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16/01/2015

Usually, we think of social media as a forum for exhibitionism. But, inevitably, the extroverted cataloguing of everyday minutiae—meals, workouts, thoughts about politics, books, and music—reaches its own limits; it ends up emphasizing what can’t be shared.
Talking so freely about your life helps you to know the weight of those feelings which are too vague, or too spiritual, to express—left unspoken and unexplored, they throw your own private existence into relief.
“Sharing” is, in fact, the opposite of what we do: we rehearse a limited openness so that we can feel the solidity of our own private selves... Joshua Rothman

27/10/2014

Journalism now ought to be conceived less on the model of information and more on the model of a conversation. As such, journalists should define themselves as being merely a part of the conversation of a culture and its community rather than truth-telling seers, says Ashwini Bhatnagar

HOW TO DRINK FROM THE MEDIA MIRAGE

Journalism is there and it is not there. You can see it and even chase it but at the end of the day it is just not there.

Like the proverbial desert mirage.

Lately, journalism has been created in our minds to quench a thirst at the oasis. The oasis doesn't exist, the mirage does. But we are so beholden to the promise of it, we never question it. If we did, it would be blasphemous to question the Gods of the Air and their meaningful gibberish.

It is not coincidental or even an innocent and inadvertent digression from the very purpose of journalism. It is deliberate and almost Orwellian in its new avatar. The Big Brother is the Big Media -- harassing, dictating, rewarding and punishing and enforcing choices which best serve its Big Purpose of Political Commerce.

Journalism today is chiefly opinion vending rather than news dissemination. Opinions are crafted by a handful of artisans (also are routinely described as journalists) at the dictate of politico-economic caucus and are hawked through the typical shrillness of a roadside vendor. Creating the bazaar and minding it is the task of the Opinion Gatekeepers (aka the caucus) and their corporate jungle tamers and merger –acquisition artistes, trapezing between Q1 and Q4 financial spreadsheets.

Therefore, the horrendous make- up of a nosey news anchor asking uncomfortable questions that a “news” vendor wears is to keep the public glued between the Big Acts of the Opinion Gatekeepers. He is a caricature and, though he is not really needed in substantial terms, he continues to makes his shrill pathetic appearance because that’s how the show has to be run.

But despite the hype and the bluster, the gaudy face of the mass media conceals a vast silence. The immobile and trance-like television audience – a viewing audience and not a speaking audience—deserves sympathy as despite the miracles of new data bases, electronic and digital gizmos, it seems to know less than what it knew 10 or 20 years ago.

The trance created by the spliced images and Big Brother commentaries is heightened when the language of the mass media deteriorates into slogans and saleable cliché, each piled on the other in relentless waves to numb and stun the viewer or the reader into abject acquiesce.

Silence, cliché and noise thus represent the condition of public life today. The media no longer speaks for you or of you. It rather speaks to you. It either tells you or ticks you off. The public or public voice has ceased to exist.

Ironically, the public is the one and only client of journalism. Journalism is grounded in the public and the press justifies itself in the name of the public. It exists—or so it is said from every media platform—to inform the public, to serve as its eyes and ears and to protect its interests. In fact, journalism originates in and flows from the relationship of the press to the public and as such the public is its totem and talisman. If journalism pays homage, it is at the altar of the public. And not public men.

But for all the ritual incantation of the public in the rhetoric of journalism, no one knows any longer what the public is , or where one may find it or even if it exists any longer. Rarely in media outlets (a completely befitting terms given its current disposition), is it seriously debated whether the press does inform the public or the nature of the public that has a right to know or how the press can or does represent the public.

Plainly put, the public has been conceptually evacuated from media debate. In other words, journalism’s one and only client—the public— has ceased to exist. The media outlets do not want it to exist. There is no place for public in the private domain.

However, behind the faux totem of the public, interest groups have started to operate. But interest groups operate, by definition, in the private sector. They also operate behind the scene. As such their relationship to public life is essentially propagandistic and manipulative. They masquerade private as public interest. Talk about the public continues but only in empty platitudes.

