ABSTRACT
Kanchan Chandra (2004), in her Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India, attributes the BSP’s electoral success in UP to (a) greater representation accorded to the Scheduled Caste (SC) elites, especially those of the Chamar caste, who constitute the majority among the SCs in the state; and (b) a series of electoral alliances that the party entered into with the other political parties. She substantiates this argument using evidence drawn from the BSP’s electoral failure in Punjab and Karnataka. The BSP’s failure in Punjab’s electoral politics, she argues, was due to the greater representation accorded to Chamar elites, although Chamars constitute a minority among the SCs in Punjab. Apart from this undue representation of one particular caste, the limited representation given to non-Chamar elites among the SCs and the party’s failure to negotiate electoral alliances with other political parties led to its failure in the state. In Karnataka, contrary to the political situation either in UP or in Punjab, the SC elites enjoy a high degree of representation in the mainstream political parties. As a result, the SC voters, Chandra claims, had no incentive to vote for the BSP.
