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206 pages

English

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This revised edition of Behenji, first published in 2008, examines Mayawati s record as chief minister since 2007. It pinpoints the reasons behind the BSP s poor performance in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, her return to the Dalit agenda prior to the 2012 assembly elections, as well as its surprising results. Also scrutinized are Mayawati s performance as a dalit leader and administrator, besides the rampant corruption and failure of her social engineering project during these years. Though no longer likely to become prime minister, the author sees Mayawati playing a pivotal role in UP, and, indeed, Indian politics post the 2014 elections.

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	09 mars 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184756500
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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AJOY BOSE
Behenji
The Political Biography of Mayawati

PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Introduction
SECTION ONE
1. Early Years
2. Kanshi Ram
3. Behenji and Saheb
4. The Quest for Political Power
5. A Doomed Alliance
6. Chief Minister Mayawati
7. The Second Coming
8. Third Time Unlucky
9. A Historic Triumph
10. The Prime Ministerial Dream
11. Return to the Dalit Agenda
12. Cycled Out of Power
SECTION TWO
13. Iron Lady Versus Transfer Rani
14. A Party with a Difference
15. Mayawati, Social Engineer
16. The Importance of Dalit Identity
17. A Rags-to-Riches Fairy Tale
18. Postscript
19. Does Mayawati Have a Future?
Illustrations
Note to the Revised Edition
Notes
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
BEHENJI
Ajoy Bose has been regarded, in recent years, as the leading expert on Mayawati and her Dalit politics. For nearly four decades, he has been associated with a wide range of media. He is at present a senior political columnist and television commentator, published in leading newspapers and magazines in India and abroad and appearing on major channels.
He began his journalistic career in the early 1970s with Patriot newspaper and Link magazine, going on to become Delhi correspondent of Sunday magazine, and in the 1980s started the Delhi edition of The Sunday Observer , India s first Sunday newspaper. In the 1990s he was with the Pioneer newspaper where he became the Executive Editor. He was also India correspondent of the Guardian , London from 1978 to 1996 and later the New Delhi representative for the Khaleej Times , Dubai. He has broadcast extensively on the BBC, Voice of America and Radio Nederlands. During the 1998 national elections he co-hosted along with Vinod Dua and Mark Tully the popular television poll programme Chunauv Chunauti for Sony television. In 2004, he produced a weekly foreign affairs television show, Global Challenges , on Doordarshan News.
Ajoy Bose has co-written two books, the highly acclaimed For Reasons of State: Delhi Under Emergency and Shah Commission Begins .