We have inherited and institutionalized this conception of journalism and the dilemmas of journalism and journalists (not media outlets) flow from this conception. We thus have scientific journalism devoted to the sanctity of fact and objectivity but is one in which publicity invades every domain of privacy.

We have a journalism that is an early warning system but it keeps the audience in constant state of agitation or boredom.

We have a journalism that reports on an endless stream of expert opinion but because there is no agreement among the experts, it is more of a parody than bearing witness to the truth.

It is above all a journalism that justifies itself in the public’s name but in which the public plays no role except as an audience – a receptacle to be informed by media outlets and an excuse for the practice of publicity.

Media outlets—operating through professional practitioners – may be doing many things but they are certainly not doing journalism. Since the public has been evacuated from the discourse by them and it has been replaced by private interest, media outlets can at best be construed as kiosks dishing out self- serving propaganda for manipulating activities and processes in the socio-economic domain. Politics is but an offshoot of this domain and therefore the object of this manipulation, too.

But the public and public interest continue to remain vital. Journalism still has to serve its purpose and it can only do so by reverting to the non partisan community model. The present day transmission model of communication cannot be immediately jettisoned but it has to be chipped away till such time when journalism is what the community participates in. Participation is the key word which will chiefly characterize the discourse in public domain about public interest and public good. It will differentiate journalism from commercial press alias media outlets.

In sum, journalism in this context is neither the journalism of truth or of information or of objectivity or of the experts. It is also not the journalism of going out and doing it. Neither is it a journalism which presents itself before its audience as a seer.

Instead, journalism now ought to be conceived less on the model of information and more on the model of a conversation. As such, journalists should define themselves as being merely a part of the conversation of a culture and its community.

There is no truth-telling for journalists for no one can tell the whole truth. All journalism can do is to preside over and be within the conversation of a culture; to stimulate it and organize it, keeping it flowing and leave a record of it so that other conversations—inter and intra community—can feed off it.

Necessarily then, these conversations have to have their roots in hyper local soil if they have to flow to the macro levels. The public, which had been so rudely evacuated from the discourse, can then relocate to its original space as a participant rather a passive spectator.

