OBC politics takes the stage in Vindhya electoral arena

At a small tea stall outside the Congress office in Churhat in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh, Vaidyanath Patel, 62, rues underdevelopment of the Vindhya region.

- Shruti Tomar

At the same time, he credits a local and former chief minister, the late Arjun Singh of the Congress, for initiating Other Backward Classes (OBC) politics in the state in the 1980s by promising reservation, which catapulted him to the national political arena. Forty-three years down the line, the Congress is again banking on OBC politics to return to power in the Central Indian state.

"Arjun Singh provided us the first hope of reservation in 1980 much before the Mandal politics started in the country," Patel said, wondering whether the Congress promise of caste census to identify the proportion of OBCs in the state to increase reservation for them will benefit the party electorally. "We were jobless then and we are jobless now," Patel, who is from a OBC community, said.

In his first term as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Arun Singh in 1980 set up Ramji Mahajan Commission to provide reservation in government jobs to OBCs. In 1983, the commission submitted its report estimating that 48.8% of the state population belonged to OBC communities and recommended 35% reservation in government jobs for them. Singh could not implement the recommendation and the Congress replaced him with Motilal Vohra as CM in 1985.

Singh in 2008 was, however, able to implement 27% reservation for OBCs in central educational institutions when he was Union human resources (now education) minister; this was done through the 93rd amendment of the Indian Constitution, and withstood legal scrutiny. The decision, an extension of the Mandal commission's recommendation on 27% reservation for OBCs in government jobs, was said to be one of the reasons for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to return to power in 2009.