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
Behenji is an attempt to connect the intelligentsia with Mayawati a defence of her but far from being a whitewash. It is clear from Behenji that Mayawati can t be dismissed as a maverick version of a typical caste politician -Mark Tully, India Today
Few politicians are as controversial and exciting in India today as Ms Mayawati. And she now has a new feather in her cap by inspiring an intrepid journalist to write a critical but supportive political biography of hers in an Indian version of Boswell recording the deeds of Dr Johnson. The result is impressive because the story itself is out of the ordinary, and Ajoy Bose has tempered his enthusiasm with a dose of realism, if not scepticism -Nihal Singh, Tribune
Ajoy Bose s life of the iconic Dalit leader is neither hagiographic nor sensational. Rather, it examines how Mayawati s meteoric career and the course of identity politics in post-colonial India are tied up with evolving structures of parliamentary democracy, social justice and economic reform. What Bose does, and does with disarming sophistication, is analyse Mayawati as a creature of the forces of history and Indian party-politics - Telegraph (Kolkata)
Hats off to Ajoy Bose for skilfully tracing the trajectory of this woman from the by lanes of Delhi s down-market Inderpuri colony to the grandeur of the sprawling official residence of Uttar Pradesh s chief minister, from where she is now getting ready to knock at the portals of power in New Delhi - Hindustan Times
What makes Behenji worth your time is its judicious mix of political facts and private whispers - Mid-Day
Ajoy Bose has endeavoured to tell one of the most fascinating stories of our times. The senior journalist with a clever knack for political stories explains what makes Mayawati a unique leader in contemporary Indian politics - Rediff.com
A timely, unofficial political biography of this remarkable woman not just highly readable but informative as well - New Indian Express
Unauthorised biographies of living personalities have distinct advantages over authorised accounts. For one thing, they carry more credibility. Affectionate without being patronising and supportive without being adulatory, the book does not seek to make most of being an unauthorised biography - The Hindu
Preface to the Paperback Edition
The Mayawati saga has only grown bigger in the nine months since I finished writing the first edition of Behenji . The Uttar Pradesh chief minister has more than vindicated my prediction that she would dominate the national scene in the near future. Indeed, a series of events over the past few months has added considerable momentum to the Mayawati juggernaut. The idea that a Dalit leader could be India s next prime minister is no longer considered a ludicrous proposition. In fact, as the prospects of the major national parties in the coming general elections look increasingly uncertain, to say that Mayawati is one of the frontrunners for the top job is to state the obvious.
It is worthwhile to note some of the key developments that have taken place between the first and second editions of Behenji . The most important is the dramatic shift in the political equations between different parties. The ruling Congress party decided to forget its past suspicion and animosity towards the Samajwadi Party and forge an alliance with the latter. This move immediately soured relations between the Congress and Mayawati as the Samajwadi Party is her sworn enemy and main rival in Uttar Pradesh. At the same time the Samajwadi Party chose to turn its back on its old ally, the Left Front, by supporting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh s pet project, the Indo-US nuclear deal, a deal that was bitterly opposed by the leftists. These political somersaults resulted in the Left performing an amazing acrobatic feat of its own-reaching out to Mayawati as an ally and even suggesting that she could be the Third Front s prime ministerial candidate.
This massive boost from the Left-the only political group that had not entered into a political liaison with her-underscores the stature Mayawati had acquired in national politics.
The many controversies that erupted around the no-confidence motion in Lok Sabha after the Left Front withdrew support from the UPA government were widely regarded as a new low in Indian politics. The Congress won the numbers game but was badly stained by the unscrupulous methods it adopted to buy up MPs from across the political spectrum. At the same time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could hardly claim a moral victory, considering that so many of its own MPs sold out. This resulted in the sordid spectacle of BJP MPs brandishing currency notes inside the House in a last-minute gamble to derail the trust vote. As for the Left, they came out looking like poor losers caught in the mesh of their own ideological contradictions.
Despite the UPA s victory in the trust vote, it was Mayawati who emerged as the only real political beneficiary of the appalling drama. Her political legitimacy as a national leader increased substantially after Left stalwarts and an assortment of regional leaders directly or implicitly accepted her as a prime ministerial candidate. Almost overnight she jumped from a state to a national canvas. Moreover, her remarkable ability to wean away Samajwadi Party MPs and win over veteran political leaders including Deve Gowda and Ajit Singh-and this despite the financial and administrative might of the UPA regime and its corporate backers-won her grudging admiration from even those who supported the nuclear deal. In the end she failed to topple the government but this was attributed to the BJP s complete inability to keep its own flock together, rather than any lack of competence on Mayawati s part. Fighting almost singlehandedly, she had given the UPA regime the fright of its life. Despite her party s till-then limited geographical reach, it was the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) that took on the role of the real Opposition, not the BJP.
Fortune seems to be favouring the Dalit leader as the aftermath of the UPA government s victory on the nuclear deal has seen a sharp deterioration on the law and order front as well as in the economic situation in the country. There have been a series of terrorist attacks in various metros and towns, a wave of communal violence in a number of states, a resurgence of separatism in Kashmir and now the grim prospect of an economic slowdown because of global recession. For the Congress, it cannot be a more inopportune moment to fight the general elections, but it has no other option. Yet, the main Opposition, the BJP, does not seem poised to take full advantage of the Congress s woes either. The saffron party is still mired in its communal mindset, exemplified by its defence of the atrocities perpetrated on helpless Christians in Orissa by one of its Sangh associates, the Bajrang Dal.
Mayawati, on the other hand, is projecting herself as a leader for all communities. Among the main reasons the Congress joined hands with the Samajwadi Party was to consolidate their Muslim base against the BSP; but this has not played out according to calculation. The Samajwadi Party s decision to support the Indo-US nuclear deal is seen as a sell out by many Muslims for its association with the hated US President, George Bush, and his Middle East policies. They are thus likely to appreciate Mayawati s opposition to the deal. Moreover, Muslim anger at the manner in which their community is being targeted-even in Congress-ruled states like Delhi-by the police and administration in the wake of terrorist attacks could seriously harm the traditional Muslim base of both the Congress and the Samajwadi Party; and the BSP is emerging as the main political beneficiary. A consolidation of Muslim v