Sanjaya Baru | Return of class in India’s caste-obsessed politics

Smart, articulate young people, who have been brought up within the cultural and linguistic milieu of metropolitan India, often find it difficult to easily pronounce a long name like Panchapakesan or even a short one like Kanimozhi, but they are quick to tell us their caste and even sub-caste. Political journalists who may not have been aware till recently of their own caste identity, or even aware of what a “sub-caste” is, have completely internalised caste consciousness. So much so that almost all political reporting in the run-up to an election is focused on caste. One may not know how to pronounce Vokkaliga or Lingayat, nor even know their place within the caste hierarchy, but we are now all aware that the forthcoming Assembly elections in Karnataka are all about them.

Why blame the young reporters? The last time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi reconstituted the Union council of ministers, the Prime Minister’s Office even briefed the media specifying the Cabinet’s caste composition. The council has a “record 27 OBCs as ministers”, the media was informed, including Yadavs, Gurjars, Jats, Thakurs, Lodhs, and so on. The 12 Scheduled Caste ministers included a Chamar-Ramdassia, a Khatik, a Pasi, a Kori, a Madiga, a Mahar, a Arundathiyar, a Meghwal, a

Rajbonshi, a Matua-Namashudra, a Dhangar and a Dusadh. The media was given a crash course in sociology and politics.

Against this background, it was refreshing to read political scientist and political activist Yogendra Yadav’s recent column in The Print drawing attention to a survey conducted across Karnataka that underscores the importance of what may be described as the “class factors” in the ensuing elections. Conducted by a civil society group, Eedina, the survey was canvassed across 41,169 respondents, by a thousand “citizen journalists” who covered 204 of the 224 Assembly constituencies.

While the survey shows the Congress Party returning to power in Karnataka with a comfortable majority, the point of analytical interest that Mr Yadav draws our attention to is the socio-economic basis of the forecast. To quote, “The BJP enjoys a 13-point lead over the Congress among the upper class, which shrinks to one point among the middle class. The position flips as we go downwards: The Congress has a three-point lead among the lower middle class, which expands to 14 points among the poor and a 20-point lead among the very poor. What tilts the balance decisively for the Congress is, of course, the relative size of these classes. The top three classes, where the BJP can trump or match the Congress, account for 40 per cent of the population, while the bottom two categories, where the Congress has a massive lead, add up to 60 per cent of the population.”

Hence, concludes Mr Yadav, “class matters in the Karnataka elections”. Those overwhelmed by the obsessive focus of the mass media on caste may be surprised by this assertion, but any analyst familiar with recent trends in the economy would not be. Even as the traditional Left Front parties have experienced an atrophy in their support base across the country, three factors have contributed to the rise of class consciousness in recent months.

First and foremost, the post-Covid loss of livelihood and employment; second, the rising and visible economic inequality; and, third, persistent high inflation that has exacerbated the effect of employment loss and rising inequality.

Taken together, these three factors have revived class consciousness both within the poor and the lower middle classes. The data on the social effects of rising inequality are all too evident. The sales of high-end automobiles have been rising while those of low-cost entry level cars has declined. Spending on foreign travel has increased but the demand for bicycles has declined. The market holds a mirror to society.

The rich are better off, the lower middle class find themselves slipping back into their erstwhile lower levels of existence.

Economists dispute this with surveys and statistical models, but the “in-your-face” consumerism of the new rich, the new power elite, stares one in the face from every TV station, every front-page advertisement. As one prescient observer recently observed, there was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the poor were represented in cinema. Raj Kapoor’s Charlie Chaplin epitomised their presence. For some time now, not only have the poor been banished from Bollywood, but Bollywood has become the stage for the overseas Indian to strut around.

It is not as if the political parties are not aware of this reality. The rising expenditure on what are called “freebies”, the provision of free food, free electricity and so on, bankrupting the exchequer, shows that politicians in power know that the unhappy poor need to be assuaged. A mix of populism, social welfare, middle castes’ appeasement and communalised authoritarianism constitute the new cocktail of upper-class dominance, as I have argued in my recent book, India’s Power Elite: Class, Caste and a Cultural Revolution (Penguin Viking, 2021).

It would be unfair to blame the Bharatiya Janata Party alone for such politics. Every regional political party represents a regional elite desperate to either share power with a national party or position itself in opposition to a national party to increase its political leverage. All regional parties are today dominated by the upper class and upper caste elements. Some of the richest members of Parliament hail from the more developed states and are members of the regional parties. For many of them the BJP is a natural ally and Prime Minister Narendra Modi knows this. From Naveen Patnaik to Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, from N. Chandrababu Naidu to K. Chandrashekar Rao, from Sharad Pawar to M.K. Stalin, every upper caste regional leader is a potential BJP ally.

With the Left parties still in disarray and most regional parties dominated by regional elites, it remains to be seen whether Rahul Gandhi’s strategy of positioning the Congress, with a Dalit as party president and raising issues relating to livelihood security and economic opportunity, will re-assert the role of class in national politics, as we have recently seen in Brazil, or whether the new national and regional ruling elites will be cleverer, and will continue to divide and rule.