INDIA’S “Dalit Queen,” a low-caste firebrand in power in the country’s most populous state since 2007, launched her re-election bid today promising to continue working for the down-trodden.
Crowds of supporters from India’s Dalits, formerly “untouchables” or the lowest social class, cheered and waved as she swooped down in a helicopter before appearing on stage clutching her trademark leather handbag.
Mayawati, who uses one name, rules deeply impoverished Uttar Pradesh where she has helped elevate the status of the low-castes, but is also accused of letting the state slide further into corruption and dysfunction.
She has also spent more than a billion dollars building giant statues of herself and her party symbol of an elephant, as well as memorials to past low-caste icons, in sprawling parks in Lucknow.
“It is the first time for this state that our government took up the cause of the Dalits and the deprived, as well as Muslims who were always neglected by successive regimes,” she said in an hour-long speech.Uttar Pradesh, which goes to the polls next Wednesday (February8) to elect a new state assembly, has a population of 200 million – about the size of Brazil’s – and some of the most entrenched poverty in the world.
It is influential in national politics as a power base – Mayawati once said she hoped to rule the nation – and is the home constituency of India’s dynastic Gandhi family, which has dominated post-independence India.
After taking to a stage that was adorned with her image, the 56-year-old, dressed smartly in beige, sat alone on a raised armchair on the front of the platform. Her ministers and local candidates stood discreetly at the back.
The crowd numbering at least 50,000, many of them families of low-caste farm labourers, packed into every available space in an open field in the town of Sitapur, about a two-hour drive northwest from Lucknow.
Many said the election of Mayawati as chief minister in 2007 had helped improve their lives as they were less often victims of persecution and harassment from higher castes.
Some described being forced to carry cow dung, or having their new clothes ripped by their resentful upper-class peers. Others said they were previously prevented from drinking from the same wells as higher castes or eating near them.
Few seemed bothered by the allegations of corruption that swirl around Mayawati, or the criticism of her extravagant spending on her statue parks.
In a speech focused largely on attacking her opponents, she promised 24-hour electricity to every home in her next term and said economic growth in Uttar Pradesh had increased during her reign.