17/01/2014

Pl feel free to circulate among your friends

Hum AAP ke hain kaun?
Or how to scale up a relationship

By Ashwini Bhatnagar
Editor-in-Chief
WriteConnectIndia.com

All journalism begins or leads to some sort of activism and AAP is a direct result of one such activism. So, as a journalist, I feel a connect with AAP in a way that relates my social concerns with visible tangible socio-political change. We are therefore related.
But the relationship is at least once removed as journalistic intellectual activism considers street-level connection as its country cousin. Hacks like me love to lecture and observe from a smug vantage position rather than get down to flag waving on the streets. The masses are separate from us. We are the intellectuals; thought leaders who are only responsible for their discourse and not the action thereupon.
But we have recently fallen upon strange times. The country cousin has turned hip and thought has started following activism. The men and women on the streets waving the AAP flags have achieved the distant and figurative goals of intellectual thought in just one small lunge changing Indian democracy by its 'thoughtless' action. It is difficult to reconcile to country cousin becoming fashionable as it is to concede that AAP is now THE conversation the nation is having with itself and coming out conclusions which trump interlocutors like me.
AAP is not about Arvind Kejriwal. As a leader too he's incidental to the cause. His appeal is not in his personal charisma. It is rather in the fact that the impossible was made possible so easily.
A few months ago all of us 'thought' politics was impossible and the Indian political system was beyond redemption. We stood by and watched haplessly as political street walkers paraded their assets brazenly. The political class gloated over its invincibility since the raktbheej of the system could only produce clones of the politician whose DNA repelled genuine public interest. It was, we declared, an impossible-impossible situation. Tch-tch.
The turnaround happened in one small magical moment - the Anna Hazare fast over the Jan Lokpal Bill. True, Anna had fasted before. True also Anna had felled many a corrupt minister in his home state Maharashtra. True he came to the centre stage with a Gandhi-like appeal and his endearing toothless smile. But all this would have been incidental and event-related if Kejriwal and his team had not conjured up the means to scale up the model.
As a journalist I have seen many simple, honest, endearing and committed people launching and sustaining social movements. They have been successful in their own way by engaging people to secure remedial action even from the most obstinate of the governments. But all of them so far had remained localised. They couldn't be scaled up from being local to national in terms of appeal, fervour, issues and commitment.
In fact, AAP became AAP because it moved away from the confines of Anna's Jan Lokpal Bill movement and broad based it to the issue of corruption and governance. Anna's fast could go only a particular distance. It was unfit to go the whole way.
The trick was in the scale. The simple solution to the impossible political situation was to combine earnestness of purpose with its propagation. Anna didn't see the potential of scale; he was happy with the earnestness of his own self and that of his local band of supporters. Kejriwal saw it differently because he understood the dramatic difference scale could make. He knew a viable model is one which can be scaled up almost indefinitely.
Scaling also ensures a broad base and broader the base the less chances there are of a vertical collapse. Furthermore, multiplicity of stakeholders in terms of mass participation and alternate choices means long term sustainability. Hence, AAP moved from demanding a change in government to the change of the current political class. The issues were scaled up along with the size of AAP's quest.
In other words, the enthusiasm in the country today has shifted from replacing the Congress with the BJP. It is now about replacing both and all others with a new political class as defined by AAP. In other words, replacement politics has been scaled up to alternate politics, which in turn has moved from being just a 'thought' to actionable 'thought'. Impossible is now in the grasp of the very possible.
IIMs grads routinely learn how to build business models which can be successively ramped up. However, the Indian political model across parties and NG0s were self limiting to region, class, caste or interest groups. Kejriwal tinkered innovatively with the political model and made successive scaling possible. TDP, SP, BSP, TMC, the Left, BJD et al have all had opportunities to scale up but they had no Kejriwal to do it for them.
Technology has been Kejriwal's big ally in this breakthrough but more than just technology it is the way it has been deployed in the scaling up that has made the difference. The BJP and the Congress crib about the TV space AAP gets but forget to address themselves to why it gets this space. It was not because journalists were going out of their way to help AAP; rather because AAP scaled up to the next news level and refreshed the debate. The news ramp up has lessons for both Modi and Rahul G but these lessons may not be of use to them now -- AAP has already clogged up the messaging network!
The distant cousin that I mentioned earlier seems like a real brother today. The journalist is now not just thought but actionable thought. It is a happy meeting which answers the question hum aap ke kaun hai with a (pun intended) response: hum hai AAP, janab.

12/01/2014

Arrey Akhilesh Bhaiya ! (Part II)

