Lalu and Nitish Sell Mandal 2.0 as Their Social Base Dwindles

Amidst fears of losing popularity among backward castes Lalu and Nitish have decided to play the reservation card.

Playing the Reservation Card

• RJD Chief Lalu Prasad raises the pitch, asking for reservation for OBCs in government jobs and in educational institutions
• Nitish Kumar also expected to rake up the issue ahead of assembly polls in October this year
• Lalu’s popularity at an all-time low among the EBC (extremely backward classes) whose vote share for RJD fell from 30% in 2004 to 10% in 2014

A Congress leader, in a hurry to rush to Delhi from Patna to attend to his ailing son, missed his train due to traffic disruptions in the city on Monday, July 27. Vehicles of even judges were reportedly held up. Some journalists had a tough time reaching the venue of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s press conference the same day. Even as Nitish presented the report card of 10 years of his rule, taking credit for establishing the “rule of law”, chaos prevailed at that very moment in many parts of the state.

Trains were disrupted, educational institutions suffered from forced closure and commercial establishments remained shut as lathi-wielding Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) workers enforced a day-long Bihar bandh, demanding the immediate publication of caste data collected as part of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census.

In fact, RJD chief Lalu Prasad has threatened to go all out if his party’s demands are not met. He has already gone on record saying that quota for weaker sections of society (read other backward classes or OBCs) in government jobs and reservation in educational institutions should be in proportion to their share in overall population. His alliance partner Nitish Kumar, though not so vociferous, too is willing to make it a big issue ahead of the crucial assembly elections scheduled for October this year.

Mandal 1.0

Both Lalu and Nitish have been the product of, what is known as Mandal politics. While the politics of this variety helped Lalu rule Bihar for 15 long years, Nitish’s ascendance in the state has been directly proportional to the declining hold of Mandal politics.

Why have they joined hands now to revive the ghost of Mandal? To prevent erosion in their key support base seems to be the only logical explanation.

Unnoticed and mostly unreported, Lalu has been consistently losing his popularity among Yadavs since the February 2005 assembly elections. And in the last two elections — 2010 assembly and 2014 Lok Sabha — at least a third of Yadavs are estimated to have voted for parties other than Lalu’s RJD, according to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) data.

Yadavs, one of the most influential social groups in terms of numbers in Bihar, are estimated to decide the electoral outcome in as many as 72 of the total of 243 seats in the state. And there are an additional 42 seats where Muslims, another social group considered to be the core of Lalu’s support base, constitute at least a third of the total voting population. But the RJD could establish lead in merely 32 assembly segments in the 2014 LS elections.

Erosion of Popularity

There has been consistent erosion in Lalu’s popularity among Dalits and Extreme Backward Classes (EBCs) too. According to CSDS data, the RJD would get in excess of 30% of all EBC votes till as late as 2004. The share fell to a mere 10% in 2014. It has been the same story with regard to Dalits too, with Lalu’s popularity at an all-time low among members of this community.

The voting behaviour of Dalits and EBCs in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections would have come as a rude shock for Nitish also. All through his tenure as chief minister, his social engineering has been aimed at winning them over through a range of targeted sops. But when payback time came, they chose the BJP instead. Nitish’s Janata Dal (United) was left with token support from these two electorally influential communities.

Faced with all round erosion in their respective social bases, Lalu and Nitish have decided to bet big on winning back the constituency that made them influential in Bihar politics. The revival of the demand for higher quota, or at least the implicit assumption, for the OBCs in government jobs and admission into institutes like IITs and IIMs, if the census data do prove that this group’s share in overall population is higher than the current estimate, is what is seen by them as one of the ways to achieve that goal.

Short-term Exigency

It might just work in the short-term, for Biharis’ preference for government jobs, almost bordering on obsession, is quite well known. The people of the state also put very high premium on IIT or IIM degrees for their children. Any leader who is perceived to be selling such dreams is sure to get serious audience and perhaps votes too.

But this is short-term politics that may boomerang in the long run. The people of Bihar, more so the section Lalu and Nitish are trying to sell dreams to through Mandal 2.0, will soon discover that the state has ceased to be a leading employer in the job market and most of the state-owned educational institutions are losing their elite status. The dream merchants will then have a lot of answering to do for selling seemingly unrealistic dreams.

(The writer is a regular contributor to the Business Standard)