The socio-economic data of the Bihar caste census report was released in the Bihar Assembly on November 7. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar led the release of data in the assembly. However, this socio-economic data revealed ongoing multiple marginalities of various castes and also reflected poverty as a phenomenon which appears across the castes and communities in the state. It is found not only in Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs) but also among upper-caste families.
Some people say poverty has a caste but here one can see that poverty emerged as a class. Without going into the economics of the caste survey, I am going to discuss the politics of this survey.
First of all, Janata Dal (United) [JDU], Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress who are part of the Opposition alliance INDIA may strengthen their politics by raising the issues of increasing the percentage of reservation for OBC, EBCs, SCs and STs in Bihar. This may evoke ‘reservation sentiment’ among OBC communities in Bihar and that may give political mileage to these parties in the upcoming state elections. Secondly, the timing of the release of the Bihar caste census also seems political. The election campaign is going on in five states of the country — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram. This is high time to make up voters’ minds, especially of the swiping voters who play a crucial role during the elections. This issue may also provide a certain amount of benefit to these parties in the coming parliamentary elections.
On the other hand, recently, Union home minister Amit Shah gave a hint of the emergence of new mobilisational politics which the BJP is going to flag off in the coming days that will be based on the mobilisation of Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), by raising the sense of comparative deprivation of these communities. This sense of comparative deprivation emerges whenever any political narrative highlights the unequal distribution of reservation-based opportunities and other developmental affirmative actions even among the OBCs. The BJP may highlight the over-dominance of a few OBC communities in politics and governance such as the Yadavs, Kurmis, and Koiris. This alliance started to form during colonial times and was known as Triveni Sangh in Bihar. The political aspiration of these communities emerged during colonial times which played an important role in their empowerment.
The pattern of BJP’s politics in various states is to mobilise non-dominant castes of the OBCs and SCs against dominant castes of these sections who are socially and politically dominant in the respective states. The BJP collected the communities of small numbers against communities of big numbers and provided them with political space and empowering support. This strategy of the BJP helped them to attain power in various states. The Bihar caste survey provided the BJP an argument and opportunity to mobilise EBCs by telling their story of further marginalisation because of the dominant OBC communities who are taking a large share of the benefits generated by affirmative actions.
Politically speaking, the Bihar caste census report produces possibilities of various kinds of politics which is going to affect the politics of the coming time. The various political groups may interpret these caste-based data in their own ways and develop their own political narrative. We need to see which kind of narratives are going to emerge from this survey and how they are going to play out in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
The writer is a Professor and Director at GB Pant Social Science Institute, Prayagraj, and author of ‘Republic of Hindutva’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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