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Journalism of Courage
The Congress’s prime poll plank of caste census to wean away the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from the BJP in the Hindi heartland does not seem to be resonating on the ground in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, with 20 seats in the latter going to polls in the first phase on Tuesday.
Over eight days and several conversations with OBC voters in north Chhattisgarh and the Mahakoshal region of Madhya Pradesh, there were hardly any voices calling caste count an important political agenda for them. In Chhattisgarh, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s promise of a farm loan waiver is a key point of conversation among OBC Sahus and Kurmis who react through the lens of their occupational identity as farmers rather than caste. Caste census figures in the Congress’s manifesto for Chhattisgarh and senior party leaders from Rahul Gandhi to Priyanka Gandhi have promised to conduct the exercise if the Congress is voted back to power. The BJP’s concern about a caste survey is that it can give rise to contesting demands, jeopardising its strategy of caste balancing. On November 2, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in Chhattisgarh, “The BJP has never opposed the caste census, but decisions have to be taken after careful thought.” Of the BJP’s 90 candidates in Chhattisgarh, 31 are OBCs while the Congress has fielded 30 OBCs.
In Chhattisgarh’s Kawardha tehsil, farmer Bhagat Patel who belongs to the Lodhi community expresses concern that the Congress’s promise of a farm loan waiver will eat into the Hindu votes of BJP candidate Vijay Sharma and help Mohammad Akbar of the Congress win again. Patel alleges that Akbar, the incumbent MLA and state law minister, has been getting Rohingya Muslims to settle here to engineer demographic changes, an accusation that the Congress rejects. Patel wants the BJP to win but is disappointed that it has made no farm-loan-waiver promise, unlike the Congress, in a belt of paddy farmers reeling under debt.
In Jabalpur, Narsinghpur and Pipariya in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Ladli Behna scheme — Rs 1,250 is transferred each month into the accounts of women between 21 and 60 years old who have an annual family income of less than Rs 2.5 lakh — is a topic of animated discussion among OBC communities, particularly in the Lodhi-heavy belt of Gotegaon and Narsinghpur.
In Pipariya, a young Lodhi voter thinks Shivraj supports only women voters. He says that while the Ladli Behna scheme puts money into their accounts, the CM has not concentrated on infrastructure and jobs. Women not giving money to their husbands has led to a rise in marital strife, he adds. On a train from Raipur to Bhopal, a young man quips, “Yahaan laadla koi nahin hai, sirf laadli hi hain (no boy here is loved, only girls are cared for).”
Among the national-level issues, India’s image abroad, the Ram temple in Ayodhya, terrorism and national security often figure in discussions. The condition of roads is also a topic, with many saying that road quality has improved under the BJP. In Bhopal, cab driver Ajit says that the commute to his village is now much shorter as roads have improved over the past decade.
In Chhindwara district’s Junnardeo constituency, Suraj, a young man from the Sahu caste (community of oil-pressers) says that while he is disappointed with the BJP in the state, the fact that terrorism has ebbed and the Ram temple will soon be a reality will make him vote for Kamal Nath in the Assembly elections and Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha.
At the Bargi Assembly constituency near Jabalpur, when a group of voters from the Vishwakarma (carpenter) caste were asked why they had not even mentioned a caste census promised by the Congress as an issue, one among them thought long and hard before answering, “Caste is not an issue in our state. Maybe in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, people think about it in the context of elections.”
