After defying several hurdles, Bihar has just completed the data collection stage of its historic and ambitious caste survey exercise.
It will become the first state in the history of independent India to publicly conduct this exercise if it releases the data.
For our curiosity and what impact it has created on the politics of Bihar, we have visited several survey sites in the state and witnessed the process, the public's reactions towards it, and its political implications.
Why the Need for a New Mandal Politics
The politics of the Hindi belt revolves around two significant schools of ideologies.
First, the RSS-BJP's style of Hindutva politics. Second, social justice politics (represented by JDU, RJD, SP, BSP, etc.) tries to consolidate the backward Hindu castes and Muslims against the overly represented upper caste Hindus. Throughout the 90s, the school of social justice was the most significant barrier to Hindutva politics.
Through its rhetorics of backward vs. forward and eighty-five vs fifteen, the school of social justice significantly kept Hindutva politics at the margin.
However, the mammoth rise of the BJP in the last ten years and its back-to-back victory in several states and national elections raises questions on the relevance of the old rhetoric of the Mandal era.
The larger section of OBCs and SCs played a decisive role in the victories of the BJP, first, because of the unequal distribution of resources (reservations, assembly seats, leadership positions among social justice parties) among castes of OBCs and SCs.
Second, due to aggressive Hindutva politics, the BJP somewhat succeeds in projecting Muslims as a threat to the existence of the Hindu culture.
It results in the consolidation of all castes of Hindus towards the BJP.
How Communities in Bihar Perceive the Caste Survey
The politics of caste survey can be understood in this context.
As the national election is approaching next year, the social justice parties in Bihar want to use the caste survey to counter aggressive Hindutva politics.
Their old rhetoric of backward vs forward was based on more than 30 years old data from the Mandal Commission report. They now need robust scientific data to deal with several intricacies of internal contradiction between OBCs, SCs, and Muslims. Parties like RJD-JDU have this hope that data from caste surveys will help in revitalising the Mandal politics in a new fashion.
Parties also have this hope that this new wave of caste politics will give them an edge in coming elections in the fight with the BJP. But how are the people of Bihar taking the caste survey? Can we say that the caste survey is another major breakpoint in the politics of Bihar after Mandal politics?
With this, the exercise of caste survey has many hopes for the social justice-driven parties. But as of now, it does not seem to be the biggest issue for the population of Bihar.
In our visits to different survey sites during the enumeration process, we realised that people's reactions towards the caste survey varied according to the different caste groups. While Dalits were mainly unaware of the process, they saw it as a regular, boring, and mundane administrative exercise.
They see it as a way to add their name to ration cards, widow pensions, old age pensions, pucca houses, etc. In our conversation with a Dalit woman, they told the enumerator, “Baar baar likh kar ke le jate hain, lekin kuchh milta to nahin hai” (they used to note down many times, but we did not get anything).
Upper OBCs were more or less enthusiastic about the caste survey because they assumed their number would increase. Interestingly, upper castes saw the process as a casteist and anti-developmental exercise. In our conversation with a Bhumihar caste person, he said, “Isse jatiwaad badhega, sarkar ko aarthik janganga karwana chahiye, aarakashan aarthik aadhar par hona chahiye.” (it will increase casteism, the government should conduct an economic census, reservation should be based on economic poverty).
How Social Justice Parties Should Use This Data
Our experience on the field suggests that the old rhetoric of Mandal, like forward versus backward, does not have the same electoral significance as it was in the 90s.
People at the margin have severe frustration with their material conditions. Reservation is not an electoral issue for a marginalised population due to the acute lack of suitable infrastructure of public educational facilities. Lack of suitable public health infrastructure, agricultural distress, inequality in the share of land holdings, and massive job crises bother the public much more significantly than anything else.
The social justice-driven parties will have to ensure the following things if they want to make data from the caste survey the base for their new politics.
First, these parties should use the data from the caste survey for targeted policy intervention for social groups. It should not be limited to cultural questions or rhetorical antagonism of the era of the 90s. Data should be used to uplift Dalit-Bahujan-Muslims in education, health, jobs, etc.
Second, social justice parties can use the scientific survey data to find newer avenues of structural transformation processes like proportional representation, reservation in private sectors, universal education system, and questioning the relevancy of the EWS reservation.
Third, there is a serious concern that data can widen the quarrel among different castes of OBCs and SCs. As we have witnessed in the 2019 general election, SP and BSP had an advantage in the arithmetic calculation but lost the election. Everyday antagonism, from atrocities to material injustices between OBCs, SCs, and Muslims, affects voting behaviours. Social justice-driven parties should harness the caste survey data to address the internal conflicts between OBCs, EBCs, SCs, and Muslims.
Data always plays a historic role in shaping Indian Politics. The first-ever colonial exercise of caste census significantly created newer spaces for backward and Dalit politics.
Again, once the Mandal Commission report was implemented in the 1990s, it drastically transformed the politics of Northern Indian states. Backward and Dalits both gained widened share in political and public institutions.
Bihar's caste survey is also pushing the other state governments ruled by non-BJP and Congress to initiate the process of caste enumeration. It can open a new era of Mandal politics - moving from the sole question of cultural identity to the structural transformation process - linked with concrete material questions.
The new era of Mandal politics should add the question of dignity with economic prosperities. High hopes and expectations can only be tested once the data will be available for public engagements.
(Nitish Kumar is a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. Kishan Kumar has an MA degree in Political Studies from JNU and works as a research associate at Ashoka University.)
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