Opinion: Can Mayawati's Nephew Salvage Her Party?

It is time for a power switch in the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), with party supremo Mayawati naming nephew Akash Anand as her political successor.

The party that Kanshi Ram started as a movement to unite various marginalised castes - Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) - in their fight against discrimination, Mayawati has converted into a family fiefdom.

Mayawati hopes young Akash will keep her political legacy alive and lead the BSP out of its existential battle. In a meeting held to review the party's preps for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Akash tasked with strengthening the BSP before the elections.

Akash is the son of Mayawati's younger brother Anand Kumar, who is perceived as next to "behenji" in the BSP. Anand Kumar was appointed vice president of the party in 2019, and his son the national coordinator.

The BSP joins the ranks of family-controlled regional parties like the Samajwadi Party, RJD, DMK, YSRCP, TDP, BRS, Akali Dal, JMM, Trinamool Congress, PDP, National Conference, NCP, and Shiv Sena.

Most of these parties have either completed a transition to newer generations like RJD (Tejashwi Yadav), SP (Akhilesh Yadav), DMK (MK Stalin), YSRCP (Jagan Reddy), Akali Dal (Sukhbir Badal), JMM (Hemant Soren), or are staring at a transition.

In many parties, the process was not smooth and the BSP is no exception as a section of disillusioned old guard look for greener pastures elsewhere.

Power transfer is smooth when a party is in power. If a party is out of power it faces challenges, like Rahul Gandhi did from the old guard in the Congress when he took over from his mother Sonia Gandhi as party chief.

The BSP is fighting an existential battle, having been reduced to just one seat in Uttar Pradesh, and Mayawati hopes young Akash can shore up the party's support base, especially among the youth.

It will not be easy, as Akash lacks the charisma of his aunt in her heydays. The 28-year-old is more of a backroom boy, and may not be acceptable to the middle-aged or older voters of the BSP.

He is also likely to face competition from leaders like Bhim Army's Chandrashekhar Azad "Ravan" who is gaining traction among a section of Dalit youth.

The bigger question is whether Dalit voters in Uttar Pradesh will accept Akash Anand as torchbearer of the bahujan identity like they accepted his aunt Mayawati as Kanshi Ram's successor.

The BJP has already made significant inroads into the non-Jatav Scheduled Caste vote in UP, bagging 51 per cent of the community's support. In fact, the BSP has dropped to the third place among non-Jatavs, with the Samajwadi Party emerging as their second choice in the 2022 state elections.

The BSP is largely left with the support of the Jatavs, the community that Mayawati belongs to; 62% of them supported the BSP in 2022. Whether London-educated city slicker Akash can establish a rapport with the BSP's traditional voters remains to be seen.

The BJP is aggressively wooing the Jatavs through representation in the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh cabinet. It recently made Jagdish Devda, a Dalit, Deputy Chief Minister in Madhya Pradesh.

Akash was focussing on the five states that voted recently and where the BSP's performance remained poor. The party, which won six seats in Rajasthan in 2018, was reduced to two seats. It couldn't open its account in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where it had won two seats each in 2018.

Per my research, regional parties have an average life of around 40 years. Many regional parties are no longer in existence, having been subsumed by national parties or having acquired a new identity. There is a significant churn among these parties at the national and state level; Akash needs to be aware of the fact that the BSP will be reaching that point soon next year, founded as it was in 1984.

The BSP won 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, and will struggle to retain these in 2024 without joining either the opposition INDIA bloc or the BJP-led NDA. So far, it has maintained an equidistant approach.

The NDA doesn't require the BSP's official support, while a Samajwadi-BSP-Congress alliance in UP looks difficult. However, due to the strain in the relationship between the Samajwadi and the Congress, an alliance between Mayawati, Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal cannot be ruled out.

Mayawati's party is going through a rough patch, and whether Akash can help the party "survive and revive" in a new era is an unknown.

The BJP has managed to add a seasoning of Hindutva and class to the Hindi heartland's caste based politics. It has tried to pull in many SC voters in its overarching Hindutva umbrella, while many have become part of its labharthi (beneficiary) pool.

The BSP is staring at a rout in next year's national election, unless Akash reinvents the party improves accessibility (24x7 availability), hits the road, and adapts to new age politics (identity, caste vs class). 

(Amitabh Tiwari is a political strategist and commentator. In his earlier avatar, he was a corporate and investment banker.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author.