— ✍️Dr. Pankaj Tambe
The Bahujan Samaj Party enters the approach to the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly election at a critical juncture. The party that formed a majority government in 2007 was reduced to one Assembly seat and 12.88 per cent of the vote in 2022. In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, it received approximately 9.4 per cent of the vote in Uttar Pradesh but failed to win a seat. These figures reveal both a crisis and a possibility: the BSP has lost electoral viability, but it has not yet lost its entire social base.
The question, therefore, is not whether Bahujan politics remains relevant. Social inequality, caste discrimination, unemployment, educational exclusion and insecurity have ensured its continuing relevance. The real question is whether the BSP can once again transform social discontent into organized political confidence.
For this, the party must revisit Kanshi Ram—not merely as an icon whose image appears on a platform, but as an organizer whose methods created a movement.
Kanshi Ram understood that communities historically excluded from power could not be mobilized through occasional speeches delivered from distant stages. They had to be contacted, educated and organized through sustained physical presence.
His cycle journeys and extensive tours were therefore not publicity exercises. The bicycle represented a particular conception of democratic politics: inexpensive, accessible and close to the people. It allowed the organizer to enter villages, Dalit settlements, working-class neighbourhoods and small towns that conventional political campaigns often ignored.
The political significance of the cycle lay in its slowness. A motorcade passes through a village; a cycle journey stops there. The leader meets residents, hears their complaints, identifies potential organizers and leaves behind a network of contacts. The journey turns geography into organization.
Kanshi Ram’s politics was built on travel circuits—visiting a place, creating a local unit and returning to determine whether the organization had survived. Repetition communicated seriousness. People gradually developed confidence that the movement would not disappear after collecting their votes.
This was one of the foundations of the organizational progression from BAMCEF to DS-4 and eventually the BSP. Electoral success came at the end of political education, cadre formation, small contributions and the creation of local leadership—not at the beginning.
One-to-one contact affects voters at a level that mass communication rarely reaches. A rally can generate excitement for a few hours and a social-media post may attract immediate attention, but a personal encounter can remain in a voter’s memory for years.
The reason is psychological as much as political. When a leader enters a person’s locality, listens without interruption and acknowledges a lived experience of discrimination, unemployment or administrative neglect, the voter experiences recognition. For communities that have historically been ignored or spoken for by others, being heard by a political leader becomes an act of dignity.
Such meetings can create what may be called an emotional memory of politics. A voter may forget the details of a speech, but is likely to remember that a leader sat beside them, listened to their family’s difficulties or returned after making a commitment. The leader is no longer perceived as a distant public figure; he becomes connected with a personal story.
This relationship generates trust through reciprocity. The voter feels: “The leader came to us, listened to us and treated us with respect; therefore, we should stand with the movement.” Such loyalty is stronger than support produced by advertisements because it is grounded in an experience rather than a slogan.
Repeated contact strengthens this emotional bond. The first visit creates curiosity; the second produces recognition; the third can establish trust. When local workers continue visiting after the leader has departed, the voter begins to see the party as a permanent social presence rather than a temporary election machine.
This also produces political self-confidence. Marginalized voters sometimes hesitate to declare their support for a party they believe cannot win. But when they see leaders repeatedly visiting their area, local committees becoming active and neighbours openly participating, private sympathy turns into collective confidence. The voter no longer thinks, “My vote will be wasted,” but begins to believe, “People like us are coming together again.”
One-to-one communication also creates a sense of moral commitment. A voter personally contacted by a leader or trusted local worker is more likely to discuss the party within the family, defend it in neighbourhood conversations and turn out on polling day. Such a voter is no longer merely a passive recipient of campaign messages; he or she becomes an informal messenger of the movement.
However, the emotional benefit can quickly become distrust if promises are not followed up. Personal contact raises expectations. Each visit should therefore be recorded, grievances documented and local workers assigned to communicate what action was taken. Listening without follow-up can deepen cynicism; listening followed by visible action can create lasting political loyalty.
Indian campaigning has become increasingly centralized and technologically intensive. Parties communicate through television, social media, WhatsApp groups, targeted videos and professionally managed rallies. These instruments transmit information quickly, but they cannot automatically create trust.
For marginalized voters, political confidence does not come only from hearing that a party may win. It comes from knowing that the party is present in their locality, understands their problems and will support them when they face discrimination, violence or denial of welfare benefits.
One-to-one contact can change the voter’s political calculations in three ways.
First, it reduces isolation. A voter who privately supports a party may hesitate to express that preference if the organization appears weak. Visible local activity demonstrates that the voter is not alone.
Second, personal contact allows listening to replace one-way propaganda. It reveals whether people are concerned about reservation, unemployment, scholarships, inflation, land disputes, police action or government schools.
Third, repeated interaction signals permanence. In a competitive electoral system, voters often desert a preferred party when they believe it cannot win. Local presence can reverse this perception by producing evidence of organizational recovery.
A party becomes viable when enough voters believe that enough other voters are also returning to it. Ground-level mobilization is therefore not merely a method of collecting votes; it is a method of producing collective confidence.
