutually exclusive caste entities.

In retrospect, it appears as if the second vivisection of Indian society in less than half-a-century began when V P Singh used the Mandal issue as a weapon to blunt the rising tide of the Ram temple fervour in the Hindi heartland. It was one step backward, for it divided the society further on sub-caste lines. It is instructive to note that the core of the BSP support-base comes from the Jatavs, the relatively better-off among the Dalits. So insidious is the influence of caste that it has broken down the bonds among Dalits, which inhuman misery and exploitation over centuries ought to have nourished into an invincible union. Poverty clearly is not the glue that holds the wretched of this earth together. Caste can. For proof, analyse the voter behaviour of various castes in the recent UP poll. It failed to throw up a clear verdict because king caste ruled supreme over the minds of the voters, in the absence of a more emotive issue. Also, it is not without significance that the BSP with its exclusionary Dalit agenda began to find ready converts only after Mandal churned up the Hindu society.

That in all likelihood is why the BJP bid for a grand comeback in UP floundered badly. Religion had failed to bind the Indian society into a single entity for long, that is, before the British successfully took up the challenge. Under the British, India became a single administrative unit, but the divisions of caste, creed and region etc, lurked underneath all the time. The Mandalists ignited the spark and brought out into the open the hitherto latent casteist passions. In the name of affirmative action, casteists have now carved out their own little pocketboroughs to grab power. The outcome in UP is testimony to the damage wrought by the process unleashed by the demons of caste, nay, Mandal. Lest anyone suspect me of harbouring anti-reservation feelings, I would like to make it plain that given the ingrained inequities in the larger Hindu society, some form of affirmative action was long overdue. Where we seemed to have erred greviously is in making caste and not the economic condition the main determinant.

Admittedly, a strong leader with a charismatic appeal, or a political party whose record inspired confidence, would have succeeded in reaching to the electorate over the heads of their casteist chieftains. But with the irrelevance of the Congress and its scam-tainted leadership, and the failure of the BJP to occupy the space vacated by the former, the rise of Mayawatis and Mulayam Singh Yadavs was only to be expected. The fragmented polity is hostage to their whims. In this depressing scenario therefore, it should have come as no surprise to anyone that no politician worth his salt has spared a thought for the governance of the largely ungovernable UP, politicking having become an end in itself.