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17 years ago, Brijlal's left hand was crushed by a powerful press in the plastic manufacturing factory where he used to work, located in Mayapuri, the once bustling industrial center in western Delhi. Since then, he has been at home-in the village of Pareva in the Basti district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, where there are hundreds of people, almost all of whom are landless workers.

Like most others in the village, Bridgelar is now in his 30s, from the marginalized Jatav Dalit community, and is listed as a predetermined caste in official records. He makes a living by buying and selling vegetables.

When we met last week, unlike his neighbors, Brijlal was very open to his political preferences. "Look, I'm Chamar," he was referring to his caste. Jatavs are also known as Chamars in some areas of Uttar Pradesh. "In this world, I can only eat and sleep with Chamar-so my vote will always go to Chamar."

In other words: He said he was a loyal supporter of the Bahujan Samaj Party.

The BSP led by the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati is widely regarded as representing the interests of the Dalit community in the state, especially the Jatav caste from which Mayawati was born.

However, the party’s influence has been waning recently. In the state's previous parliamentary elections held in 2017, the party could only win two of the 84 seats reserved for Dalit candidates in the state.

On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has swept the polls, ranks among the top 70 such seats. Mahadev, where Pareva is located, is one of them. BJP candidate Ravi Kumar Sonkar won BSP's Doodhram with a decisive lead of more than 25,000 votes.

Opinion survey data in Uttar Pradesh indicated that although the BSP retained a large portion of Dalit votes, since 2014, the BJP has managed to remove a large number of non-Jatav Dalits. This is the result of the party’s research and successful strategy, which needs to impress non-Jatav communities, that BSP only caters to Jatav’s interests.

Located at the intersection of the Awadh and Purvanchal regions in Uttar Pradesh, Basti is full of small towns and caste-separated villages. Both geographically and demographically, it is no different from other regions in the Hindi center.

For many years, the BJP has hardly been a serious participant in the region, except for a brief period in the 90s, when the party played an important role with the support of the emotional Ram Janambhoomi movement, whose center is adjacent to Ayoti Ya. Before 2017, the party won a seat in the district in the 2000s. Political observers said that the only victory was more like a fluke: Ram Prasad Chaudhary, who occupied the Kaputanganj seat for 24 consecutive years since 1993, was in a relationship with Maya. After the fallout, Mayawati joined the party before the 2002 general election and retained his seat.

Until 2017, BSP occupied a decisive advantage in Basti. In 2007, the party won four of the district’s five seats; in 2012, even though it suffered heavy losses in most of the state, it still retained two of them. Of the remaining three seats, the Samajwadi Party became two winners, and the Congress became one winner. In the 2012 election, the People's Party hardly won the competition in the region. Although the party won fourth place in three of the five constituencies, it is far ahead in the other two constituencies.

But in 2017, the BJP won all five electoral districts in the region.

In Mahadev, every three people are Dalits, and the BJP candidates received more than 40% of the total votes.

Brijlal said that although he himself may not have voted for the BJP, he understands why many Dalit voters would do it. "Everyone believes that Modi will make Uttar Pradesh a paradise as he did with Gujarat," he said, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gujarat, where Modi served as the chief minister from 2001 to 2014, is one of the most industrialized states in India, and its manufacturing industry accounts for nearly 40% of the state’s GDP.

"This is a vote for him," Brillard said. "I hope we don't have to go to other states for our livelihood. Uttar Pradesh will have factories and industries, just like Gujarat."

Five years later, the mood among Dalit voters was mixed. These tasks have not yet been achieved. People are angry with inflation. But the BJP’s social welfare policy seems to have helped offset some dissatisfaction, especially for those at the absolute bottom of the socio-economic pyramid.

The Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh parliamentary elections is particularly impressive in areas where it has barely won in the past 20 years. In the government led by Chief Minister Adityanath, can the party consolidate its achievements and further strengthen its position? Or will the 2022 elections weaken its hegemony? In this series, five years after the BJP cleanup, we bring you dispatches from five such regions, and we will track them all the way to polling day during the election season. Basti is one of them.

