GORAKHPUR (India): The final round of polling in India's most populous state began on Tuesday, with voters saying they are tired of feeling their only choice is to vote for people seen as sympathetic to their caste and religion.
A party's policies are not important in the polls to run the assembly of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 170 million people and plagued by crime, poor healthcare and crumbling infrastructure.
What is likely to determine the outcome of these elections is who is most successful in attracting large chunks of votes from castes and religious communities.
“Caste feeling is prevalent, although mostly in rural areas,” said Amarnath Singh, a civil servant. “But all we want is development.”
In an unexpected alliance, some Brahmins and most Dalits -- those born respectively into the very top and bottom of the caste hierarchy -- are uniting behind the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is expected to win the most seats in this election. The party's Dalit leader, Mayawati, has fielded many Brahmin candidates and is favourite to become chief minister.
Somewhere in the middle sits the Yadav caste, who have prospered under the incumbent Samajwadi Party ruled by Mulayam Singh Yadav, sometimes to the resentment of other groups.
Many Dalits feel it is their turn in the sun.
Yet many of those lining up behind Mayawati do not expect to get much more than the vicarious pleasure of having one of their own in power, said political analyst Yogendra Yadav from New Delhi's Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
“Mayawati is known to rule somewhat ruthlessly and to not pay much attention to Dalit causes,” he said of the politician who has been chief minister three times before.
“Dalits will say in any case that the image of her being in power is what matters.”
Media surveys are predicting that no one will win a clear majority, and that the BSP will end up heading an alliance with other parties in the local assembly.
TIRED WITH VOTEBANK POLITICS: The city of Gorakhpur is one of the places voting in the final phase of the month-long, seven-stage elections.
Voters said they felt the only political choices being offered to them were caste-based, when what they really wanted were jobs, electricity, water, roads and less crime.
“The BJP likes only Hindus. It doesn't pay any attention to Muslims,” said Ahamad Moazzam, referring to the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that looks likely to emerge as the second or third strongest party.
But that's not a problem for Mohan Singh, a Hindu from the Sindhi community. His priority was that the Samajwadi Party is not returned to power.
“They prefer only Yadavs,” he said.
Crime is another major issue, and some voters said they would vote for the party they saw as least corrupt.
According to a study by Election Watch, a non-government watchdog, 162 of the 934 contestants in the final phase of voting are facing criminal charges.
Uttar Pradesh stretches along the plains of the Ganges, from the Taj Mahal city of Agra in the west to Varanasi in the east, and is one of the most crowded regions on Earth.
It is roughly the size of the United Kingdom, yet only five nations, including India itself, have a higher population.
When the results are announced on May 11, some pundits will be looking for hints about the political fortunes of the two major national parties -- Congress, which heads India's coalition government but has little power in Uttar Pradesh, and the BJP, the main opposition.
But other analysts say local politics are so peculiar to each state that no single state works reliably as a crystal ball.—Reuters
