Aalampura Village: The Bahujan Samaj Party's social engineering formula seems to have failed to cut ice with the voters in Punjab, the state which is known to have the highest Dalit population in the country.
The party which is set to play a significant role in swaying the parliamentary elections results, tried to distribute the seats more or less in an equitable manner while contesting all the 13 seats. Yet it has a few takers in the state.
"It is 50 per cent for both the sides - the Congress and Akali Dal," says Kuldeep Singh, the Sarpanch (head) of Alampura, a village with a majority Dalit population. Dalits comprise 30 per cent of the state's population.
Alampura had voted for Dalit icon Kanshi Ram in 1996. The BSP-Akali alliance won 11 of the 13 seats in Punjab then. But their numbers have fallen ever since.
In the last elections, the BSP couldn't win a single seat in Punjab. Kuldeep Singh explains, "Tomorrow if we need something, we will have to go to the MP, so people vote for the winning side."
Barely 100 km away, there's a village called Talhan which is part of Jalandhar district. It's a prosperous Dalit village. Here almost every second household has a member living abroad. But here too, not many are willing to take chances.
"BSP candidates were voted but then they changed parties, so people stopped voting for them," says the village Sarpanch.
So, people in both the poor and the developed Dalit villages of Punjab say they will not bet on the losing horse. The question is: has Mayawati, who could well be the next prime minister of the country, watered the field Kanshiram sowed the BSP seed in? Though some think otherwise, some staunch BSP supporters insist the elephant will win the race, sooner or later.