Dalits make up about 20% of the Basti population, close to the overall proportion of the Uttar Pradesh community.

Since there are no official numbers for other caste groups, it is difficult to achieve a neat community breakdown-Scroll.in obtains estimates from party staff who have access to household data developed at the booth level. In addition to the Dalits, another important group is the middle caste of Kurmis-according to local estimates, they are the largest communities in the constituencies of Basti Sardar, Kaputanganj and Ruduri. The area is also home to a large number of high-caste Brahmins, who are traditionally regarded as supporters of the BJP; their numbers are especially important in the Harraiya constituency.

Muslims account for less than 15% of the total population of Basti, which is significantly lower than the state's average of around 20%. Yadavs is another traditional base of the Samajwadi party in addition to Muslims, and is believed to be lower than the number of people in the entire state.

This caste arithmetic indicates that the Samajwadi Party, which has become the main contender of the BJP before the 2022 parliamentary elections, will complete its mission in Basti. If the party wants to seize the area from the Saffron Party, it must attract communities that have traditionally been cautious about it. Considering their large numbers, perhaps the most important of them is the Dalits.

"If we don't get Dalit votes, we will need at least 70% of non-Yadav OBC votes for us," said Ram Prasad Chaudhary, a five-time legislator from the Kaptanganj constituency. Chaudhary joined the Samajwadi party earlier this year, referring to the intermediary caste groups under the protection of other backward castes, which have voted in large numbers for the BJP since 2014 in Uttar Pradesh.

Chaudhary is one of the highest Kurmi leaders in the region-an important OBC community in the region. Those who closely follow the politics of the region say that Chowdhury’s entry may help attract some Kurmi votes, but it seems unlikely that such a large-scale integration of non-Yadav OBC groups to support the Samajwadi party is possible.

Dialogues with residents of the five constituencies revealed that the middle caste is somewhat divided between the Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Although some communities, such as Rajbhars and Kurmis, seem to be open to the former's ideas, because influential leaders from their respective castes have joined forces with it, other groups, such as Nishads and Prajapatis, say they see no reason to jump off the ship.

However, despite the importance of the Samajwadi party winning Dalit votes, I found that despite their disillusionment with the BJP, most of the Dalit voters I spoke to seemed to have barely noticed this.

Among Dalit voters, "mehengai" or inflation seems to be the theme of the campaign.

In a village in the Kudraha neighbourhood of Mahadewa, Radhika Harijan complained: “Everything under this government is more expensive. I have stopped refilling the cylinders they gave me and started cooking on the chulha (fireplace).”

In the village of Parewa not far away, Motilal Harijan said that his family had also stopped using steel cylinders provided to them by the government for free. “Just tell me how we can survive when the cooking oil is 200 rupees per liter and my daily salary does not exceed 250 rupees,” he said.

However, the assessment of the situation at hand seems very different. Some people say that although the situation is terrible, the government has been providing cash and in-kind assistance.

For example, impoverished Dalit women often interrupt their gratitude for the government’s “free rationing” in their desperate rants about rising prices of necessities, alluding to the additional food supplies that the center has been distributing since the beginning of the year. Pandemic.

There are also many mentions of free housing and toilets, and people say they have gotten them from the central government in the past four and a half years.

Phoolmati Chamar, 45, lives in the Bharauli village of Rudhauli with her 18-year-old daughter. “I can’t lie and say that Modi at least gave me something.” “I didn’t get anything from Mayawati.” Poolmati said of her. In the past few elections, they voted for "kamal", which refers to the lotus flower that symbolizes the election of the People's Party.

Similarly, in the Chauba village of Mahadewa, Shyamraji talked about the 6,000 rupees in cash assistance she receives each year as part of the direct welfare transfer program for land-owning farmers, which is also a central program. "What did Mayawati give?" she asked.

But others believe that the government at the time "takes away" much more than they give. In the village of Kurmaul near the border of Gorakhpur, Sita expressed a widely expressed sentiment. "The previous government may not have given us anything, but it hasn't taken it from us-from kuch banaya nahi to bigada bhi nahi," said the 40-year-old.

