Recently, the BSP underwent perhaps a major shuffle in its organisation. Now there are two national coordinators who will take charge of regular review meetings of the party organisation and Mayawati, the president of the BSP, will be spared from reviewing the party organisation. Too late, but a welcome change in the internal working of the BSP. The four years of Modi government should have provided enough ammunition to the party to raise its ideological profile to a level where it could have directly fought on the basis of its core ideology. The party reorganisation is an important step, but the most radical step that the BSP could have taken it to assert its ideology.

The issues that are close to the BAMCEF/BSP ideology are already open to grab by the political parties. The issue of reservation in promotion, the issue of OBC and their census, the issue of rising communal and caste hatred, the exploitation of the SC and ST students, and the list can go on and on. The issues can be listed clearly and they are the grounds on which the party ideology can be loaded to destroy Brahminism/manuvad once and forever.

The inability of the BSP to sharpen its ideological edge when it is needed the most will eventually render its reshuffling ineffective.

It is good that Mayawati is now will have more time (?) to engage with other other political parties, but that engagement now has the constraint of time. The elections are just 12 months away and to create a viable coalition in the mix of parties is a time-consuming process. Coming together on the dais as anti-RSS/BJP coalition is great, but it is useless if it cannot be converted into an electoral strategy and in order to do that it needs time and patience with the maturity to share seats and hence power.

This is the greatest opportunity for the BSP to rise and scale heights if the time is controlled and the engagement with others is strategically worked out. Perhaps.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale

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