Why is the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) opposed to reservation for the poor among the so-called ‘forward castes’? When the 10% quota in jobs and educational institutions for the economically weaker sections (EWS) was announced, the RJD found itself in two minds. Lalu Prasad, who broke away from the Janata Dal to form the RJD in 1997, had found his mojo in the post-Mandal era, riding to power on the back of backward identity politics in a state riven by deep faultlines of caste. From 1990, when Lalu first became Chief Minister of Bihar, to 2000, when Rabri Devi completed her term, the RJD’s politics remained strongly anti-upper caste. When Rabri Devi came back after Nitish Kumar’s eight-day stint in 2000, however, the RJD formed the government with the Congress — and was forced to recalibrate its stance towards the upper castes. This broadly remained the RJD’s line for the next 15 years — until the elections of 2015. That year, with the political landscape of North India having been changed by the rise of Narendra Modi, the RJD entered into the Mahagathbandhan with Nitish’s JD(U) and the Congress against the BJP-led NDA. In the campaign, Lalu switched back to his hard rhetoric of the 1990s, seizing upon RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat’s call for a review of the policy of reservations, and telling an election meeting in Raghopur (Vaishali): “Ee baar phir backward-forward bhe gelo (It is backwards versus forwards once again).” Politically for the RJD, that situation has not changed since. Despite the desertion of Nitish, its best chance of defeating the BJP lies in countering the consolidation of the Hindu vote through an appeal to caste identities, and sharpening Bihar’s old forward-backward binary. OBCs, EBCs, Muslims, and at least some SCs are the natural constituency of the RJD. After slight initial hesitation, therefore, the party leadership of Lalu, his son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, decided to oppose the EWS quota. However, to signal that it was not against the poor among the upper castes, the party nuanced its opposition — targetting the Rs 8-lakh criterion in the government’s definition of EWS. How can someone who earns over Rs 66,000 per month be “poor”, Tejashwi has been asking. But does the RJD have no base among the upper castes? It does have some upper caste people in its top leadership, such as national vice president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, and former MPs Jagdanand Singh and Prabhunath Singh. The late Umashanker Singh was also a prominent upper caste leader of the party. However, most of these leaders got votes because of personal popularity in their areas. While this has been helpful for the RJD — in the fifteenth Lok Sabha (2009), for example, Lalu was kept company by the three Rajputs, Raghuvansh, Jagdanand, and Prabhunath — for the party as a whole, upper caste votes have always come as a bonus. That is why, despite some open dissent from its upper caste leaders such as Raghuvansh, the RJD has decided to put its faith in its core constituency. The estimated 14% Yadavs, most of the 29% EBCs and 17% Muslims, and a sizeable chunk of the 16% SCs will, it is hoping, make it worthwhile to give up entirely on the much smaller and more uncertain 12% upper caste vote. How will the Congress reconcile its own backing of the EWS quota with its ally, the RJD’s opposition to it? Like the RJD, the Congress too, has decided to go back to its old core of upper caste and Muslim voters, along with a section of EBCs and SCs. Of the 16 upper caste candidates that the Congress fielded in the 2015 Assembly polls, 12 won. The Congress has been upset with the RJD’s opposition to the EWS quota, and worried about the impact it can have in the transfer of votes within their alliance. For example, Meira Kumar, the potential Congress candidate in Sasaram, may not get upper caste support — and, should the RJD field Raghuvansh from Vaishali or Muzaffarpur, the Congress could struggle to explain the RJD’s position on the EWS quota to its upper caste voters. Indeed, the party faces a Hobson’s choice in Bihar — despite its frustration with the RJD, it cannot risk the senior partner leaving it out of the opposition alliance altogether. But doesn’t the JD(U), too, have an OBC base? Why has Nitish’s government decided to enforce the quota? The JD(U) and erstwhile Samata Party have been with the BJP since 1996, barring the four years from June 2013 to July 2017. Even in the 1995 Assembly polls, Samata tried to tell non-Yadav OBCs, EBCs, SCs, and upper castes that Lalu was against them, and favoured Yadavs unduly. Nitish’s prime constituency has always included non-Yadav OBCs and a good chunk of the untapped EBCs. In addition, he has created his own constituency among the SCs, identifying 21 Scheduled Castes as Mahadalits, who have been getting benefits of about 20 welfare and education schemes since his first full term (2005-10). With the BJP, the JD(U) is looking at a “coalition of social extremes”, where upper castes and Dalits coexist and vote together for the same alliance. Nitish, whose government will pass the EWS quota Bill in the coming Budget Session, would be hoping that his return to the BJP has assuaged the anger of upper castes whom he had upset by going with Lalu in 2015. The harvest, he hopes, will come in the form of good mutual conversion of votes, even though he may field fewer upper caste candidates than his partner, the BJP. And where does the BJP stand in this complex situation? Its goal is Hindu consolidation, and it has been trying to do a good balancing act. It has been trying to counter the RJD’s attempts at creating a backward-forward binary by underlining that the EWS quota is an addition, and has not taken away from the existing quota for OBCs and SCs. The Bihar BJP has called a meeting of its OBC wing on February 15-16 — to be addressed by Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, and Shivraj Singh Chouhan — to disseminate the message of the Centre’s “eight-point welfare programme” for OBCs, including giving the OBC Commission constitutional status, the facility of self-attestation for OBC certification, and paving the way for venture capital loans for OBC entrepreneurs. The BJP, with its allies JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP, is looking at the consolidation of non-Yadav OBC votes, EBC votes, mostly from the Dhanuks and Nishads or Sahnis (boatmen), and Dalit Paswan and Mahadalit votes. It will field its OBC star campaigners in selected constituencies to try to neutralise the RJD’s attack on the EWS quota. Two major BJP OBC faces — Chouhan and Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das — will addess the party’s OBC meet next week. So, can it be assumed that the EWS quota will be a major election issue in Bihar? It will be an issue among both the beneficiary upper caste voters, as well as the OBCs, EBCs and SCs whom the RJD will try to tell that the central government’s move is the first step towards taking away their own quota. The RJD did this successfully in 2015 — the Election Commission had found pamphlets being distributed in Araria, telling voters that the BJP was “trying to end reservation”. But the fact that Lalu is in jail and ill, could seriously handicap the RJD’s campaign. Tejashwi, who has been prolific on Twitter against the quota, will be tested during the campaign. The strength of the Congress’s campaign on this issue will probably be decided by how hard Tejashwi pushes, and how much traction he gets. The NDA will attack this apparent faultline within the RJD-Congress alliance. The BJP, JD(U), and LJP have already started to remind voters of the RJD slogan from the mid-1990s — “BHURA BAL saaf karo”, a provocative call to “remove” the upper caste Bhumihars, Rajputs, Brahmins, and Lalas, as Kayasthas are known in Bihar.