Much ado about a small fair

Ashwini Bhatnagar

The other day Akhilesh Bhaiya addressed a press conference. He was in a bad mood. He had a good reason to be angry but like always he calmly explained the situation.
Safai, he said, is a small village in Etawah district which for years has devoted itself to the promotion of rural arts and crafts. Every year therefore the local village committee organises a festival largely from its own funds to inspire the youth into creative action. Bhaiya said that whenever his dad was in power he suitably supported the grass roots event through government funding. But even when he was out of power, Safai benefitted from his personal out of pocket expense. So what was wrong with it, he asked calmly despite being mighty irritated.
Bhaiya didn't want to take on the media for whatever it had done. But like always, the hacks forced it on him and he had to blame them for creating so much ado about a small fair. It wasn't fair (no pun intended), he said.
Again, he explained, the festivities are staple fare for 7100 people of Safai during the winter month year on year. The Rs 8 to 10- crore allocation is routine expense considering the fact that most of it has been contributed by the village committee itself. And that the village, just off the Agra-Kanpur national highway, is also a routine annual fixture for Bollywood stars. Riot or no riot, the fair has to happen. A lot depends on it.
As always, Bhaiya is 100 per cent right. Salman Khan confessed later he had to go to Safai because he has to earn his bread and butter. And his colleague Madhuri Dixit is a very sensitive person. A lot did depend on Safai. So what was the ado about?
Really, why the hullabaloo? Ask again and I can think of only one reason - the media is a pervert. It has stopped being straight. It turns over everything and then flogs it dry.
It is therefore indeed q***r for Arnab Goswami to label the Safai Mela as debauchery. It isn't really -- though it may sound q***r when the media splits the window to show Akhilesh Bhaiya warm and comfortable and intent on eye candy while widows wail and children suffer in some place called Shamli camp.
Similarly, I think it is media's perversion to label the Safai Fair as Samajwadi Nites or SP disco. Technically of course the programmes happened after dusk but how can the media deride some village level singing and dancing after sun set?
Indeed, Akhilesh Bhaiya did the right thing by putting Arnab Goswami in his place. Bhaiya is no debauch, he's far from being one. But as always, Arnab jumped the gun and pronounced the verdict even when a good case was being made.
In fact, the media wallahs never wait for full facts to emerge or a situation to ripen. Take Arnab's example again. Akhilesh Bhaiya isn't even 20 months into his rule, there are still 40 more months to go; four more Safai village fairs await and yet he is in a tearing hurry to label Bhaiya's efforts as debauchery. Not fair, I say. Slow down Arnab, don't scare off Bhaiya from his path.
I know for sure the Samajwadis have their heart in the right place. They are always for the poor, the downtrodden and the hapless Remember Akhilesh Bhaiya went to Muzaffarnagar once? He went to Safai once too. Fair and square isn't it? Did he discriminate between the two? No.
Unfortunately the media doesn't see Bhaiya's equanimity. In his eyes all are equal but the media perverts it all. It suffers from compulsive obsessive disorder and hangs on to poor pictures of riot victims. Come on man, flip it. There's Madhuri's 10-crore smile on the other side. Bhaiya, smile!!

