She insists that she's incorruptible, and that her vast wealth is simply gifts from her many supporters. She isn't given to modesty.
Mayawati has a 2,000-page autobiography and collections of diamond jewelry and homes. On her birthday, which she renamed Dalit "Self-Respect Day," officials line up to pay her fealty.
But her most obvious legacies are in Lucknow, the state capital, where she is spending $460 million four times the state health budget building a series of memorials celebrating Dalit heroes, her political mentor and herself. The monuments defy the state's poverty: triumphal buildings, dozens of statues and acres of pink sandstone.
Flanking one long marble walkway are 60 larger-than-life stone elephants, the symbol of her party. But if this makes her look like a coarse arriviste to India's establishment, millions of impoverished low-caste voters revel in seeing one of their own openly flaunt her power and wealth.
Just ask Ajay Kumar. A 43-year-old Dalit who lives in a tidy Lucknow neighborhood, he has pulled himself up into the lower middle class by selling life insurance.
He remembers when Dalits couldn't enter Hindu temples, and when the idea of a Dalit chief minister, the state's top position, was laughable. "When Mayawati came to power she ensured that Dalits also got their own statues, even bigger ones than the statues of the upper castes," he said.
"Now our statues dominate their statues." But can she become prime minister? She certainly has a chance.
While national politics have long been dominated by two parties the left-of-center Congress and the Hindu nationalist BJP neither is expected to be able to form a strong coalition. This has given regional and caste-based parties particularly Mayawati's additional power as they negotiate to join alliances that will form after the five phases of voting end May 13.
Even Mayawati's supporters admit her national support is probably not broad enough to become prime minister. But if the two main parties stumble badly she could head a much-discussed "Third Front.
" And she'll almost certainly play a major role helping form the next ruling coalition. Plus, some say, victory may not be her real objective.
Not this time. "The 2009 general elections are not the last general elections for Mayawati.
They are the first," said Shivam Vij, a journalist and longtime Mayawati watcher. "And if she doesn't become prime minister this year she'll say 'Look, they stopped a Dalit from succeeding...
Mayawati has a 2,000-page autobiography and collections of diamond jewelry and homes. On her birthday, which she renamed Dalit "Self-Respect Day," officials line up to pay her fealty.
But her most obvious legacies are in Lucknow, the state capital, where she is spending $460 million four times the state health budget building a series of memorials celebrating Dalit heroes, her political mentor and herself. The monuments defy the state's poverty: triumphal buildings, dozens of statues and acres of pink sandstone.
Flanking one long marble walkway are 60 larger-than-life stone elephants, the symbol of her party. But if this makes her look like a coarse arriviste to India's establishment, millions of impoverished low-caste voters revel in seeing one of their own openly flaunt her power and wealth.
Just ask Ajay Kumar. A 43-year-old Dalit who lives in a tidy Lucknow neighborhood, he has pulled himself up into the lower middle class by selling life insurance.
He remembers when Dalits couldn't enter Hindu temples, and when the idea of a Dalit chief minister, the state's top position, was laughable. "When Mayawati came to power she ensured that Dalits also got their own statues, even bigger ones than the statues of the upper castes," he said.
"Now our statues dominate their statues." But can she become prime minister? She certainly has a chance.
While national politics have long been dominated by two parties the left-of-center Congress and the Hindu nationalist BJP neither is expected to be able to form a strong coalition. This has given regional and caste-based parties particularly Mayawati's additional power as they negotiate to join alliances that will form after the five phases of voting end May 13.
Even Mayawati's supporters admit her national support is probably not broad enough to become prime minister. But if the two main parties stumble badly she could head a much-discussed "Third Front.
" And she'll almost certainly play a major role helping form the next ruling coalition. Plus, some say, victory may not be her real objective.
Not this time. "The 2009 general elections are not the last general elections for Mayawati.
They are the first," said Shivam Vij, a journalist and longtime Mayawati watcher. "And if she doesn't become prime minister this year she'll say 'Look, they stopped a Dalit from succeeding...
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) I really like how Ash even tried to get her dear Sasu to stick em' up!!! 
Its kinda disheartening as well, certainly it'll be doomsday if she gets the PM seat. 
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