Has turning 60 sobered Mayawati or is it a pre-poll ploy?
January 15, 2015, when Mayawati turned 60, was a big surprise for all and sundry. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) "queen" - as she was referred to by her mentor and the party founder Kanshi Ram - walked into the lavishly-built party office at Lucknow's elite Mall Avenue to address her customary conference sans the glamour and grandeur.
Her signature diamond necklace studded with umpteen solitaires was missing (some felt it was hidden behind the high-neck chocolate brown coat she wore). The diamond danglers on her ears looked far less loud than usual.
Neither was there any 1,000-rupee notes garland that had once drawn much flak, nor was she surrounded by sycophant "durbaris" vying with each other to push their slice of birthday cake into her teeth. In fact, the cake that had been a part of each of her past birthday bashes, was conspicuous by its absence. Yes, she had made it a point to stick to her birthday favourite pink satin suit, that could be seen jutting out below the stylishly tailored coat.
Visibly, the only obsession she could not give up was a 40-minute monologue, she read out of neatly-typed eight pages, after which she chose to hurriedly step out - though not without telling the huge contingent of journalists, "There is sumptuous lunch laid out for you all."
Among those who were left behind to give scribes company was party general secretary Satish Misra, who continues to be credited as the torchbearer of her social engineering experiment which paid dividends by adding a chunk of upper caste votes to her captive Dalit vote bank, and forging her to power with a comfortable majority in 2007. She was stated to be in a rush to proceed to Delhi where greetings from who's who of the political class were awaiting her arrival.
However, her long speech laced with all the political ingredients, was clearly indicative of the obvious design behind her changed demeanour. With elections to the state Assembly due in the next 14 months, Mayawati seemed to be readying herself for the big show.
The sobered-down birthday celebrations, sans the usual extravaganza for which the BSP supremo was widely known, seemed like a part of a well-orchestrated pre-poll exercise.
For months she had maintained a rather low profile, arousing all kinds of speculation about her plans. Some political pundits attributed her silence to her demoralisation on account of the total rout suffered by her party at the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Narendra Modi's subsequent failures in Delhi and Bihar were seen as her morale boosters to once again give her the strength rise to the occasion in UP.
Having, apparently, done her home work well, she could clearly identify her potential rivals at the next battle of the ballot. And it was therefore, no wonder that she chose to train her guns pointedly at the two ruling parties - Samajwadi Party in UP (SP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre.
But more importantly, she used the birthday celebration to emphasise that she had rid herself of obsessions that earned her all the infamy and in turn unpopularity that eventually cost her the 2012 state Assembly election.
Sure enough that was what prompted her to not only declare that she was done with construction of memorials or raising her own statues, but also confess that it was also the end of the old practise of holding birthday celebrations to fill her coffers. "We have decided to observe this day as 'Jan Kalyankari Diwas' (People' Welfare Day)", she asserted, in a stark departure from her earlier blatant declaration of her birthdays in the past as "Arthik Sahyog Diwas" (Financial Support Day).
However, she made it a point to overcome that guilt too by making a subtle confession. "The opposition has often tried to malign my image by describing me as 'daulat ki beti' instead of 'Dalit ki beti' - and that too because my well-wishers and supporters often used to make generous donations, about which I have given detailed explanation to the Income Tax department", she said.
(Interestingly these "donations" and "gifts" of the order of some Rs 61 crores over a span of one year were legitimised by an Income Tax tribunal). "Now, that I have received enough financial assistance, I have told my supporters to stop making personal donations to me and advised them to send their contributions directly to the party fund", she went on to add.
Surely, Mayawati could not have found a better way to tell the world what a good girl she had turned into. And, so what if the motivating factor was the March 2017 state Assembly election.