08/01/2014

Arrey Akhilesh Bhaiya
A laconic reading of UP CM's mindset

By Ashwini Bhatnagar

Akhilesh bhaiya is truly blessed. He has a charming personality which wins friends easily. He's easy going and amiable and almost fits the bill for the first few qualifications stipulated in Dale Carnige's catalogue on How to Win Friends and Influence People.
He used the charms to ride piggy back of his father's political legacy and the failings of the political biggie Mayawati and come to power in May last year. His father's struggles in Uttar Pradesh's political akhara and Mayawati 'monumental' obsessions made it easy for him to grab a historic electoral victory. He was feted and cheered, sometimes raucously or too loudly, but admittedly he was the Great Young Hope.
All deaths are sombre events but a young death is heart wrenching. Akhilesh Bhaiya had been blessed with a full term, he could live to it with the muscle of majority under his command. The world, in a manner of speaking, was his oyster.
It still is. The Great Young Hope is not dead yet. But the prognosis is not encouraging at all. Perhaps, the first symptoms were visible at the swearing in itself when hooliganism took centre stage. A little later, power wrangling usurped the spotlight. Minority leaders wanted majority share, family kin professed divine kingship rights. The Great Young Hope stared at despair.
Anyone would have sunk in this quagmire but as I had said earlier Akhilesh Bhaiya is truly blessed. The brute majority of his father's party in the Assembly is a huge blessing. The Union government's dependence on Dad's outfit for survival in the Lok Sabha is another such mana from heaven. Nothing can cause sudden death. The vital signs of Bhaiya's body politic are okay right now.
May be Akhilesh Bhaiya is relaxed because there are no shivers yet. May be he thinks that five years is a long time for any disease to wear itself out even in the absence of political antibiotics; or, just may be, he thinks all's right with the world, and what is this fuss about?
Of course, there is much ado about nothing. Questions about Muzaffarnagar riot victims irritate Akhilesh Bhaiya. Why does every one want to hurry up the settlement of their plight? Why do they want him to be hands on on the situation in a western part of the state? Why do they want him to roll up his sleeves and dive deep into the muck of state administration when he's not responsible of it anyway? It is Behenji who heaped it earlier and now it is the chachas and taus and other heaven begotten uncles. Where is he responsible?
No man should shrug his responsibilities and Akhilesh Bhaiya manly shoulders his own. He was at the MOU signing ceremony with a respected industrialist. He has made his speeches at media hosted enclaves and he was there at Safai for the grand carnival to celebrate village life in filmy style. Those who ask for more, really ask for too much.
Only the truly innocent are genuinely blessed. Rahul Gandhi is, in a manner of speaking, Akhilesh Bhaiya's heavenly brother. Rahul G in his divine innocence rolled up his sleeves on scores of dias' to demonstrate he meant business. It didn't occur to his baby innocence that after rolling up your sleeves you have to put your hands to work.
Again, he addressed conclaves to assure himself he could call muck by its first name when he saw it. He knew it but would do nothing about it till Aam Adami came up with a popular How-to-do- it manual. It then dawned on him that there is much to learn from it.
Akhilesh Bhaiya, it seems, is waiting for a similar learning manual for himself.
God is kind and perhaps he will deliver all the learning to Bhaiya in one fell swoop. He may thus pave the way for Akhilesh Bhaiya to wrest the outcome of the Lok Sabha poll from the clutches of political adversaries. Popular discontent is hardly an issue with someone who is as blessed as Akhilesh Bhaiya.
Doom sayers aren't believers. They are wiley foxes out to prey on the innocent. What they don't know is that at the end it is the young and the pure, those who haven't dirtied their hands and those who look at the world with rose tinted glasses are the ones who will inherit the world. A miracle is waiting to happen, relax Akhilesh Bhaiya.

