A meeting of opposition parties which was called by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader and Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin has formed a body called All India Federation for Social Justice and made two key demands: a national census of backward communities (caste census) and reservations in the private sector. While the demands are not being raised for the first time, their reiteration by a meeting of opposition parties shows that reservations and caste census are going to be major political issues in the run-up to the 2024 general elections. Here are four charts which explain the political economy behind the renewed push for social justice politics.
Demand for a census to count OBCs is aimed at generating political legitimacy for higher reservations
Technically speaking, India has not conducted a caste census since 1931. The decadal census – the 2021 census has been indefinitely delayed by the Narendra Modi government – only counts Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) groups. However, this does not mean that we have no idea about the demographic share of people who do not belong to SC-ST groups. There are various government surveys in India which give a share of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and persons who do not belong to SC-ST-OBC communities. Almost all of them put the share of OBCs upwards of 40%.
To be sure, even the Mandal Commission report – OBC reservations in India are a result of its recommendations – had arrived at a 27% quota for OBCs by a deductive method to preserve the cap of 50% on all kinds of reservations.
“The population of OBCs, both Hindu and non-Hindu, is around 52% of the total population of India. Accordingly, 52% of all posts under the Central government should be reserved for them. But this provision may go against the law laid down in a number of Supreme Court judgments wherein it has been held that the total quantum of reservation under Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution should be below 50%. In view of this, the proposed reservation for OBCs would have to be pegged at a figure which when added to 22.5% for SCs and STs, remains below 50%. In view of this legal constraint, the Commission is obliged to recommend a reservation of 27% only, even though their (OBC) population is almost twice this figure”, the report says.
While the 50% cap was preserved for a long time, the Narendra Modi government breached it by announcing 10% reservations for economically weaker sections (EWS) who do not belong to SC-ST-OBC communities. Since the decision has been ratified by the Supreme Court, it has generated traction for the idea that the overall quota for reservations can be pushed further.
This is exactly what is encouraging demands for a caste census to count OBCs. Once the census results show that the share of the OBC population is much higher than 27% — this is a given – demand for a concomitant increase in OBC quota will be made. Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, the deputy chief minister of Bihar and Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) leader made this clear in the meeting on March 3. “Our government has begun conducting a census in Bihar and the results are expected soon. Based on the outcome, we will decide on the quantum of reservation”, he said. As is obvious, parties making these demands are hoping that such a demand will receive a big traction among OBCs in India.
The importance of the OBC vote in BJP’s post-2014 dominance
As the single largest social group in India, OBC voters play a crucial role in making or breaking political fortunes in India. Data from CSDS-Lokniti National Election Studies shows that the BJP has doubled its vote share among OBCs between the 2009 and 2019 elections and bulk of these voters have shifted from non-Congress parties. The shift of OBC voters from regional parties to the BJP has been particularly pronounced between the 2014 and 2019 elections. Regional opposition parties realize that unless they can win back the OBC voter from the BJP, it is impossible to defeat the BJP in the 2024 elections.
Will the promise of higher reservations resonate with OBC voters?
India has seen a proliferation of agitations demanding reservations in the past two decades. Most of them have involved dominant peasant castes which have seen a squeeze on their socio-economic status because of the viability crisis in agriculture. An HT analysis of the PLFS data shows that OBCs do fare poorly when it comes to share in both government and private sector salaried jobs. This suggests a potential for political support behind an agitation which demands an increase in OBC quota in government and reservations in the private sector.
But dominant-OBC capture of Mandal parties might limit the class appeal of Mandal 3.0
India saw a massive upper caste backlash to two rounds of OBC reservations; the first in jobs in 1990 and the second in central educational institutions in 2006. However, given the importance of OBC voters, no serious political party has ever taken an explicit stand against OBC reservations. The BJP, especially its ideological parent RSS, realized the costs of doing this in the 2015 Bihar assembly elections after the opposition exploited Mohan Bahgwat’s statement asking for a review of reservations to decimate the BJP.
The BJP has since improvised its political pitch on OBC politics by arguing that the Mandal parties have betrayed the cause of upward mobility for all OBCs by ensuring the political and economic benefits of OBC assertion in politics are limited to a handful of dominant OBC sub-castes. The fact that BJP’s support among OBCs is primarily among the non-dominant OBCs shows that this appeal has worked. The Narendra Modi government has also formed the Rohini Commission (and given multiple extensions to it) to explore the sub-stratification of OBC reservations.
While a concrete acceptance or rejection of dominant OBCs capturing maximum benefits of reservations thesis will take a comprehensive socio-economic census, anecdotal data does support such claims. For example, the average asset levels of Samajwadi Party (SP) and BJP candidates in the 2022 assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh were nearly identical. If the opposition wants to argue that the BJP represents a party of big capital and is against socio-economic equality, its grassroots organisation and its parliamentary representation will have to be a more inclusive representation of the poor OBC constituency to which the demand for caste census wants to appeal. This will require nothing short of a purge in regional parties. It is here that the proponents of Mandal 3.0 will face their biggest organisational challenge.
Abhishek Jha contributed to the data analysis for this story
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