The Nitish Kumar-led Mahagathbandhan government set in motion the much-talked-about 'caste census' (actually a survey) in Bihar on January 6 -- a move seen as capable of changing the contours of politics, particularly in the Hindi heartland, in the run-up to the 2024 general elections.
It involves door-to-door surveys and will cover 12.70 crore people divided among 204 castes across 38 districts of the state. The exercise is going to be carried out in two phases -- the first from January to April involving the counting of the households and the second from April to May 31 where information on the caste, skill, income and religion of the individuals will be collected -- and is estimated to cost Rs 500 crore. The government will make the survey report public in June.
Prior to this, the British administration had carried out a caste census in 1931. On the basis of that census, the backward castes categorised as Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the Mandal Commission report are estimated to constitute 52 percent of the population in north India. This population is considered the mainstay of Ram Manohar Lohia's brand of socialist politics now espoused by different political parties in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
When the late 1980s witnessed the weakening of the Congress and the emergence of Hindutva politics, these socialist parties -- led by Devi Lal in Haryana, Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar -- used Mandal as the weapon to counter Hindutva referred to as Kamandal politics.
'Mandal versus Kamandal' reached a fever pitch after the then BJP chief LK Advani embarked on the Ram rath yatra, a little after Prime Minister VP Singh decided to implement the Mandal Commission report that gave 27 percent quota to the OBCs in government jobs.
Though the Congress came back to power with PV Narasimha Rao taking over as the Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996 after the fall of VP Singh's government, the grand old party lost its upper caste support base to the BJP and its Muslim, OBC and dalit support base to the Janata Dal formed in 1989 under VP Singh's leadership as an umbrella of the parties of social justice.
The post-1990s then witnessed the parties of social justice emerging as the biggest opponents of the Sangh Parivar.
Over the years, the parties of social justice weakened for two broad reasons. First, they suffered multiple splits in Bihar, UP and Haryana and second, the BJP co-opted several of their splinters, leaders and symbols to broaden its support base beyond its traditional Brahmin-Bania combination.
For example, in Bihar, Nitish Kumar formed the Samata Party, which attracted a big chunk of the non-Yadav OBCs. He aligned it with the BJP in 1996.
Similarly, Sonelal Patel, Omprakash Rajbhar, Swami Prasad Maurya and others in Uttar Pradesh broke away from Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party to form their own parties and aligned with the BJP adding to the latter's acceptance and base.
The BJP also promoted its own set of OBC leaders including Kalyan Singh and Uma Bharti.
To this mix was added a more vocal Hindutva note with the ascendance of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister in 2014. The Gujarat model that involved the systematic segregation of the minorities was successfully transplanted to Uttar Pradesh.
Modi knew the importance of the most populous state. As Prime Minister, he also introduced a plethora of welfare schemes like distributing free ration and direct transfer of cash in the name of old-age pension, kisan samman yojna (farmers' honour scheme) and beti-bachao beti padhao (save and educate daughter) scheme among about 80 crore families mostly in UP.
In the process, with help from his trusted aide Amit Shah, the PM created a new and large group of beneficiaries who were from the dalit and OBC community. The BJP has, in fact, accommodated several OBCs including Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, a Kurmi leader, in its cadre in UP. But it has failed to do so in Bihar as it was dependent on Nitish who never yielded space to the RSS's agenda.
Now, Nitish, an accomplished practitioner of socialism, has joined hands with his old pal Lalu, the biggest hero of Mandal politics. Apart from Lalu and Nitish, the Mahagathbandhan has seven parties including the Congress and the Left. Ably supported by his deputy and Lalu's son Tejashwi Yadav, Nitish has embarked on the caste survey exercise to revive Mandal politics against the BJP's aggressive hindutva.
With the demand for a broader national census set to follow, Nitish aims to first unite the OBCs at the ground level and then unite the splinter groups of social justice at the national level. The Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has strongly supported the caste survey in Bihar and has asked for the same from Narendra Modi at the national level.
Nitish has not sprung this move out of the blue. The Bihar CM had taken a 10-party delegation to the PM to press for it in 2021. Tejashwi Yadav was part of that delegation. It was at a time when Nitish was in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and knew the PM was uncomfortable with it.
The grapevine has it that after the caste survey report is made public, Nitish and most of the non-BJP parties will clamour for raising the limit of the OBC quota in government jobs beyond 27 percent. In their estimation, the OBCs constitute over 55 percent of the population in Bihar and UP. The SCs and STs have got quotas in proportion to their population. They will seek the same for the OBCs too.
This might create a tricky situation in the run-up to the 2024 general elections for the BJP, which has accommodated the OBCs in its cadres but denied them their due in government jobs.
(Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, media educator and independent researcher in social anthropology.)