26/02/2012

http://travel.hindustantimes.com/travel-stories/high-art-in-simple-bastar.php

10/01/2012

Why I love Mayawati-- V
She’s a Braveheart
The 2012 poll for the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly will be like no other in the state’s history. It has all the potential of throwing up clear winners even as sagacious political pundits are parroting their hung assembly forecast of 2007 poll once again. They say there are no clear winners this time around, and the last election results were a flash in the pan for Suhri Kuwari Behen Mayawati ji. A repeat of the ‘social engineering miracle’ of 2007 is being ruled out by them.
The pundits are engaged in their complex calculations of caste kundlis and the ruling stars that govern them. Most say that the major contenders for power, viz the ruling BSP, the 2007 loser SP and the also-ran Congress have major malefic influences and their political destiny at the hustings is a bit star-crossed. They point out that Chief Minister Mayawati is under siege and, over the last three weeks, has been making desperate attempts to break out by sacking more than a score of her ministers and an equal number of sitting MLAs and other loyalists. Her Brahmin-Dalit formula is off track and she may be hard put to even get 100 of her nominees to win the poll.
The SP is stated to be the front runner in these elections. Mulayam Singh and his son, Akhilesh, have been pulling crowds. However, acrimony within the party over nominations may hurt its chances. The top leadership now counts for only the family members of the Mulayam clan; non family members have been sidelined.
The Congress has dared its political rivals through Rahul Gandhi alone. Rahul G’s hectic tours of east and central UP have pulled crowds but the sentiment is far from enthusiastic. Add to this the lackluster campaign mode of the state leadership with their ongoing bickering and electoral hopes are considerably dampened. A part of the top state leadership is also said to be playing footsie with both the BSP and the SP for their private gain. Given this scenario, the pundits claim, the stars foretell a seat share in double digits only.
Oh yes, I forgot the BJP! But I am not an exception, only the most desperate BJP supporters will remember the party as a poll choice after the Babu Ram Kushwaha episode. Truly, the UP BJP is in tatters and even a Narendra Modi will be hard put to revive it.
But for each of the top three contenders for power, 2012 elections present a historic opportunity. A clear win in UP will be a long term game-changer for them for them both in the state and at the Centre. The stakes are therefore terribly high for each one of them, perhaps the highest ever for any election.
The Samajwadi Party is confident today because it seemingly has its Muslim-Yadav combo back in circulation to a great extent. However, the crowds at the SP rallies are largely a reassertion of the Yadav votebank which felt the pinch during the BSP’s Dalit-Brahmin five- year rule. Historically, the Yadavs have been an aggressive political caste in UP politics, much like the Jats of Haryana, and a resurgence of their vote muscle, with the Muslims pitching in, may well see the SP coming back to power. The win will give Mulayam Singh a lot of elbow room at the Centre and make him a national leader in his own right, minus the crutches of a Amar Singh-like wheeler-dealer.
Mulayam Singh therefore needs to win this fight to ensure survival not only for himself but for his political legacy and dynasty. It’s a must-win situation for him and, as of today, he seems to be playing it right.
Rahul G needs Lucknow for his claim on Delhi. A swing in his electoral fortunes here will make him a natural, no-questions-asked choice for Prime Ministership. He is working hard to collect Dalit, Muslim, OBC votes from the erstwhile banks of the BSP and the SP. However, mere assurance that he will work hard to ensure the state’s betterment will not help. Among the voters, there are no takers for any of the Congress leaders from the state as chief ministerial candidates. They will rather prefer Mayawati or Mulayam Singh. Mr G can thus only hope for a large swing if he takes up the leadership of UP himself.
It is indeed a historic moment for Rahul. He could stare down the barrel and dare the BSP or the SP to pull the trigger. Such a dare can make him a political super hero. But his advisers, and possibly Rahul himself, have so far decided to err on the side of caution. The tagline ‘darr ke aage jeet hai’ has obviously not impressed him. The moment in history is likely to pass him by though there is still time for him to assure the voter of his hands-on approach to UP affairs.
But Mayawati has shown she can dare. Unlike all her political rivals, she has had the guts to throw out even her trusted7 aides and winnable candidates. I don’t remember any other politician who has sacked ministers and members of influential families by bucketfuls on poll eve. Some say its sheer arrogance, others label it political courage.
Whatever you may call her action, the fact remains that Mayawati has strategized differently and gone against the established poll tactics of accommodation and appeasement in the name of scoring at the hustings. Her decisions, I believe, are based on her assessment that her Dalit votebank is secure and she can make it to power once again solely on the basis of their support.
The gamble which Mayawati has undertaken is to move away from the Dalit-Brahmin formula and ensure Dalit supremacy in the ensuing elections. She has also made it abundantly clear that doesn’t care for sub-regional satraps and the elephant can pull the heaviest of loads all alone. It is a huge dare; a make or break situation. Notwithstanding the consequences, Braveheart Mayawati has cast the dice.
Is it the beginning of the endgame game for her? Or will it spell finis for her rivals? Time will tell.
More in my next dispatch.

27/12/2011

The political phantom or Phantom, the Ghost who Walks, whichever way you choose to image her, has mystery, mystique, invincibility and hence certain charisma attached to it. The appeal of Mayawati in fact lies in the aura of an ivory tower existence. She is the Lonely Queen living in isolated splendor. A charitable Queen devoted to the cause of the underprivileged, writes Ashwini Bhatnagar in the fourth part of the series.

Why I love Mayawati—IV

She is a political phantom!

