A look at the Bill ruckus "Backward"

Nearly half-a-dozen OBC ministers in the BJP-led Government are up in arms and at least three have threatened to resign if sub-quotas for OBCs is not grafted within the women’s reservation quota.

In the Congress, Sonia Gandhi is confronted with the first real challenge to her hegemony within the party for her stand that the Bill should be passed as it is.

At one level, the series of events shows that the political class in India would rather thrive on politics of passion than face questions of rational choice. At another level, itbetrays the Yadav leaders’ desperate need to fortify their besieged citadel of social justice. Desertions from within the OBC-Dalit-Muslim coalition have rendered their seemingly impregnable fortresses vulnerable.

Thanks to their unending efforts to keep the Mandir-Masjid dispute alive –Mulayam and Laloo have threatened to march to Ayodhya to rake up the issue again — the Muslim-Yadavs are also with them. But the same cannot be said of the Dalits who account for nearly 23 per cent of the population of Bihar and UP.

Confident of her unflinching Dalit following, an aggressive Mayawati refuses to do business with Mulayam in UP. In Bihar, Ram Vilas Paswan is still a thorn in Laloo’s path and sections of SC/STs are getting attracted by the parties of the extreme Left (CPI-ML, Party Unity and MCC) and extreme Right (BJP).

The non-Yadav OBCs in the two states — the Yadavs account for only 11 per cent of the population in the two state — are also posing problems for the two Yadav leaders.

In Bihar, theKurmis-Koerie followers of Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar have walked over to the BJP camp. In UP, BJP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh (a Lodh) is himself trying to emerge as a champion of the backward castes. Canny politicians that they are, both Mulayam and Laloo realised the moment the BJP-led Government was installed at the Centre that they must patch up or perish.

Their new front may have been prompted by an earnest wish to combat the BJP’s brand of communalism. But their real motive was self-preservation. Mulayam had already lost his paradise. Laloo clung on to his, albeit precariously.

Finding Sonia unwilling to act according to their script and going along with the BJP and the Left on the Women’s Reservation Bill, they changed tack. The bogey of reservations for OBCs and Muslims came handy.

For the time being they seem to have succeeded. The "naughty boys" of the Janata and the Samata have been compelled to tail behind. The Congress and the BJP have been forced to go on the backfoot.

The Yadavgambit has brought Congressmen with varied motifs and motivations — Sharad Pawar, Sitaram Kesri, Rajesh Pilot and Shiva Shankar — together. Voices espousing a closer relationship with Laloo and Mulayam are getting bolder and louder.

In the BJP, backward caste leaders like Uma Bharati and Ganga Charan Rajput are gloating at their Brahmanised leadership’s discomfiture. Even UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh has reasons to be grateful to the two Yadavs. The campaign to dislodge him by the party’s upper caste lobby has been thwarted.

Caught on the wrong foot, the Left appears stranded. But this hardly bothers the two Yadavs. They have survived by using the Left when in need, poaching on its political space when possible, and ignoring its homilies when inconvenient.

Their "charwaha school" reading of the Communist Manifesto tells them that the Left cannot look the other way when they march together towards Ayodhya: the spectre of fascism haunts India, the secularists must unite to overthrow them!