However, when you ask these discouraged Dalit voters who they would vote for if they weren't the People's Party, their answers are often cautious and vague, obviously because they are afraid that opposing the ruling system is a bad idea. However, after talking with them for a while, their loyalty will become clearer.

The Bahujan Samaj Party may have the lowest status, but some Dalits, especially the Chamar caste, which accounts for about 60% of the community in the area, are committed to voting for it despite the decline in their numbers.

As Hanuman Prasad of Mahadewa explained, “People want to take their lives to the next level, and for that you need to work. Mayawati creates jobs for us.”

Prasad was hired as a sanitation worker in the village committee near Basti in 2008. From 2007 to 2012, the Mayawati government employed more than 100,000 sanitation workers, most of whom were Dalits-few people would sign in other communities to take into account the nature of the work.

The government’s work helps Prasad, and he also owns some land to enable his children to live a better life. His two daughters go to college and his two sons go to high school.

Although the leaders of the Samajwadi Party acknowledged Maywati's influence on Dalit voters, they insisted that the community will vote strategically this time because what they really want is the defeat of the BJP.

Some politically conscious Dalits do admit that if they want to meet a new chief minister in Lucknow, the only realistic choice is Akhilesh Yadav, the boss of the Samajwadi party. As Sumit Rao, a 26-year-old pharmacy graduate from Arda Village in Rudhauli, said: “This time, people may vote for a party that has the potential to defeat the BJP.”

This argument is based on the view that BSP is not a true competitor this time, and voting for it may indirectly benefit BJP.

Although some Dalits, especially educated young people, do seem to agree with this view, this is not an idea that has been widely disseminated. As 20-year-old Pradeep Gautam, who lives in Chhapia in Harraiya and is studying for a bachelor's degree in education, said: "What we want is the MLA of our own party. Take a break and we will think about it later."

Most of the Dalits I met believed that even if they voted for the Samajwadi party, if the party wins, they will be labeled as voting for BSP, so they will be excluded from government plans. Kalicharan, who works as a painter in the Kudraha neighbourhood of Mahadewa constituency, said: “We might as well vote for our own political party and elect our own representatives to speak for us.”

Basti’s People’s Party leader admitted that Dalit voters were somewhat disappointed.

Harish Dwivedi is the BJP member of the district, which is also the Lok Sabha constituency. He said that inflation is a problem and may cause the party to lose some votes. "Part of the non-Hali Jandalit who voted for us this time will not," he said, referring to the non-Chamal Dalit community.

But it is not important, he added. He claimed that the untouchable community "opposed to Samajwadis 10 times more often than against the BJP."

Dwivedi’s argument is that as long as the community’s votes have not undergone a major shift to the Samajwadi party, there is no reason to panic. This argument also stems from the view that BSP is unlikely to attract votes from other communities and therefore does not pose a real threat to BJP.

As far as the leaders of the BSP are concerned, they are unwilling to address the general view that the votes for it are basically against the Samajwadi Party, the so-called second place in the election. "What we do know is that we are also fighting for an election and conducting it in a competitive manner," said Subhash Chandra Gautam, election coordinator for the party in the region.

However, after all, change may not be everyone's idea. Many Dalit voters, especially those from non-Jatav communities, seem to be open to the idea of ​​voting for the BJP. Koke Sonkar, who lives by selling fruits in Basti, said that he hopes that the prices of basic commodities will fall, but he does not want the new government to do much about it. "If it wasn't for inflation, I would give the People's Party government 10/10," he said.

Even some Jatav voters seem willing to give the BJP a second chance. Brijlal, a vegetable seller who had sharply criticized the government, also avoided writing it off completely. "For everyone with bimari, the times are cruel," he said, referring to the coronavirus pandemic. "Therefore, it may not be completely fair to evaluate the government based on the past five years."

All photos taken by Arunabh Saikia.

Follow the rest of this series here.

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