To me, Mayawati is a political phantom. A few days back, I used this phrase with some of my journalist friends and it brought to them images of the comic-book character Phantom, who lived in the jungles of Africa and came out of his skull-shaped cave to vanquish the villains trying to defile his hidden paradise.
Of course, I hadn’t meant Phantom, the Ghost who Walks, of our teenage years. I had used it more in the sense of an apparition, a sort of vision which is here and yet not there; an apparition which is seen and heard and whose presence is felt by a special few. For others, Mayawati is yet another shadowy tale for the night around the fire.
Mayawati has indeed been a political phantom during the last five years. The popular image is (as seen on TV screens) of one who floats out of a side door of a large room makes a few clinical pronouncements and disappears even before you can say Behenji aloud. She’s is a fleeting image for nearly all of us, as real or unreal as any phantom of our mind can be.
She is also the comic book Phantom, protected by her own set of pygmies and living a lifestyle which may make even the richest sultan of the world, the Sultan of Brunei, jealous. Like Phantom, she is quick on the draw and can track down the invaders to her domain with a zealous intent.
The political phantom or Phantom, the Ghost who Walks, whichever way you choose to image her, has mystery, mystique, invincibility and hence certain charisma attached to it. The appeal of Mayawati, despite what her detractor may say, in fact lies in the aura of an ivory tower existence. She is the Lonely Queen living in isolated splendor. A charitable Queen devoted to the cause of the underprivileged.
This is not an extravagant description; indeed, it’s a realistic one. Despite a rather lower than expected outcome in the 2009 parliamentary elections, Mayawati did not change her routine. She was not bothered by it. The UP Assembly Poll 2012 is about five weeks away and she is not yet bothered. Her confidence stems from the fact that her core vote bank of the Dalits has not eroded in any way. Mayawati still commands their confidence and all the charges leveled against her of corruption, arrogance and splurging on memorials and statues of herself by the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, have not changed the way her constituency views her. She is their Queen Bee.
There, however, is some debate on whether the ‘social engineering’ formula devised by her in the 2007 can deliver the required results in 2012. The Dalits etc vote bank had joined hands with the Brahmin vote then to give her a clear majority in the House. Brahmins are little wary of her this time around, say political pundits, and their loss of interest may prompt a drastic 50 per cent fall in her seat share. In other words, Behenji is all set for a serious drubbing come February 2012.
But has the social engineering formula really collapsed? Yes, say some shrewd political watchers. The Brahmins voted for her in 2007 because Samajwadi Party had to be outed. The Congress and the BJP were totally fragmented and directionless then. Their winnability factor was at its nadir. The BSP was the only choice. Craftily, the analyst say, the Brahmins threw in their lot with the potential winner, the BSP, and Mayawati was sworn in as Chief Minister for a full term. The strategy helped the Brahmins to enjoy the fruits of power in a Dalit government – no mean achievement by itself!
But 2012 will be different. The sins of Mulayam Singh Yadav government have been forgotten, if not forgiven. The Congress is being led belligerently by Rahul Gandhi and today more than one political option is available to the electorate. Mayawati may therefore lose out and her Brahmin support base may largely migrate to the Congress and/or the BJP.
There is also the anti incumbency factor. The bureaucracy, it is said, cannot stand her whimsical ways and her style of functioning through a tight coterie. Her phantom image has also not endeared her to the middle class or even the lower middle class. She has not shown in any way that she’s a peoples’ CM. A people -friendly government and personalized, accessible leadership may be preferred over Mayawati’s soundproofed deodorized governance.
Add to this Rahul Gandhi’s promise that he will be the de facto CM of UP, if not de jure, if his party is voted to power. The promise of seamless flow of funds from the Centre to the state because of Rahul, who is also a prime ministerial candidate, may well become the proverbial push coming to a shove in toppling Mayawati from power.
But pre poll calculations are what all calculations are—they reveal the important but conceal the vital. We still don’t know what is going to be that vital thing which may swing the vote one way or the other. Perhaps, the political phantom may do what all phantoms are supposed to do – over awe the voter with a series of numbing apparitional moves to dramatically sn**ch victory out of the jaws of defeat. Mayawati is quite capable of it. Just wait, and do watch the Phantom of the Opera in the interregnum.
More in my next post.

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