Caste has taken centre stage ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections, with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar making the findings of the state’s caste survey public.
The survey report, which was conducted in two phases—first in January this year and then in April-May—has sent politics in India into a tizzy with people scrambling to understand what impact the move will have on the upcoming elections.
The survey results were long-awaited and came on unsurprising lines. It was expected to split voting blocs and political parties. It was predicted to fuel demands for similar state-based caste surveys across India. What wasn’t scripted however was PM Narendra Modi’s counterattack. It was difficult to see what he was batting for —minorities or Hindu votes. He even invoked Manmohan Singh’s infamous inclusive growth line to prove his point against Rahul Gandhi’s Jitni Aabadi Utna Haq slogan.
The politics and anxieties that Nitish Kumar’s caste survey unboxed have been unceasing. That is why it is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
Also read: Bihar census identified the privileged and under-privileged castes. Go national now
Stoking resentment
The survey was approved by the Bihar cabinet in June 2022. Its findings were made public on Monday.
As per the statewide survey, 36.01 per cent of the population belongs to the extremely backward classes and 27.13 per cent were from other backward classes. Cumulatively, they constitute 63 per cent of the state’s 13 crore population.. Of this, Yadavs formed a little over 14 per cent.
Both Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal see this as an opportunity to further their political capital and put them ahead in next year’s Lok Sabha elections and the 2025 Bihar assembly elections.
Hailing the survey, RJD leader and Bihar deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav called it a “milestone” that will “ensure the deprived sections get their due”. JD(U) state president Umesh Singh Kushwaha said the findings will strengthen the path of social justice in the state.
Even as the central BJP leadership called the survey a ploy to divide the country along caste lines, Bihar BJP state president Samrat Chaudhary stated that the party was not against caste survey and had in fact repeatedly demanded the government to make the findings public.
He pointed out that while the caste data has been made public, data related to the economic situation has not. And that the party will continue to push for it to be made public.
However, the most significant reaction came from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While addressing an election rally in Gwalior on Monday, the PM hit out at the Opposition.
“These are projects of more than Rs 19,000 crore which have been announced in one day; this is a result of our double-engine government. The Opposition, however, has been playing with the emotions of the poor and dividing society on caste lines. They are committing this sin even now,” Modi said.
A day later, while addressing a rally in Jagdalpur in poll-bound Chhattisgarh, Modi slammed Congress over Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Jitni Aabadi, Utna Haq’ (the greater the population, the greater the right (to reservation)) remark.
“Since yesterday, Congress leaders have been saying ‘jitni aabadi utna haq‘… I was wondering what the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be thinking. He used to say that the minority has the first right to the country’s resources… But now Congress is saying that the population of the community will decide who will have the first right to the country’s resources,” he said.
By rejecting the slogan, as ThePrint’s political editor DK Singh points out in his column, Modi is “showing an inclination to return to his party’s original electoral strategy centred around stoking latent resentment of non-dominant communities—say, for instance, non-Yadav OBCs in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, non-Jats in Haryana, non-Marathas in Maharashtra or non-tribals in Jharkhand—against dominant ones to mobilise the former in its favour.”
Contradictions abound
The BJP’s response to the survey has been rife with contradictions. While it calls the survey a ploy to divide, it has highlighted the welfare measures taken by the party for the OBC community and the fact that the current Modi government has 27 ministers from the community, five of whom are in the Cabinet. The party has also been showcasing PM Modi’s OBC identity as a sign of BJP empowering the community.
But its allies are not happy with this hot and cold response. Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, NISHAD party, Apna Dal (Sonelal) and Hindustani Awam Morcha Secular have reiterated their demand for a nationwide caste census. The Narendra Modi government had previously told the Supreme Court that the 2021 population census is not the ideal instrument for the collection of details on caste.
In this noise, Opposition leaders have brought caste to the centre stage ahead of the Lok Sabha elections by converting it into a national demand and mobilising the backward castes. However, the Congress has still not made public the findings of a similar survey conducted in Karnataka in 2015. This will give enough ammunition to the BJP to target the party ahead of the elections.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)