Gehlot’s order for caste survey well-calculated, but not without risks

The sanction for a caste survey in states and a caste census, nationally, has emerged as a key pivot of the Opposition’s INDIA coalition ahead of the forthcoming assembly polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Buoyed by a palpably positive response that the recently published caste survey, commissioned by the Nitish Kumar-led JD (U)-RJD-Congress ruling coalition in Bihar, has received from the numerically formidable backward classes, the Congress has been promising a similar enumeration exercise in the five poll-bound states.

Gehlot’s masterstroke before polls

Gehlot’s move is in line with his party’s pitch and comes a day after the core committee for Congress’s Rajasthan unit unanimously agreed that the survey must be a prominent plank of the party’s poll campaign. However, by actually ordering the enumeration instead of dangling it as a poll promise, the Rajasthan chief minister has outsmarted not just his political opponents from the BJP but also further cemented his position within his own party ahead of an election which many of his intra-party rivals are hoping would be his swan song.

The decision also distinguishes Gehlot favourably from his Chhattisgarh counterpart, Bhupesh Baghel. Of the five poll-bound states, the Congress currently rules Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge along with party leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi had, over the past week, pitched conducting a caste survey as its poll promise in both these states. Gehlot can now claim credit for initiating the process to deliver a poll promise before the actual election. Incidentally, both Gehlot and Baghel come from backward communities – the social denomination that the Congress and its INDIA partners most hope to woo with the promise of caste enumeration – and have emerged as their party’s foremost OBC faces.

The Gehlot government’s decision is expected to immediately attract the charge of being motivated by electoral expedience, given that it has been taken in the final days of the government’s five-year tenure. However, a source close to the chief minister told The Federal that Gehlot is “confident that such criticism will backfire because our election campaign will ensure that the caste survey is explained as a natural progression of pro-people policies and programmes of a government that has made historical interventions and course-corrections on all matters related to welfare of socially oppressed and economically backward communities”.

The Rajasthan government’s order also articulated the need for a caste survey on the same lines as explained by the Congress leader quoted above. The order, which said that the state’s department for planning (economics and statistics) will be the nodal department for conducting the survey, stated that caste enumeration was required to ensure that welfare schemes are drafted after factoring in requirements for social and economic upliftment of all sections of the state’s population. The order also said that the nodal department will formulate a questionnaire that will ensure that “information related to social, economic and educational level of every person” is collected as part of the survey.

‘BJP struggling to find counter narrative’

The Congress and its INDIA allies, particularly the JD(U), RJD, SP and the DMK, believe that the BJP’s resistance to caste enumeration and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt at painting the exercise as a socially-divisive agenda pursued by the Opposition would alienate the backward classes from the saffron party.

“If you see the statements coming from the BJP, and especially from Modi, on the caste census, it is easy to make out that they are struggling to find a counter narrative... the Bihar caste survey (which revealed that over 63 per cent of the state’s population belongs to the backward and extremely backward classes) has created a groundswell of support for caste survey in every state and more the BJP resists this demand, the more support it stands to lose among backward classes,” said former Congress Working Committee member and Gehlot confidante, Raghuveer Meena.

The Congress is hopeful that the caste survey, coupled with the Gehlot government’s welfare schemes such as Chiranjeevi Yojana, urban employment guarantee, minimum income guarantee bill, Annapurna, Mehangai Rahat Camps, among many others, would help the party tide over criticism from the BJP of turning the state into a hotspot of crimes against women, Dalits and tribals. Additionally, with the BJP struggling to resolve its internal feuds and unsure of the shenanigans that its tallest but sidelined state leader, former chief minister Vasundhara Raje, may employ during the polls, the Congress believes that Gehlot’s Machiavellian manoeuvres are the party’s best bet at returning to power in a state otherwise known for voting out incumbent governments every five years.

Solution to Jat-Gujjar issue

By giving a nod for the caste survey, Gehlot also seems to have factored in the electoral repercussions that both Congress and BJP have faced in Rajasthan in the past whenever they have undermined – or, equally, played along with – the assertion of caste identity by various groups and their demands for a slice of the affirmative action pie. Both Congress and BJP have, on different occasions, faced the wrath of the Jat and Gujjar communities over demands that have, at various points in time in the past three decades, ranged from their inclusion in the state and central OBC lists to the creation or increase of a sub-quota for them in reservations in government jobs and educational institutions.

Though the regimes of Gehlot and Raje – the two have ruled the state cyclically since 1998 – have each made attempts at addressing the social inclusion and reservation-linked concerns of the Jat and Gujjar communities, the solutions offered by them have often proved failed the test of longevity; giving way to recurring agitations for increased representation – both in politics and administration.

Gehlot, arguably, has been hit harder compared to Raje given that the former belongs to a numerically smaller backward community (Gehlot belongs to the Mali caste while Raje is a Rajput married to a Jat) and has had a troubled history with the electorally formidable Jat community, which at an estimated 20 per cent of the state’s electorate, is the largest monolithic caste group in Rajasthan. His equations with the Gujjars, another electorally influential caste group which constitutes an estimated six per cent of the electorate, has been equally problematic due to his internecine squabbles with intra-party rival, Tonk MLA Sachin Pilot.

The Jats and Gujjars, both part of state’s OBC list with different sub-quotas earmarked for them under the perseveration reservation scheme, are just two of several caste groups in Rajasthan that have been vocal over their recurring demands for better socio-economic inclusion. By ordering the caste survey, Gehlot can now claim that a reassessment of the presently applicable social justice and welfare apparatus would be done once the enumeration is completed, irrespective of whether he remains in power or not. In making such a pitch, he can also hope to consolidate support from scores of smaller backward castes that are spread across Rajasthan but are not as vocal as the Jats or the Gujjars.

Is Gehlot’s plan a gamble?

Whether Gehlot’s plans pan out as intended and help him break the jinx of losing power after completing a term in office is, of course, premature to say.

“It’s a gamble and I would go as far as to say that no other politician in Rajasthan, not even Vasundhara Raje, would have taken it in an election that is still a very close contest (between the Congress and BJP)... we will have to wait and see what kind of narrative the Congress builds on this and the counter that comes from the BJP; equally, we have to see how the numerically bigger communities, backward or forward, react to this – for instance, if the Jats think the survey may show their population to be lesser than what is currently perceived, they will obviously not be too happy... so there are obviously a lot of ponderables but I think Gehlot will not make the mistake of overplaying the caste survey and he will, instead, give primacy in the campaign to his flagship welfare schemes, which are undoubtedly a big hit with the masses,” Jaipur-based political commentator Om Saini told The Federal.