From low caste to high office in India

She smiles like a queen from almost every street corner here. Billboards congratulate her on her recent 52nd birthday, declaring her admirers’ wish that she live for “thousands of years.”

Her name is Mayawati, and she has a penchant for diamonds, helicopters and power, all of which are at her disposal as the leader of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state and home to the Taj Mahal. Elected chief minister in May, she reigns over a population more than half that of the United States.

But Mayawati, who goes by one name, has her eye on an even bigger prize: becoming prime minister of India, an ambition that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Mayawati is a Dalit, a member of the community formerly known as “untouchables,” the lowest of the low.

Her rise has shaken up Indian politics as the country gears up for national elections due by May 2009.

She won her present post by stitching together an unlikely coalition of supporters from opposite, and traditionally hostile, ends of the social spectrum: the Dalits and the Brahmins, the cream of India’s ancient caste system.

That it was Mayawati who united elements of the two sides seems even more improbable. She first rose to power as a demagogic advocate of caste-based politics, famously urging her fellow Dalits, who make up more than a fifth of Uttar Pradesh’s population, to beat higher-caste people with their shoes.

The strength of the Dalit vote was enough to propel her into the chief minister’s seat on three previous occasions, but always at the head of unstable coalition governments with other parties. Only one lasted longer than six months.

This time, her Bahujan Samaj (Majority Society) Party, or BSP, owns an outright majority in the state assembly. About three dozen of the BSP’s 206 state legislators are Brahmins, the people she once denounced as her enemies.

Mayawati is trying to export her winning formula, promoting the party in other state races and then in national elections. Most analysts do not consider the BSP in a position to win a general election, but it could hold the balance of power in a hung parliament, which would give Mayawati enormous influence and the scope to continue building her profile.

“Her party is a national party now. Mayawati is a recognizable figure in national politics,” said Ajay Mehra, director of a public-affairs think tank near New Delhi. “Her becoming prime minister certainly is within the realm of possibility. She’s trying to build herself toward that.

“But,” Mehra said, “there are many slips between the cup and the lip.”

Critics accuse her of being vain, egotistical and corrupt, a woman more likely to spend state funds on herself than on the downtrodden supporters who helped elect her. Plump and combative, she routinely dismisses such criticism by saying she is being attacked for being “a Dalit’s daughter.”

Last year, the former schoolteacher and daughter of a clerk declared her personal wealth to be more than $13 million, including $250,000 in jewelry. She flies around in a helicopter and recently ordered a fleet of armored cars. An Indian news channel reported in January that she had hired an Israeli security firm to train the commandos who protect her, which, along with other measures to enhance her personal safety, will cost the state $6 million a year.

In a recent interview with the newsmagazine India Today, she said that if the central government could arrange special protections for other top leaders, “then why not for a Dalit’s daughter? I am a hard-working girl.”

Others suspect that her riches derive from something other than just hard work. A few years ago, Mayawati came under investigation in a corruption scandal that involved a proposed development project near the Taj Mahal that she had approved during a previous stint as chief minister. Millions of dollars earmarked for the project are unaccounted for. But the investigation has sputtered, some say because of political pressure.

“She’s always claimed that all the money she has has been given by her supporters, which amounts to hundreds of millions” of rupees, Mehra said. But many Dalits, who have historically been assigned the most menial and worst-paid jobs in Indian society, earn less than a dollar a day.

Whether they resent Mayawati’s extravagance is difficult to say. Some see the pageantry and trappings of power and wealth as her due, a sign that she belongs in the big league. Her political triumphs are a powerful symbol of empowerment for many Dalits, as are her publicly advertised ambitions for even higher office.

“That endears her in the eyes of her voters, because this is a community that has historically been denied power. When she says, ‘I want to be prime minister,’ she makes a larger social statement on behalf of millions and millions of people,” said Yogendra Yadav of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies.

Uttar Pradesh has been the breeding ground of many of India’s prime ministers since the country’s independence in 1947. The key for Mayawati is to hold on to her traditional base of Dalit voters, now that she has broadened the BSP to include upper-caste members.

Some Dalits feel betrayed and angry that a party founded on behalf of their community has installed Brahmins in positions of leadership.

“How can these people who mistreated us help us now? I doubt even 25% of Brahmins want to do anything to uplift Dalits,” activist Pushpa Valmiki said.

Critics say that, even in her previous short-lived governments, Mayawati failed to do much to help Dalits.

Aides to Mayawati have countered such criticism with a booklet listing the achievements of her government, including the expansion of a multimillion-dollar development and welfare scheme once targeting Dalit-majority villages but now available to all. Her office declined requests for an interview.

Widening her appeal will be crucial if Mayawati hopes to storm the national stage and take votes from more established groups, such as the ruling Congress Party and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

This means that a heavily pro-Dalit agenda in Uttar Pradesh is no more likely now, even with a legislative majority, than it was during her previous shaky coalition governments, analysts say.

“In terms of any transformative agenda, any redistributive agenda, making any change for the poor and downtrodden whom she purports to represent, I don’t think she’ll do much,” Yadav said.

What she can do to reward loyalists is to exercise the powerful spoils system that permeates Indian politics. A few months after her election, her government fired 18,000 police officers hired by her predecessor, a bitter rival. Few expect replacements to be recruited impartially.

To her critics, Mayawati has elevated the politics of personality and power above the norm, surrounding herself with sycophants who fawn over her as their behenji, or “honored sister.”

Even veteran political observers were surprised and appalled by television footage showing officials, including the state police chief, hand-feeding Mayawati morsels of the 52-kilogram (115-pound) cake that was ordered up for her 52nd birthday on Jan. 15. Short and squat, Mayawati seemed to purr like a cat, albeit one wearing a diamond necklace with matching earrings. The last time she celebrated her birthday as chief minister, in 2003, she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money on a party for herself and called it “self-respect day.”

“My birthday is celebrated in a way that no other leader’s is,” she boasted in the magazine interview. “People donate money in my name. My birthday will be celebrated all over India, in each state. And on this day, we will help widows, the handicapped and the poor.”

Sonu Devi is still waiting for that to happen.

Devi, 23, lives in the impoverished village of Gorakhpuri Bangla, not far from Mayawati’s lavishly appointed personal and official homes here in Lucknow, the state capital. Children run around barefoot in the chilly winter, avoiding heaps of cow dung as they dart between mud-and-thatch homes. There is no electricity or running water.

A mother of two, Devi belongs to the same Dalit group as Mayawati: the Chamars, or leather workers. She, too, knows discrimination. The Dalits of her village dare not use the water pumps of higher-caste residents, who regard the likes of her as unclean, and she has been harassed for riding a bicycle, which they consider above her station.

Like 80% of Dalits in last May’s state election, Devi voted for Mayawati. “She’s trying, we know, but the fact remains that [benefits are] not coming down to our level,” Devi said.

Although she choppers from place to place in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati has never visited Gorakhpuri Bangla, about half an hour’s drive from central Lucknow. If she did, Devi said, “I’d point out all my problems to her -- that I have no income, I have no house. What she’d do, I can’t say.

“But if she works for us, we’ll vote for her in the next election.”

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henry.chu@latimes.com