If the history of Dalit politics is a signpost for such a dynamic, it is clear that ‘mere’ elections of Dalits through reserved seats have hardly made a difference to the social discrimination and economic dispossession of Dalits. On the contrary, political inclusion of Dalits has served well to push under the carpet the real plight and representation is seen as a misplaced standard to evaluate changing caste dynamics. In fact, the visible Dalit-political ‘mezzanine elites’ reduce, by default, violence against Dalits into exceptions and local aberrations. In the south of the Vindhyas, where the independent Dalit movement has strong roots, it has managed to raise more awareness around issues of recognition and redistribution; though this could never fructify into Dalits coming to power as an independent political formation. Much in contrast, in the north, where Dalits did manage to come to power through the BSP, they barely managed to articulate the social demands of education, land, access to resources and dignity. Political became a compromise to maintain social consensus. The BSP is struggling to find traction in the south because the nature of social demands are much more radical and structural than what a political formation like the BSP can manage to articulate as part of its electoral calculations. Dalit scholar and activist K Laxmi Narayana of the University of Hyderabad, in the course of a personal communication, referred to this pining for political power at the cost of everything else as if it was a ‘master key’ to all other deadlocks. One needs to keep a close watch on this equation, even as we re-evaluate Ambedkar’s strategy of suggesting the significance of political power for the Dalits—even as he chose to resign as a minister in Nehru’s cabinet in protest against the non-implementation of the Hindu Code Bill.