Congress is doing OBC politics half-heartedly. But I want it to win

Congress' defeat in the Hindi belt will be disastrous for the caste census. There will be no incentive for the party to continue with its demand.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses a public meeting, in Kanker, Chhattisgarh, on 28 October 2023 | PTI

Congress is the new pro-OBC Lohiaite Socialist Party, at least in terms of the rhetoric and utterances of its top leaders. The party’s OBC-centric uproar has become louder ahead of crucial assembly elections in five states in November. Among these states are Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which fall in the politically crucial Hindi-speaking belt.

This OBC-related demagogy is a matter of grave concern for me. I, from the core of my heart, want the Congress to win these states. Similarly, I wish that the BJP performs well in Telangana, as Home Minister Amit Shah has promised an OBC chief minister if the party sweeps the assembly polls there.

But the stakes are higher as far as the Congress is concerned. If the party tastes defeat in these states, OBC politics, in all probability, will take a back seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. That would be a disaster because OBCs are at the centre of national discourse after a long while.

Assessing ramifications

I foresee three implications of the Congress losing all or even two out of three Hindi states.

One, the old Savarna elites of the Congress will hit back at Rahul Gandhi and his socialist advisers and force the party to go back to the drawing board to change its social policy. The Congress leadership, in all probability, will be forced to abandon its OBC outreach, and leaders from the community will be sidelined. In the Raipur conclave earlier this year, Congress had decided to give 50 per cent of party positions to the SCs, STs, and OBCs. This policy will certainly go for a toss if the Congress loses assembly elections.

Two, an important casualty can be the demand for the caste census. The Congress has been pitching for it intensely; if it fails to translate into electoral dividends for the party and the OBCs are not galvanised toward the party, there will be no incentive for it to continue with its caste census demand. What will the Congress gain by raising a demand that certainly antagonises the ‘upper caste’ and, at the same time, fails to garner OBC votes?

Three, the pressure on the BJP to address OBC concerns, even if superficially, will ease. The party will go back to its politics of appeasing dominant castes – just as it did before the 2019 elections in the form of an Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota for the non-SC, ST, and OBC category (the upper caste, that is). Under Narendra Modi, the BJP did some tangible things for the OBCs. The Union government’s decision to make the National Commission for Backward Classes a constitutional body through a constitutional amendment, was one of the most important decisions of the Modi government.

Implementing OBC reservations in medical and dental colleges, and at the level of associate professor and professor, and reserving seats for OBCs in Navodaya Vidyalaya and Sainik schools were also significant moves. Inducting 27 OBC ministers into the Union Council was unprecedented. Prime Minister Modi has, on numerous occasions, highlighted his OBC identity, and the party harps on it. Modi has claimed that Congress hates him because he rose to become PM despite the limitations that his OBC identity presented. Will these things continue if OBC politics takes a back seat?

I am apprehensive that the BJP will lose its OBC outreach motive if its principal opposition fails in its endeavour to get OBC votes.

I am more worried because of the earlier track record of the Congress when it was in power at the Centre. Historically, Congress had a power arithmetic that political scientist Paul R Brass rightly terms as the coalition of extremes. The Congress, even in the pre-Independence days, had Brahmins at the top, with Muslims and former untouchable groups making up the big bottom. Cobbling together three social groups who are apart vertically and horizontally is at the core of Congress politics.

This coalition of extremes functioned well for the Congress till the late 1960s when the intermediate and backward castes were asserting themselves, and that was the reason for the coalition of non-Congress governments in as many as nine states. It was becoming more and more obvious that in the Congress scheme of things, the middle castes would not get their due share in power. That is the reason Congress opposed OBC reservation in central government jobs till 1990.

The leader of the opposition, Rajiv Gandhi, delivered his long speech in the Lok Sabha on 6 September 1990, opposing former Prime Minister VP Singh’s move to implement the Mandal Commission Report. For the very reason of its social coalition, the Congress, till recently, was opposed to the idea of caste enumeration. It scuttled the caste census in 2011 by not including the caste question in the decennial census and then, after clubbing it with the Below Poverty Line (BPL) survey and renaming it as the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC). That proved to be a disaster. We don’t have any data on the 2011 SECC, even after the government spent Rs 4,893 crore on that exercise.

As I have written earlier, at the time of going to the election in 2014, the Manmohan Singh Cabinet had only one OBC minister, Veerappa Moily.

A tactical move

Things changed for the Congress vis-a-vis OBCs in 2014 when the upper caste in the north changed its allegiance and shifted toward the BJP. According to the CSDS Election Study in 2014, in the all-crucial Uttar Pradesh, BJP got more than 70 per cent of the Brahmin, Thakur and Vaishya votes.  This shift dismantled the social coalition of the Congress as its top core evaporated. The trend continued in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2022 UP assembly elections. The Congress is now sensing that the upper caste is not going to come back to it in the near future, so in desperation, it is trying to forge a new social coalition.

This shift stems from a desperate situation and thus lacks any convictions or commitment on the part of the Congress party. It’s a tactical move, and the party structure is not on board. I have apprehension that in the three northern states going to the elections, the Congress will fail miserably in giving proper representation to the OBCs in ticket distribution. It may lag the BJP in giving tickets to the OBCs. We should revisit this aspect when all the candidates are announced. As Congress is doing OBC politics half-heartedly, it may falter at any point. At the tipping point, the party may conclude that OBCs are unreliable and unpredictable and decide against indulging in OBC-focused politics.

The Congress is taking a significant risk this time, as it hasn’t made substantial on-ground efforts with the OBCs. It’s unable to highlight any major policy achievements from the governments in Rajasthan or Chattisgarh. See Congress’ short-lived Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh, which failed to implement the 27 per cent OBC quota, leaving it as a mere announcement. The Congress isn’t even pitching an OBC leader as its potential CM candidate in the state, especially when the BJP has an OBC figure in the form of Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

So, it certainly risks losing upper-caste support. And with that, support from media and opinion makers will also go. The OBCs will still not be galvanised.

I am keeping my fingers crossed and praying that the Congress wins. That is very crucial for OBC-centric politics. After all, here we are talking about more than 52 per cent of India’s population.

Dilip Mandal is the former managing editor of India Today Hindi Magazine, and has authored books on media and sociology. He tweets @Profdilipmandal. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti & Ratan Priya)