Book Excerpt: How Mandal Proved Seminal In VP Singh바카라™s Career, And India바카라™s Politics

By social groups, of course, VP meant castes 바카라” though he would never have realised at the time how crucially the new groups he was about to embrace would shape his political legacy. As many political scientists have noted, and as VP himself found out in all the elections he fought as a Congress candidate, the Congress바카라™s electoral base in north India comprised a 바카라˜coalition of extremes바카라™ 바카라” the bulk of its voters were either upper castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas) or Scheduled Castes (the Dalits or traditional untouchables), apart from the Muslims. This odd combination of upper castes and the lowliest castes had been forged in pre-Independence times. While the far-better-educated upper castes naturally dominated the freedom movement and were the Congress바카라™s main supporters, the Scheduled Castes were attracted to it mainly due to Mahatma Gandhi바카라™s crusade against untouchability. 

The group left out of the Congress fold in north India were the Shudras 바카라” the bulk of peasants and rural service providers who form the mainstay of rural society, many of whom (though, importantly, not all) came to be classified as the OBCs. Historically, they, too, had been discriminated against by the upper castes, but to a lesser extent than the Dalits. Though the peasants among them were big gainers from the Congress바카라™s land-reform drive 바카라” the abolition of zamindari and the imposition of ceilings on large landholdings 바카라” in north India they still stayed away from the party, partly because the reforms were not implemented rigorously enough but mainly because the upper-caste leaders who dominated the Congress organisation resisted sharing power with them. Even in the breakaway parties Indira Gandhi formed after splitting the Congress in 1969 and again in 1977-78, the upper caste바카라“Scheduled Caste combination remained her bulwark of support in north India. 

Though their numbers were formidable 바카라” their nationwide population estimated at different times between 35 and 52.4 per cent 바카라” the OBCs, especially in north India, due to poor political awareness, would initially scatter their votes, which, in turn, enabled the Congress to keep winning elections, despite the fact that the Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas together averaged merely 20 per cent of the population, with Dalits about 15 per cent and Muslims another 13-15 per cent. The personal popularity of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira also helped the Congress garner votes, irrespective of caste.

The politicised sections of the OBCs, however, mostly supported the Socialist Party and its successor, the SSP, as VP had vividly observed while fighting his first election from Soraon in 1969. The socialists바카라™ main appeal for OBCs stemmed from their avowal that if elected to power, they would reserve 60 per cent of all government jobs for them, embodied in a slogan much heard in the SSP바카라™s (abbreviated to 바카라˜Sasopa바카라™ in Hindi) heyday, 바카라˜Sasopa ne baandhi gaant/Pichhdey pawey sau mein saat바카라™ (The SSP has pledged amen/for backwards, it바카라™s six out of ten)바카라™. No doubt the OBCs realised that such reservation would only benefit a minuscule number among them, since government jobs comprised a very small slice of the total number of available jobs. But with OBC representation in government services extremely low 바카라” in the Central government, when VP took over, it was 14.5 per cent 바카라” and such jobs providing prestige, security and power, even as private industry in the north Indian states remained moribund, the slogan resonated strongly with them.

The scenario differed considerably in south and west India, where, unlike in the north, the Congress drew sizeable support from the leading peasant castes. In these states, upper castes are even fewer than in north India, their population as a percentage of the total mostly in single digits. They thus matter far less electorally, leaving the Congress no choice but to woo other castes as well. Yet, here too, as in the north, the upper castes 바카라” especially the Brahmins 바카라” given their millennia-old tradition of education, held the bulk of government jobs. But with the OBCs being in greater numbers and better organised than in the north, they had long ago begun protesting this imbalance. In response, even before Independence, the British governments of the Bombay and Madras presidencies, as well as the princely states of Kolhapur (the first to introduce job reservations of any kind, in 1902), Mysore, Cochin and Travancore, acknowledging the validity of the protests, had begun setting aside quotas in government jobs for them.

Post-Independence, the Congress governments in these states had continued with the quotas. In most north Indian states, however, the only reservations were for Dalits and the tribals; the Congress saw no reason to extend them to the OBCs, who didn바카라™t vote for them anyway. They also knew that doing so would surely annoy their upper-caste supporters, whose job opportunities would shrink. 

