A 51 year-old single woman, a Dalit who grew up in slums, has pulled off a staggering political shift in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, which has almost the same population as all of Pakistan. Her Bahujan Samaj Party has secured an unambiguous majority in the 403-strong Assembly. The number of seats it won (206) greatly surpasses the 115-to-168 range that most opinion polls forecast for the BSP.

Mayawati’s feat is all the more impressive because her sole political instrument was the BSP, with its small Dalit core and without the experience, visibility, social acceptability and favourable media attention which its rivals enjoy.

Mayawati has broken UP’s decades-old “impasse”, under which the state had a series of hung Assemblies. As different caste/community groups voted to achieve political self-representation, there has been political fragmentation, leading to no clear majority for any party. The last time this impasse was broken was in 1991, when the Bharatiya Janata Party rode the anti-Babri mosque wave. But this was a short-lived affair.

Mayawati has emerged as the tallest leader of Indian Dalits after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Indeed, no Dalit leader has enjoyed the spectacular electoral success that she has achieved by dint of hard work, by devising a new form of “social engineering”, and through extraordinarily energetic campaigning.

The BSP has scored an impressive increase in its vote-share from 23.2 to 30.5 percent since 2002—by garnering non-Dalit votes across the board and across all the regions of UP.

It fielded as many as 139 upper-caste candidates, 86 of them Brahmins. But this couldn’t have translated into votes without the relentless grassroots bhaichara (social amity) campaigns run by the party’s cadres. The most significant was the Brahmin jodo abhiyan.

One reason for this alliance of strange bedfellows is that both the Dalits and the Brahmins feel squeezed by the rise of the OBCs. But as we see below, that couldn’t have been the main reason.

The BSP now has the largest number of Brahmin MLAs (34). It also has the largest number of Thakurs (19).

However, no less important were the BSP’s gains among the OBCs (51 MLAs, including 4 Yadavs)—compared to the quintessentially OBC organisation, the Samajwadi Party (with 27 OBC MLAs). The BSP drew strong support for the Most Backward Classes too.

With a 6 percent vote-swing among Muslims, who account for 18 percent of UP’s population, the BSP decisively breached the SP’s minority stronghold. Of the 62 constituencies where Muslims form 20 percent-plus of the population, the BSP improved its tally from 10 to 22. The SP’s tally here fell from 24 to 13.

Significantly, most of the BSP’s 26 Muslim MLAs come from the poorer ajlaf communities. By contrast, most of the SP’s 16 Muslim MLAs are from upper-class ashraf groups.

This, like the MBCs’ gravitation towards the BSP, speaks of its emergence as the chosen party of all subaltern groups.

It’s tempting to argue that the BSP’s new sarvajan coalition (comprising all social groups) is a replica of the Congress’s “winning coalition” of the 1950s and 1960s, comprising the upper castes, Muslims and Dalits—with a middle-of-the-road, inclusive appeal. But this would be a grave error.

Many of these non-Dalit groups voted for the BSP, but on terms set by its Dalit-centred agenda.

It’s a tribute to the BSP’s growing stature and the acceptance of the centrality of its subaltern appeal that UP’s upper castes voted for it. The key here lies in the BSP’s relentless rise over two decades, and the BJP’s erosion.

The BSP has ceaselessly expanded its tally—from 11 seats in 1989, to 13 in 1991, to 67 in 1996 and 98 seats in 2002. Each time the BSP allied with the BJP, it expanded its base at the latter’s expense.

The results are a major blow to the SP (down from 143 to 98 seats), the Congress (25 to 22) and the BJP (from 88 to 50). There’s a difference, though. The SP’s vote-share has marginally increased.

The Congress suffered a tiny one-half percentage point decrease in votes—despite a high-profile campaign by Rahul Gandhi. His road-shows attracted big, curious audiences, but not many votes. The Congress represented no specific social bloc. It kept talking about an intangible “Hindustani” identity, ignoring caste self-assertion, which is important in UP.

The election’s biggest loser is clearly the BJP. It suffered a 3 percent-plus decline in its vote-share. And it forfeited advantages from the return of Kalyan Singh to its fold, and an alliance with the Kurmi-dominated Apna Dal.

In 2002, the BJP and its allies were at the Number 1 or Number spots in 238 seats. This time, the figure has fallen to just 124. The BJP’s own No. 1 & No. 2 spots have fallen from 197 to 120.

Evidently, the BJP’s recent electoral successes in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Punjab were transient. The BJP ran a dirty and divisive campaign in UP which used inflammatory communal material and a CD roundly condemned by the Election Commission. It focused on “minority appeasement”—the Sachar Committee, the Afzal hanging case, etc.

This strategy miserably failed. The tallest of BJP leaders, including Atal Behari Vajpayee, couldn’t rescue it from humiliation in his home state. Nor could Murli Manohar Joshi and Rajnath Singh ensure state president Kesri Nath Tripathi’s victory in Allahabad.

The BJP stands reduced in UP to its pre-Ayodhya avatar—a largely urban, Number 3 or 4 party in a predominantly rural state. Half its seats have come from large cities like Lucknow, Varanasi, Allahabad, Agra, Meerut, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Ghaziabad, Muzzafarnagar, Bareilly and Moradabad.

What do the results imply for the future? The BSP has gained handsomely in national stature. Yet, it faces major challenges in UP—in delivering goods to its constituency, in particular, the Dalits. This it can only do through serious social reform, including land reform, and by putting the redistribution agenda right on top while concentrating on law-and-order and responsible governance.

A major source of the BSP’s success lay in popular disgust with goonda raj under the SP. It will be judged severely on law-and-order. The Dalits expect the BSP to catalyse their substantive empowerment through land reform, education and employment.

UP can now return to the agenda of development with distributive justice—from which it has retreated, especially thanks to the SP’s cronyism, links with shady businessmen, and its contempt for social justice issues.

The BSP’s victory will influence the complexion of Indian politics—not least because it places equity and redistribtutive justice on the agenda amidst a dangerously misplaced euphoria over (unbalanced) growth.

The SP’s defeat will put the idea of a Third Front on the backburner for some time. The CPM lost heavily because of its tacit alliance with the SP. It must learn a lesson.

The BSP may not be able to replicate its UP success in many other states. But it can look forward to spreading its influence in some, including Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. It can best capitalise on these gains if it adopts a Left-of-Centre programme with emphasis on radical reform.

That’s the best way of building on the Ambedkar legacy.