Caste census, OBC welfare take centre stage ahead of key state elections

The Congress-led state governments are acting swiftly on the caste survey issue.

Days after the Bihar government released the findings of a caste-based survey, top leaders of the Congress party promised to conduct similar exercises in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh if voted to power next month.

The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s top decision-making body, also passed a resolution on October 9 promising to carry out a nationwide caste census if it comes to power in the Centre next year.

The developments indicate that the Congress, currently in power in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, is making the demand for a caste census and welfare of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) the mainstay of its campaign in the upcoming state elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which is incumbent in Madhya Pradesh, countered the Congress by accusing it of dividing the people based on caste.

As the electoral campaign gathers steam in the three states, experts said the demand for a caste census and the political centre-staging of the OBC support base could be one of the key issues. The three states, with Telangana and Mizoram, vote next month and counting will take place on December 3.

Shift of votes?

“It is too premature to say whether it will give political dividends to the Congress but it will be a very crucial issue all throughout the campaign,” said Yatindra Singh Sisodia, director of the Madhya Pradesh Institute of Social Science Research in Ujjain. “OBCs are sizeable in all the three states, constituting more than 40 percent of the total population.”

In 2007, the National Sample Survey Organisation put the OBC population in India at 40.94 percent. Estimates of their population in the three poll-bound states range from 40 percent to 50 percent, making it a significant electoral group. The chief ministers of all three states belong to the OBC community.

According to Sisodia, the BJP, earlier seen as an upper-caste urban political party, has successfully penetrated rural parts of north India in the past decade and drawn large support from OBC voters. This, he added, led to the BJP’s win in 2014 and 2019 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Opposition parties feel if they can highlight this effectively and if there is any resultant shift in OBC votes, it will be favourable for them. It is a very calculated move but I am suspicious if this issue alone can make a sizeable shift of OBC votes from the BJP to the Congress in these states,” he added.

The Congress’s demand for a caste census is linked to its pitch of ‘jitni abaadi, utna haq,’ or rights proportional to population. Modi has attacked this proposition on the grounds that poor people should have the first rights over the country’s resources. This war of words between the two sides, which are in a direct contest in all the three states, could get intense in the coming weeks.

The Congress-led state governments are acting swiftly on the caste survey issue. The Ashok Gehlot-led Rajasthan government issued an order last week to conduct a caste survey in the state. The survey will use the resources of the state government to collect information related to the social, economic and educational levels of the people.

In Chhattisgarh, general secretary Priyanka Gandhi said the party would conduct a Bihar-like caste survey if it was voted to power. In Madhya Pradesh, the announcement was made by former party president Rahul Gandhi.

“The Congress is aggressively trying to woo the lower caste categories and pluck it back from the BJP. On its part, the BJP has done well because it had support of Dalits and OBCs,” said Manisha Priyam, a New Delhi-based political analyst. “Issues like demand for caste census are being raised because every political party is thinking about how to appeal to the electorate in a new way.”

Potential impact

According to Priyam, the demand for a caste census could be one of the biggest rallying points in the state elections. She said the findings of a caste-based census, like the one announced in Bihar on October 2, have the potential to change local political dynamics and impact equations on the ground.

“In the long term, caste-based knowledge and data could challenge the narrative of dominant caste politics. Combination politics, which club upper castes and lower castes together, may no longer work,” she said.

The renewed demand for a nationwide caste census and OBC representation came from the opposition after Parliament passed the Women’s Reservation Bill last month, keeping a third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies for women. Opposition lawmakers unsuccessfully demanded a sub-quota within the share of seats reserved for women.

For the opposition, making this issue a key narrative in the state elections is also a way to test the political waters for the Lok Sabha polls less than six months away. This is the last round of state polls before the Lok Sabha elections next year.