But on the recommendation of an advisory committee to the constituent assembly, the Indian Constitution had included an article 바카라” Article 340 바카라” which authorised appointing a commission 바카라˜to investigate the conditions of socially and educationally backward classes 바카라¦ and the difficulties under which they labour, and to make recommendations as to the steps that should be taken 바카라¦ to remove such difficulties and improve their condition바카라™. Accordingly, in January 1953, such a commission was set up, chaired by former freedom fighter, social reformer and writer Dattatreya Balakrishna (Kaka) Kalelkar, which submitted its report two years later, listing 2,399 castes countrywide that it considered OBCs and recommending 25-40 per cent reservation for them in different categories of Central government service. 

Yet its recommendations were never implemented, partly because, in a bizarre afterthought, Chairman Kalelkar undermined his own report, adding to it a twenty-three-page covering letter pointing to its several purported shortcomings, but also because the Congress feared upsetting its upper-caste voters in north India. Yet, anxious to not lose the OBC votes it drew in the south and the west (which it might have if it dismissed the report entirely), the Congress found a middle path, declaring that while there would be no OBC quota in Central government jobs, state governments were free to set up their own commissions to identify state-level OBCs and reserve jobs for them if they wanted. Thereafter, over the next two decades, ten state governments (including some of those that already had OBC reservations dating from before Independence) set up fifteen such commissions, all of which acknowledged that reservations for OBCs was necessary and set varying quotas for them, ranging from 5 per cent (Punjab) to 50 per cent (Karnataka), which their state governments mostly accepted. Significantly, these ten included all the southern and western states 바카라”Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat 바카라” but only two of the north Indian, Hindi-speaking ones 바카라” Bihar and UP. Even in Bihar, it was not a Congress government but one of the half a dozen governments that ruled during the political flux of 1967-72 that took the step, setting up the Mungeri Lal Commission 바카라” named after its chairman, a state Vidhan Parishad MLC at the time 바카라” in June 1971.

Though the bickering of its leaders destroyed the SSP 바카라” as it did the other socialist party, the PSP 바카라” the OBC reservation idea long outlived it. Some former socialists joined the Congress, especially in the 1960s; others 바카라” once Charan Singh quit the Congress and made another political alternative available 바카라” preferred to join him, since his electoral base comprised mainly farmers, many of whom were also OBCs. They continued to keep the OBC reservation demand alive. 

When the Janata Party was formed after the Emergency, both Charan Singh바카라™s BLD and the remnants of the socialist parties joined it, cooperating closely thereafter, further consolidating the OBCs politically. Thus, while the Janata Party바카라™s victory in the March 1977 general elections was no doubt a reassertion of democracy against Indira바카라™s dictatorship, it was also seen in north India as a victory of the OBCs over the upper-caste바카라“Scheduled Caste combine.

The Janata Party바카라™s election manifesto had promised to implement the Kalelkar Commission report바카라™s proposals, but eventually, in January 1979, given the report바카라™s shortcomings and the tussles within the party, it decided to set up a new commission to repeat the effort. As chairman of the commission, it appointed Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal, who had been Bihar바카라™s chief ministerfor a fleeting forty-seven days during the political churn of 1967-72. In its report, which proved seminal in VP바카라™s career, the five-member Mandal Commission listed 3,743 castes across the country as OBCs and made a host of recommendations for their uplift 바카라” the most important of them being reserving for them 27 per cent of jobs across all categories of Central government service and in all Central government-run technical and professional educational institutions. 

Why 27 per cent? The Mandal Commission report maintained that according to its calculations based on the last caste census held in 1931 (the censuses thereafter avoided enumerating specific castes), the country바카라™s OBC population was 52.4 per cent and, ideally, the community바카라™s share of government jobs should match that figure. But it also noted a crucial legal impediment 바카라” the 1963 Supreme Court judgment in the case of Balaji versus the State of Mysore, which had ruled that reserved quotas had to be less than a total of 50 per cent. Since, at the Central level, the Scheduled Castes had already been allotted a 15 per cent quota and the Scheduled Tribes another 7.5 per cent, the OBCs could not be given more than 27 per cent.

The Balaji judgment had also decreed that OBCs should not be identified by caste alone, though caste could be one of the yardsticks defining backwardness. Accordingly, the Mandal Commission used levels of education and income as indicators too, to determine which castes to list as backward, though in computing the final 바카라˜backwardness바카라™ score of each caste, social backwardness 바카라” being looked down upon by other castes and such 바카라” was given more weight than educational backwardness or economic deprivation.

(Excerpted from 바카라˜The Disruptor: How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India바카라™ by Debashish Mukerji, with permission from HarperCollins India. Debashish Mukerji has been a journalist for nearly 40 years and has written on Uttar Pradesh and national politics.)