Development has overshadowed the influence of caste in electoral behaviour in recent elections. Discuss. (UPSC CSE Mains 2019 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1).
- According to Christophe Jaffrelot, ‘While caste-based politics remains largely true, the 2014 and 2019 general election reflected the growing importance of some class elements within the caste, which is partly due to the socio-economic differentiation of caste groups’.
- According to him, the promise of caste-based reservations has lost momentum. In the 1990s, in the wake of the pro-Mandal mobilisation, some parties could tell OBC voters, Vote for me and you’ll get quotas.’ But such claims are not sustainable any more as quotas have reached 60 percent, beyond its saturation point. A similar dynamic can only be started again if reservations in the private sector became a realistic prospect, but that is not the case today.
- For decades, caste and class almost coincided and, as a result, from the 1990s onwards, upper castes monopolised middle-class positions. Changes have occurred in the context of the post-1991 liberalisation. This process has fostered a very high growth rate that has helped some poor people to become part of the neo-middle class.
- This very amorphous social category is made of aspiring people who have initiated some upward mobility and sometimes some geographical mobility too, as they shifted from rural to urban or semi-urban localities to get a non-agricultural job. This group is more focused on development internally and also on the geopolitical location of India globally.
- However, caste continues to play a significant role at the jati level, a more relevant unit of analysis than the large categories like upper castes, OBCs and Scheduled Castes. But some socio-economic differentiation is also taking place within jatis, and this process, along with other subdivisions, affects the voting pattern at that level too.
- So, while we can still explain the electoral behaviour of Indians on the basis of their caste background, new variables need to be factored in, including development politics.
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