Caste census will be INDIA’s rallying point in run up to 2024, but why BJP may not be overly anxious yet

Ruling party has learnt to counter conventional identity-based social justice politics as seen in its move to boost OBC representation & focus on delivering welfare schemes.

File photo of officials collecting data for caste-based census in Bihar | ANI

New Delhi: As the Bihar government’s caste survey data prompted the Opposition to call for the exercise to be scaled up at the national level, political experts foresee that the demand is likely to be amplified for converting it into a rallying point to mobilise the backward castes in the run up to the 2024 general election.

The BJP, however, will be no pushover as it has learnt to counter the conventional identity-based social justice politics as it has not just ramped up the representation of OBCs in politics, but also focused on delivering welfare through various schemes, the experts add.

However, whether through the Opposition’s push, or the BJP’s counter, the Bihar government’s move has signalled that caste will emerge as one of the primary sites of political contestation in the coming months, said Harish Wankedhe, who teaches at the JNU Centre for Political Studies.

“There is a political objective behind this particular survey. There has been a visible shift of the Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) in the BJP fold in the past and that needed to be halted. For that, you needed some empirical evidence,” Wankhede told ThePrint.

According to numbers released by the Bihar government, EBCs account for 36.01 percent of the state’s population, followed by the OBCs at 27.12 percent.

“When these numbers are contrasted with their participation in political or public institutions or in the economy, it will be obvious that they have a very minuscule presence. That can become a rallying point to mobilise the EBCs back to the social justice movement,” said Wankhede.

Professor Badri Narayan of the Govind Ballabh Pant Social Sciences Institute suggested a different perspective, saying that he does not believe that the such census or survey data will lead to any real consolidation in favour of the parties that claim to practise social justice politics.

“They are facing the BJP. Yes, there will be an aggressive mobilisation for increase of reservation in Bihar, and it may also impact politics in other states. But the BJP has given bigger representation to OBCs in politics. They have worked on identity-based social justice politics as well as development based social justice politics. The latest example is the Vishwakarma Yojana,” Narayan said.

The Vishwakarma Yojana is a Central scheme, with an initial outlay of Rs 13,000-Rs 15,000 crore, for traditional craftsmen and workers, primarily hailing from communities classified as OBCs. The scheme was launched on 17 September.

In the recently concluded special session of Parliament, Union Home Minister Amit Shah highlighted the BJP’s initiatives to augment the representation of OBCs in politics.

He pointed out that as much as 29 percent of the party’s MPs are OBCs, adding that the Union Council of Ministers has 29 members from this category. Out of the BJP’s MLAs across states, 27 percent are OBCs, he said.

The origins of the BJP’s attempts to win over the backward castes go back to the time of K.N. Govindacharya, who later fell out with the party leadership. The party cultivated a vote bank of non-dominant backward castes successfully in states like Uttar Pradesh and to some extent in Bihar, and also shared power with the EBCs.

A post-2019 general elections survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) captured the gains made by the party on this front. While in the 2009 Lok Sabha election, 22 percent of the OBCs are believed to have voted for the BJP and 42 percent for regional parties, in 2019, this number was 44 percent and 27 percent, respectively, the survey found.

Back to drawing board

A BJP functionary admitted that the development in Bihar will lead to calls for breaching the 50 percent cap for quotas set by the Supreme Court and push the party back to the drawing board.

“Our own government in Maharashtra is pushing for more OBC reservation. Though the BJP will not be the loser, it can create another version of Mandal politics. Its ramifications  can upset Hindutva politics. We will be more careful in drawing out strategies going ahead,” the BJP leader told ThePrint.

Experts also feel that the resonance of the Bihar caste survey data will be felt far beyond the borders of the state and can have a deep impact on the political discourse . The Congress has been pushing the slogan ‘Jitna Abadi, Utna Haq’ (representation according to share in population).

“See, even the BJP has never directly opposed any caste census. In fact, when the party was with the JD(U) in Bihar, it had backed the proposal. But it does realise that the political usage of the census data might go against the party since it could be used to challenge the control of the social elites over power,” said Wankhede.

D. Shyam Babu, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research who has conducted socio-economic surveys to map social changes, said it was obvious that there will be a growing clamour for caste census or surveys in other states now.

“One does not know immediately what its impact will be on poll outcomes as it depends on local dynamics at the constituency levels to a large extent. But the Bihar survey shows what we have known for a long time that a bulk of the population happen to be backward castes. So, we are going in a particular direction now. It also strengthens the demands of parties in the south such as DMK that the quota ceiling should be raised,” Babu said.

Narayan, however, suggested that the potential impact of the Bihar survey, or a scaled up version of it, was being overestimated, at least in terms of its impact on the BJP’s politics around the coalitions of non-dominant backward castes.

“See, caste census cannot be an aspiration in itself, but the gains around it can be an aspiration. But the moment that happens, there will be calls for quota within quota, or else the non-backward castes will feel that the dominant castes are cornering its benefits,” Narayan said, adding that caste surveys may also create “graded inequalities which refers to inequalities based on numbers not social culture but on numbers”.

(Edited by Tony Rai)