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A backgrounder

Rahul Verma, Oct 15, 2023: The Times of India

The first wave of Lohiaite politics in the 1960s and 1970s led to formation of many state-level parties relying on mobilising a large chunk of OBC population. The acceptance of Mandal Commission recommendations in 1989 led to the second wave, which witnessed a fragmentation of this block with the rise of new parties that exclusively mobilise non-dominant OBC castes. The BJP’s victory ascendance since 2014 is not just due to greater consolidation of the upper castes, but also because of the deep inroads among the lower castes, especially among the OBCs. Data from National Election Studies (NES) conducted by Lokniti-CSDS indicates that the party’s vote share among OBCs doubled between 2009 and 2019 – it received approximately 20% OBC votes in the 2009 general elections, which increased to 44% in the 2019 elections. These inroads came at the cost of both the Congress and state-level parties.

The data (table on right) shows that the BJP’s gains have an interesting pattern — between 2009 and 2014, the gains were more among the lower OBCs, and between 2014 and 2019, it was among upper OBCs. In bipolar states in which the Congress and the BJP are main competitors, the gap between two parties has widened considerably since 2009. BJP received nearly half of the OBC votes in 2004 and 2009 elections, and the Congress won approximately 40%. The OBC vote for BJP in 2014 and 2019 elections increased to nearly two-thirds, while it declined for the Congress to roughly one-fourth in these states.

Perhaps this declining OBC support base prompted the Congress leadership to take an aggressive stand on the caste census issue. Will it gain from this move? The Congress must realise that it has always been at the margins of OBC politics since Independence, and mere slogans cannot change this. It has to make concrete efforts in this direction to see any gains. Those who know the history of OBC politics will remember that the party never acted on the recommendations of the Kaka Kalelkar Commission or the Mandal Commission. The Congress social coalition in most states during this period comprised upper castes, Dalits and Muslims. The socialist parties of the 1960s, and its later avatars have mobilised the backward castes since then. In 2006, the Congress made yet another effort to woo backward castes when Arjun Singh as HRD minister extended 27% reservation for OBCs in higher educational institutions. By then it was too little and too late for the party. It seems that the party is extrapolating a national model from its recent success in Karnataka assembly elections that largely relied on rallying the backward castes and poor in favour of the party.

Can the BJP withstand the emerging challenge on the caste question? Few years ago, it was in favour of a caste census, but it has been hesitant on this question after constituting Justice Rohini Commission in 2017 to look into sub-categorisation of OBC quota. There is no doubt that some communities among OBCs and Dalits have benefited more from reservations, and some of them like Yadavs and Jatavs in north India have acquired greater political power. And, the BJP reaped electoral benefits in the past decade by creating a wedge between the dominant and non-dominant sections of lower caste.

OBC (Other backward classes) politics: India

A backgrounder

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