Bulla and her simple dreams

Doyen of the downtrodden

Mayawati has celebrated 25 years of BSP in immoderate fashion. A 200 crore rally and a Rs 5 crore garland might be a big power show in a state which is much used to such obscene display of one's position but i'm sure Kashiram and Ambedkar both have their heads hung in utter and absolute disappointment seeing the 5 crore garland grace Maya's extravagant neck.

The woman who claims to be the doyen of dalits and feels such gestures need to be made in order to assess her identity of being a dalit has long lost any inkling of the ideology BSP was based upon.
Parks, over the top statues of dalit leaders including herself are not going to do a single dalit good. It may keep her in power for sometime to come but wont be beneficial in the long run.

Crores and crores of the taxpayer's money is being guttered in erecting her statues in every single town of UP. I do not quite understand how all this expenditure is going to benefit the cause of the dalit.

There are 2 ways of appeasing dalits:

One being the way of passing regulations, building more institutes for the minority, giving state sponsored scholarships, better medical facilities, rural electrification etc.

And the other is the completely wasteful but politically smart move of spending all this mad money on giving UP an unmistakeable dalit footprint. These parks, nagars, statues assert the dalit identity and help dalits feel some semblance of power and a better status in society but what is completely ignored is the fact that all this is not going to do a single dalit any good.

Because of the mayawati statue or ambedkar park a dalit from a village in western UP is not going to get a better job or a chance to study or electricity and water for his anyways miniature fields.

Heart is winning over the head and false pride is winning over pragmatic realism.

All this ostentatious display i am guessing is to show to the OBCs (Mulayam Yadav) that dalits have finally arrived on the political scene and by the sheer numbers can and will hold an important position in state politics but hasnt it been enough?
I think Mulayam gets the idea bloody well that he doesnt have a squat of control in this state and its no more upto him or his bunch of goons to decide what stays and what goes in the state of UP.

Mayawati should stop such stupid and obscene acts and concentrate on the task at hand. Even now every second day a newspaper report says 'A dalit girl raped', 'A dalit boy killed for marrying an upper caste girl'. The literacy in rural UP is abysmally low and while hordes of people from the hinterland reach Mumbai's shores in search of opportunity only to get beaten up and treated like third grade citizens, Mayawati is busy conducting rallies when she should be concerned about the curfew in Bareilly.

I remember being all hopeful and elated when she came to power mainly because she was a woman and i have believed women can change the very course of things when they decide to and because the state of UP deserved better leadership than Mr Mulayam Yadav, Mr Singh etc.

She has done immense good in areas such as infrastructure, in helping Noida to become one of the best towns in India to live in, developing greater noida and other satellite towns but a chief minister's job is much more than that. She needs to inspire leadership not only by power shows but by some tangible groundwork.