BJP'S Chakravyuh- Quota Vs Quota

Wary of SP-BSP unity with 2019 on its mind, the BJP has a new poll trick: divide up the OBC quota, pitting the relatively better-off sections against the rest.

- Bhavna Vij-Aurora

The national political thermometer may have been showing higher readings from Karnataka by then but, on March 20, a lot of fuel stocks for future heat were beginning to be deployed at a quiet meeting in Delhi. Om Prakash Rajbhar, Uttar Pradesh’s minister for backward classes welfare, had finally got the appointment with BJP president Amit Shah that he had long sought. His agenda: to impress upon Shah the urgent need to slice up the OBC reservation pie in UP. It’s the next big idea in the BJP’s arsenal, meant to counter the potential consolidation against it by a united Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party phalanx.

Here’s how it works. Simply put, the idea is to take the most populous umbrella caste segment in India’s most populous state—OBCs are perhaps 50 per cent of Uttar Pradesh—and put it under the lens. Thus, first distinguish between the great variety of shades on the backward class palette. Then group them in three separate slots according to affinities in socio-economic indices—who is less or more poor, who has less or more land (or none at all), who has better education levels et al. And finally carve up the 27 per cent OBC quota and make available three separate portions to each.

In a way, it’s a variation on the old idea of the four-way division of Uttar Pradesh—except that it would be along the lines of social geography rather than pure territory. The motives remain the same. Earmarking a share for the extremely backward and most backward communities is an urgent matter, Rajbhar told Shah. The dominant castes among OBCs like the Yadavs, Jats and Sonars were hogging most of the benefits. Besides, of course, there’s the political benefit of raiding the enemy’s resources from both flanks.