MAY 19, 2010
India Goes Backward on Caste
Identity politics yields diminishing returns.
By BARUN S. MITRA
Caste has cast its shadow once again over Indian politics. Over the
past few weeks, parliament has witnessed uproarious scenes on whether
to include caste in the once-a-decade census that has just gotten
underway. Opinion is split among political leaders, social activists
and the public. But far from being ultimately divisive, this debate is
a perfect demonstration of how India's vibrant democracy and growing
economy is making caste less and less important.
For a start, counting castes is increasingly a practical absurdity.
When the British tried it as part of the first census in 1881, they
identified fewer than 2,000 subcastes, and found that 58% of these
groups had a population of less than 1,000. They omitted caste from
the 1931 census because they couldn't standardize the categories in
view of enormous local variations.
Even Indians have problems defining caste. When a commission was set
up in the 1980s to identify socially and economically backward
classes, it identified more than 4,000 "other backward castes."
Including all the subcastes among the upper castes, there might be
around 10,000 castes in India today—or more.
But does any of this really matter? As time goes on, economic growth
is eroding strong caste distinctions. Indians who want to escape
restrictive social customs in their villages can find economic
opportunities and upward mobility in cities. Urbanization has also
provided an opportunity to remain anonymous in a sea of humanity, in
contrast to small towns or villages where it was easy for residents to
know each other's ancestry and caste.
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They're more concerned with development than social class.
Society is also becoming more tolerant. A century ago, caste-based
discrimination prevailed in social and religious practices, marriage
customs and eating habits. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who chaired the
committee that drafted the Indian Constitution, was forbidden to touch
water pots at his school because he was from a lower caste. Barely 40
years ago in New Delhi, it was not uncommon to find Brahmin teachers
refusing to eat or drink if they were served by lower castes. Today,
students and teachers at government schools participate equally in
midday meals, and schools that are found to discriminate on the
grounds of caste are castigated.
Thus the only people who would advocate a caste census would be the
people who personally benefit from it: namely, politicians who depend
on identity politics to win votes. They hail from mostly smaller
parties like the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar or the Samajwadi Party
in Uttar Pradesh. Marginalized from the halls of power, they think a
caste census could facilitate the flow of more money and affirmative
action programs to their political constituencies.
This trend started in the late 1980s, when the Congress Party's grip
on power eroded. Smaller parties emerged to seize the political
opportunity and sought to mobilize voters based on their regional,
religious or caste identities. But to win support, they had to give
those groups special benefits. Citizens quickly realized they needed
to be classified as certain castes to obtain certain benefits. In the
1990s, so many groups in Andhra Pradesh demanded to be recognized as
"backward" that the total number was a figure four times larger than
the official population of the state.
The bigger problem is that playing identity politics has a diminishing
marginal return. Indians are generally comfortable with multiple
identities—ethnic, linguistic, regional and religious, as well as
caste. Hardly any narrow homogeneous identity dominates any specific
electoral constituency or region.
That's why in a country where over 80% of the population professes to
be Hindu, the Bharatiya Janata Party's attempt to mobilize support
based on that identity did not assure them electoral success. Uttar
Pradesh chief minister Mayawati figured this out in 2007, when she
expanded the base of her Bahujan Samaj Party to include all castes,
rather than just untouchables. The strategy propelled the party to
power by itself for the first time ever in India's most populous
state.
Thus it's little surprise that the big political parties—the Congress
Party and the BJP—have mixed views of the calls for a caste census.
Since these parties are national in scope, they are naturally more
cautious.
They also understand the limits of Indian politics. The "first past
the post system" mandates that the winning candidate must win the
maximum number of votes in a geographic constituency. Given the
diversity of India's population, a candidate has to form political
coalitions that cut across caste, religious and ethnic identities to
have any chance of winning. This is especially true for state or
national-level legislative elections—and invariably necessitates a
degree of compromise.
More practically, there is a limit to political patronage that can be
distributed. The public sector, including national, state and local
levels, employs barely 5% of the more than 450 million people in the
labor force. Even if all the jobs were reserved for the lowest and
backward castes, it would barely make a dent on the socio-economic
status of these communities. In addition, finding qualified and
competent people from within a lower caste would be a challenge, given
35% of that population is illiterate, and less than 15% of the youth
actually enroll for any kind of college education.
India's politicians face a clear choice: They can side with the old
social order and try to secure their own political future through
patronage, or they can discard it, like the rest of the country is
doing. Indians are on the move and their many identities are becoming
optional. It is the politicians who are in danger of being left
behind, exposing the true nature of their own identities.
Mr. Mitra is director of the Liberty Institute, an independent think
tank in New Delhi, and a columnist for WSJ.com.
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