Maya's jumbo trumpets into hill battle

SANKARSHAN THAKUR

A poster of BSP candidate Tara Dutt Pandey in Jageshwar. Picture by Sankarshan Thakur

Jageshwar (Uttarakhand), Jan. 28: A new, and for these heights, unlikely, species is prospecting Uttarakhand as future habitat: the lumbering, and recently much shrouded, elephant. Monday's election could see the political shape of the state altered from linear bipolarity to triangular, courtesy a vibrant push by Mayawati's BSP to erode the Congress-BJP monopoly over power.

With eight seats in the 70-member Assembly, the elephant already enjoys an oft-ignored toehold in Uttarakhand; a leg up on that tally and the BSP could heave itself higher.

The party has been quick to sense this could be as good a chance as any other. "Why must the Congress alone be the beneficiary of anti-incumbency?" asks Manohar Lal, an apparatchik, in the hill hub of Bhawali, roughly midway between the plains and Almora, the Kumaoni nerve-centre. "Why must people not visit another alternative?"

Lal's sense isn't counterfeit, it has a real ring. You might want to ask around and you'll hear soon enough that there exists a weariness from years of being volley-balled between the Congress and the BJP. "It is always one or the other and both can be equally useless," says Sandeep Khatri, a share-cab owner who operates between Haldwani and Almora. "How long will the two keep taking people for fools, there is also the BSP. Don't take it, or the people, for granted."

Besides, as many of "behenji's" party managers are beginning to conspiratorially let on, Uttarakhand might just become a handy lever to hold in the bigger power-game in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. Should they manage enough to dictate who forms the government in Dehradun, they could leverage it to far greater purchase in Lucknow.

Awaiting Mayawati's arrival for a rally back in Haldwani, a senior police officer gave out what he believed to be a "tactical secret" of the BSP gameplan. "Khel sirf pahad ka nahin hai, khel Pradesh ka bhi hai," he whispered backstage. "Uttarakhand ki chabi se kai taale khul sakte hain. Aur haathi pahad par chadh gaya to utrega nahin. (This is not merely about the hill state, it is also about Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand could become the key that opens many locks. If the elephant mounts the hills, it won't come down.)"

It is not for nothing Mayawati is soaking her resources to saturation. There isn't a valley or hilltop bereft of her party's raging blue. But it isn't the mere presence of it that has made the BSP a challenge for the established two to contend with, it's the persistence and promise with which it is conducting itself.

The BSP may have no chance to make it from the temple-town of Jageshwar in upper Kumaon, for instance, but that isn't stopping the cadres from putting all they can in the fight. A slew of glistening SUVs cutting dusty trails across hill hamlets, entire bustees proclaimed by blue buntings, a poster war that has fairly been won against greater opponents.

The BSP's Tara Dutt Pandey isn't among the frontrunners in Jageshwar, a seat held by the Congress for two consecutive terms. But for Paras Ram Sau, "samanya karyakarta" (ordinary worker) of the BSP spreading the "sarvajan samaj" message among high priests of Jageshwar's ancient temple complex, it is enough just to be waging the campaign.

"Jeetenge nahin par lage hain," he says, least concerned that the Jageshwar outcome will be negative for the BSP. "Baat yeh hai ki sarkar kisi ki bhi ho, ab chabi hamare haath mein rahegi. (So what if we don't win, we are in the fight. The thing is whoever forms the government, the key will be in our hands.)"

What the Haldwani policeman revealed as hush-hush secret is apparently open party strategy: Don't aim too high just yet, focus on securing make-or-break numbers in the Assembly and leave the rest to behenji's bargaining prowess.

So why would Sau, and his party, be investing so much in a lost cause such as Jageshwar?

"Poltricks," he says, nuancing his headgear to keep out the chilly draught, "Simple poltricks," quite unaware he might just have coined a quite fine word for how politics is often practised. There is, Sau patiently explains, the short term and the long term and Jageshwar belongs to the latter trick: "When the BSP first came to Uttarakhand, nobody gave us a chance, we won votes in hundreds or the lower thousands, but we contested everywhere. Then we won seats, and more seats, and now we think we can win enough to decide who comes to power. Jageshwar's turn will come."

There is a charming irony about the little scene Sau has quite suddenly managed to conjure in the stone courtyard around which stand many shrines, big and small, to the elite of the Hindu pantheon: a Dalit towncrier preaching realpolitik — poltricks — to an inclined audience of Brahmin custodians in "rannami" wraparounds, their temples smeared with sandal and vermillion, their bodies bent to the wind sweeping down the high deodar forests, their ears flapping.

"Our candidate (the Tara Dutt Pandey of the omnipresent posters) too is a Brahmin, like you, don't take us amiss," Sau tells them, probably as much in assurance as in light-hearted aside, "poltricks mein sabko leke chalna hai, aap bhi aao. (We must take everyone along in politics, you are welcome too.)" He then holds out a bunch of leaflets and they are quickly taken. "Read it carefully, and let me know what you think of it," Sau says in parting, and then turns to ask if they will give him a glass of water. "Phir milenge. (We'll meet again.)"

The elephant may not have conquered the hills yet, but it's made its way well up where no elephant has ever been before.