On the wall of his office, sculptor Shravan Prajapati has nailed a typed list of instructions for the statue of his most important client.
It must show her looking slim; make her neck look long; not make her chest look too pronounced; not include a double chin.
The specifications are for a 15m bronze monument of a woman in triumphal pose — Mayawati Kumari, a diminutive former schoolteacher whose supporters believe she may soon hold the balance of power in the world’s biggest democracy. So confident is she of victory in India’s general election that she has already commissioned Prajapati to start work on the enormous statue, which she plans to install in Delhi if she is named prime minister.
Before the results are announced, on Saturday, there is little certainty about which parties and individuals are ahead. But no one doubts the size of Mayawati’s long-term ambition or the crucial power-broking role her party will play as the new government is formed.
Chief minister of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati (52), already controls a region of 190-million people.
Born a Dalit (formerly an ”untouchable”) to poor parents in a Delhi slum, she has defied deep-rooted prejudice throughout her political career. Unmarried, she is one of the few Indian women to claim power in her own right, and not as a daughter or a widow.
Her supporters cast her as a symbol of hope for India’s 160-million Dalits and other low-caste, oppressed members of society. They compare her journey to the rise of Barack Obama.
India’s election is widely expected to end in messy compromise, with no one party able to command a majority. Uttar Pradesh has more seats than any other state in India’s 543-member Parliament, and Mayawati’s party, the Bahujan Samaj party (BSP — Party of the Majority of Society), is fielding more than 400 candidates nationwide.
If she wins sufficient seats, a conceivable scenario is that the BSP’s support could be so crucial to the Congress party or the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata as they scrabble together a coalition that the prime ministership could be offered to her.
Prajapati has already completed 18 statues of her, scattered across Uttar Pradesh with those of India’s two other most prominent Dalit leaders, BR Ambedkar, author of the Indian constitution, and Kanshi Ram, a fervent campaigner against the caste system.
His work is at the centre of a personality cult Mayawati has nurtured since becoming chief minister for the fourth time in 2007.
Commentators have remarked with growing disquiet on the combined cost of this and other self-aggrandising ventures — notably the 125-acre Ambedkar Park, paved entirely with highly polished, shimmering marble and dotted with giant elephant statues, the BSP’s symbol.
Mayawati’s popularity with India’s Dalits appears to be based more on her inspirational achievements than on her questionable track record in uplifting a community which remains profoundly downtrodden, despite 60-year-old legislation outlawing caste discrimination.
Mayawati is unembarrassed about flaunting the symbols of her success — her numerous mansions, cars, helicopters — and makes no attempt to pitch herself as one of the people.
Suspicion about her approach to money began during an earlier term in power, when she began building a giant shopping mall next to the Taj Mahal, a project later abandoned amid allegations of corruption.
India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has accused her of illegally acquiring property and bank deposits, charges she dismisses as politically motivated.
Her party has not published a manifesto, and her political vision is ill-defined. In the past she has forged alliances with parties across the ideological spectrum, and she is now tied to high-caste groups and movements from the centre and right.
Her behaviour has bemused many who were initially impressed. ”When she won in 2007, and I saw men crawling like worms at her feet, I was pleased that a woman should have got to this position of power,” Kulsum Talha, a Lucknow journalist, said. ”She is very, very capable — it’s just that she hasn’t used her talents well. All this building work is sheer madness in a poor state. The money could have been used to uplift Dalits in more practical ways.”
For many, her extravagance and ability to stockpile wealth are part of her appeal.
”The more she fortresses herself from her people, the more they cleave to her,” a report in the weekly news magazine Tehelka concluded this week. ”She is the symbol of what they can be. The more ostentatious her image, the greater their glee.” —