Author: Lucia Michelutti
Publication: India Today
Date: December 4, 2009
URL: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/StoryPrint?sId=74191&secid=30&page=null
Introduction: The New breed of cosmopolitan
provincial politicians remains configured by caste lines, if only to retain
existing benefits rather than gain new ones in a even more polarized nation
One of the most striking political developments
of the last decade has been the rise and consolidation of caste-based regional
parties. During this time the political significance of lower castes/communities,
and lower caste political leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mayawati, have
achieved national prominence.
Underprivileged groups have gradually emerged
as major votebanks in opposition to the 'forward castes' and revolutionised
the Indian political arena at all levels. Not only have historically disadvantaged
groups become more likely to vote and participate in politics than their well-educated
and wealthy counterparts, but there has also been a radical change in the
face of the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, with many more politicians coming
from lower caste backgrounds than ever before.
Underpinning these political developments
has been great social change. Popular politics did not spring out of the blue
in the late 1990s, and its development is linked to long-term processes of
social transformation beyond the realm of electoral politics. These changes
have not only shaped the practice of electoral politics, but have also more
fundamentally altered the social and cultural meaning of democracy in India.
The argument I put forward in my monograph,
The Vernacularisation of Democracy, is that popular politics thrives when
ideas and practices of democracy enter and transform domains of life which
are not usually considered to be 'political' like family life, caste, kinship,
marriage ideologies, and popular religion. Thus, the entrance of underprivileged
sections of society into mass politics has not been a response to changes
that took place in the realm of party politics, but rather has been the result
of ongoing transformations in the social and cultural structure of society
which political parties then caught up with and reacted to.
The rise of regional caste-based parties over
the last two decades has been encouraged by a number of interlinked social
processes such as the weakening of the legitimacy of caste hierarchy, changes
in the local patterns of authority and patronage and crucially the 'substantialisation'
of caste and its transformation into a 'quasiethnic group'. Ethnographic research
shows how the caste system defined by hierarchical relations is changing its
nature. As a result, castes are increasingly becoming competitive 'horizontal'
groups.
This provides the basis for new forms of political
competition. And it is precisely as 'horizontal' groups that they have been
mobilised by regional political parties. It represents a shift from the mobilisation
techniques used by the Congress during the first decades of rule.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Congress transformed
patron-client relations between so-called 'dominant castes' and other castes
into a votebank through 'vertical mobilisation'. In doing so the party put
together coalitions of upper and lower castes. By the 1970s, however, the
experience of competitive electoral politics, and the impact of education,
reserved jobs and land reforms, weakened local structures of dominance, and
this opened up political spaces for traditionally marginalised (both economically
and ritually) castes and communities.