Akash Anand could translate Kanshi Ram’s organizational method into a contemporary form by undertaking an extensive motorcycle journey across Uttar Pradesh.
The motorcycle would not carry precisely the same symbolism as Kanshi Ram’s bicycle, but it could combine accessibility with the speed required to cover India’s most populous State. Such a journey should not become a continuous procession of large rallies. If reduced to flags, loudspeakers, convoys and photographs, it would reproduce conventional campaign politics.
Instead, the proposed yatra should follow a disciplined structure. Akash Anand could hold small meetings in villages, Dalit bastis, backward-caste settlements, minority neighbourhoods, university campuses and industrial areas. Each stop should include a public interaction, a meeting with local workers and a listening session with young people, women, employees, farmers and small entrepreneurs.
The most politically valuable moments may not occur on the main stage. They may occur when Anand visits the house of a student whose scholarship has been delayed, meets a family affected by caste violence, sits with unemployed graduates or listens to sanitation workers. Such encounters would humanize the leadership while demonstrating that Bahujan politics begins with the everyday experience of citizens.
The yatra should eventually reach all 403 Assembly constituencies through carefully planned regional phases. Its success should not be measured by kilometres travelled or crowds photographed. The relevant indicators would be the number of booth committees established, grievances documented, volunteers enrolled, women and young people included, and follow-up meetings completed.
Every district visit must generate an organizational record: Who attended? What were the principal issues? Which workers accepted responsibility? Was the party unit functioning three months later? Without follow-up, the yatra would remain an event; with it, the journey could become an institution-building exercise.
The BSP’s difficulty is not simply the absence of popular leaders. It is the weakening of the organizational layer connecting the central leadership with ordinary voters.
Kanshi Ram developed a network of teachers, government employees, students, social activists and local intellectuals who could explain the movement’s objectives in everyday language. They did not merely distribute campaign material; they produced Bahujan political consciousness.
This middle layer must be reconstructed. A statewide yatra can identify new organizers, but they must receive training, defined responsibilities and opportunities for advancement. Young supporters will not remain active if their only function is to attend rallies or circulate posts on social media. They require a ladder of political responsibility.
The BSP also needs two-way communication. Local workers must carry public grievances upward, while the leadership must report what action was taken. Constituency-level grievance registers, legal-support networks and regular public meetings could restore the party’s identity as a protective political institution.
This is especially important because the BSP faces competition for Dalit votes from several directions. The BJP offers welfare, representation and ideological incorporation. The SP-Congress alliance presents itself as the principal electoral vehicle for defeating the BJP. Chandrashekhar Azad’s victory in Nagina has demonstrated the appeal of a visible and locally embedded form of Dalit leadership.
The BSP cannot answer these challenges merely by invoking its past. It must demonstrate its contemporary usefulness.
The idea of a Bahujan majority was never a demographic fact waiting to be discovered. It was a political coalition that had to be constructed. Dalits, most backward classes, minorities, workers and other marginalized communities do not automatically vote together. They must be connected through a common programme while their distinct grievances are acknowledged.
The proposed yatra should therefore be accompanied by a concise “Bahujan Social Justice Charter.” It could include protection of reservation, time-bound recruitment against backlog vacancies, scholarships and affordable education, caste-sensitive policing, land and housing rights, representation in government contracts, and opportunities for young entrepreneurs.
Such a programme would allow the BSP to move beyond symbolic remembrance and demonstrate how political power would improve everyday life.
At the same time, social coalition-building cannot be reduced to distributing tickets among caste notables. Kanshi Ram sought to convert communities into organized political actors. A coalition assembled only during candidate selection remains vulnerable to desertion. A coalition built through booth committees, shared struggles and regular consultation can survive an election.
Mayawati remains indispensable to the BSP because she represents continuity and the memory of a government in which Dalit political authority became visible at the highest level. Akash Anand’s role need not be constructed in opposition to that legacy. It can be presented as its intergenerational extension: Mayawati providing authority and administrative experience, and Akash Anand undertaking organizational reconstruction among a younger electorate.
The BSP has already indicated its preference for a janata ka gathbandhan—an alliance of people built through booth-level meetings and local interactions. The proposed bike yatra could provide this strategy with a recognizable statewide framework.
But revival cannot be proclaimed from Lucknow. Nor can it be manufactured entirely on social media. It must be built constituency by constituency, booth by booth and household by household.
The lesson of Kanshi Ram’s cycle is ultimately straightforward: before asking people to demonstrate faith in a political organization, the organization must demonstrate its presence among the people. The road to 2027 may therefore begin with a young leader travelling through Uttar Pradesh, listening to those who feel politically abandoned and rebuilding their confidence through repeated contact.
The motorcycle can travel faster than Kanshi Ram’s bicycle. The challenge for Akash Anand will be to preserve the bicycle’s political ethic: patience, accessibility, education, accountability and organization. Only then can a journey across Uttar Pradesh become more than an election campaign—and mark the reconstruction of the BSP as a movement-party.
- Dr. Pankaj Tambe is an Ambedkarite thinker, writer, and researcher based in Nagpur, Maharashtra. His work focuses on the thought of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, social justice, equality, democracy, constitutional values, and the struggle against caste discrimination.
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