Caste was a dominant factor in the selection — after the election — of the chief ministers for Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. A tribal leader for Chhattisgarh, an OBC Yadav for Rajasthan and a Brahmin for Rajasthan. There was similar accommodation for other electorally important castes in the selection of two deputy chief ministers for the three states. Thus, the BJP has sought to cover all its flanks, now that the I.N.D.I.A alliance has latched on to caste as a survival strategy. Fully alive to the fact that Rahul Gandhi is now fixated on caste as a tool to push the BJP on the wrong foot, the trio of BJP CMs seek to pre-empt his electoral pitch ahead of the 2024 parliamentary poll. The tribals and OBCs constitute a major component of the BJP vote. The demand for a country-wide caste census does not reflect a sudden burst of love for the OBCs. It is merely another desperate ploy by the Opposition to try and wean a part of the OBC vote away from Modi, an OBC himself. By appointing a Yadav as chief minister in Madhya Pradesh the BJP has sought to signal to the most dominant section among the OBC bloc that its interests are safe with the party. If in the process the saffron party is able to groom its own Yadav leader in order to challenge Akhilesh Yadav in UP and Laloo Yadav in Bihar, it stands to blunt their caste appeal.
For sure, the fragmentation of voters on caste lines signals a certain regression. How it is healthy for a progressive polity while the fragmentation into two major large blocs, Hindu and Muslim, is regressive is hard to explain. Hitherto, the Congress party was deadset against making caste the currency of electoral politics. But a much diminished party under Rahul Gandhi has abandoned the age-old abnegation of caste as a determinant of popular appeal, and embraced it with a missionary zeal. The other day while trying to counter Amit Shah’s criticism of Nehru for the Kashmir problem the Gandhi scion totally out of context raised the demand for a caste survey. A couple of days earlier, the leader of the Opposition, Mallikarjun Kharge, blamed Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka D K Shivakumar for keeping the report of the caste survey in the state under wraps. The Congress president went on to say that the upper castes from all parties join hands when it comes to opposing a caste census. That Kharge should openly air differences within the Karnataka government over the caste survey underlines the wider divisions in society over granting primacy to caste yet again for further augmentation of reservations in government jobs and government-controlled educational institutions. The Karnataka caste survey was undertaken by the previous Siddharamiah government in 2015. Its report was yet to be released. Shivakumar argues that it was not conducted “scientifically”, leaving out a large percentage of households uncovered. Kharge and others, in favour of releasing the findings of the survey, suggest that the upper castes such as Vokkaligas and Lingayats fear that the survey would reduce their weightage in the caste calculus and, thus, in the state polity.
Meanwhile, the apex court sooner or later will be called upon to take note of the flagrant violation of its order setting the maximum limit on the scale of reservations at 50%. In a number of States reservations already exceed far above the half-way mark. The only country-wide caste survey was conducted in 1931. Conducting another would inevitably sharpen caste conflicts. For the time being the BJP may have avoided the concerted pressure from the Opposition parties to order a caste census, but it may be forced to take a call should the issue gain further traction. Its choice of chief ministers and deputy chief ministers in the three North Indian states acknowledges the pressure building up in the polity for a caste census.
