Call it the hour of reckoning for Rahul Gandhi. It’s time to tell and show the country how he can change the lives of the underprivileged and oppressed sections of society, and how he can bring social and economic justice for them. For several years now, he has been offering caste census as the panacea for all their problems. It may look like a throwback to Mandal vs. Kamandal politics of the 1990s, but he has looked convinced that what undid the Congress – especially in the Hindi heartland – would do the same to Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. Let’s not pre-judge it yet.
Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, his acolyte, has given Rahul Gandhi a perfect opportunity to show what he plans to achieve through a nationwide caste census. Reddy is convening a special session of the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday to debate and adopt the caste census report or the report of the Socio, Economic, Education, Employment, Political and Caste survey.
“Today marks a revolutionary step for social justice in Telangana,” Uttam Kumar Reddy reportedly said, adding that the survey aligns with the vision of “future Prime Minister Rahul Gandhi”.
Revanth Reddy is walking the talk, unlike his Karnataka counterpart Siddaramaiah, who has been sitting over this report for close to a decade, promising to present it at the next Cabinet meeting for several months now. Siddaramaiah, an OBC leader, is facing opposition from powerful Vokkaliga and Lingayat leaders in his party – given that the caste survey purportedly shows the population of these two communities much lower than commonly projected.
But trust Siddaramaiah to make the report public at a convenient time, using it like a Pandora’s Box if and when the political heat, generated as much from within as outside, becomes too much to bear. Revanth Reddy seems more inclined to stir the pot in Telangana.
Just how the latest caste survey is likely to play out politically and in matters of governance, can be gauged from what K Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter Kavitha wrote for NDTV about three weeks back:
“Telangana under the leadership of K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) had witnessed firsthand the transformative power of targeted policies, whether through BC welfare programmes, the post-matric scholarship schemes for BC students, and BC Residential schools. For other community initiatives, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government in Telangana introduced life insurance for the weaver community, government support for inter-caste weddings, free electricity for saloons to support the Nai Brahmin community, life insurance for weavers, and various other schemes for the dhobi community to name a few.”
Telangana is likely to witness much more amplified demands from different caste groups for their share in resource allocations—apart from reservations in government jobs and educational institutions, of course—once the Revanth Reddy government makes the entire data public.
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The implications of this move will span much beyond a state or a political party. Telangana is likely to become a pilot project or a laboratory of what Rahul Gandhi seeks to achieve by the caste census. On the face of it, it looks like Gandhi is borrowing the slogan of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) founder Kanshi Ram—”Jiski jitni sankhya bhari, uski utni hissedari (greater the number, larger the share)”.
Gandhi has, however, remained vague about specifics. He has spoken about taking the reservation ceiling beyond the court-mandated 50 per cent but that’s in the context of quota in government jobs and education. He has been repeatedly raising the issue of minuscule OBC representation among the secretaries to the government of India—three out of 90, as he said in September 2023.
He is evidently convinced that the caste of decision-makers has a bearing on the orientation of policies toward disadvantaged groups. He seems to be tying himself in knots, though. Because Rahul Gandhi, projected as the ‘future PM’ by Congress leaders, is a Dattatreya Brahmin.
The fact is that there are lots of ambiguities when it comes to Gandhi’s idea of caste census: Is it about proportionate quota in jobs and education—setting the legal hindrances aside for now? Or is it about proportionate distribution of resources, such as 56 per cent of capital expenditure on BCs in Telangana?
Would it also mean proportionate representation in decision-making positions—say, 56 BCs (percentage wise) out of 100 ministers, joint secretaries, secretaries, principal secretaries, judges, school and college principals, patwaris, station house officers, sarpanches etc in Telangana?
I know I am sounding almost sarcastic and dismissive here. But it’s as much to do with my cynicism about the impracticality of proportionate representation and distribution, as with my ignorance about Rahul Gandhi’s plans.
He has probably thought it through, unlike the Narendra Modi-led government that set up the Rohini Commission on the sub-categorisation of OBCs in 2017 – only to give it over a dozen extensions and sweep its report under the carpet.
If that is the case, and Rahul Gandhi has a proper roadmap for Revanth Reddy to implement, Telangana caste survey offers a huge opportunity. It will allow him to show India how it can be transformative for underprivileged sections. If he rolls out the blueprint in Telangana soon, it will put the Modi government in a tight spot.
The latter has been delaying the Census and has been evasive on the issue of enumerating castes in it. In the latest Budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has allocated only Rs 574 crore for it, indicating that the government hasn’t decided yet to conduct a Census in 2025. In 2019, the Union Cabinet had reportedly approved a Rs 8,754 crore proposal for conducting a Census in 2021.
If Rahul Gandhi can steer the Revanth Reddy government to announce some radical measures in pursuance of the caste census report, the issue would probably start gaining traction nationally and put the ruling BJP in a spot of bother. But if the Telangana caste survey doesn’t go beyond political rhetoric in terms of follow-up policy actions, it will completely take the shine off Rahul Gandhi’s mega poll pitch. The Congress will then find itself trapped in the caste web Gandhi wove so assiduously to ensnare the BJP.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
