Prof. Satish Deshpande on caste factor in Indian politics today

Last updated on 9th Nov. 2015

A view about caste factor in Indian politics today, from Prof. of sociology, Satish Deshpande of the University of Delhi, The ‘OBC’ primer on Indian politics, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-obc-primer-on-indian-politics/article7847129.ece, dated Nov. 6th 2015.

Prof. Deshpande, http://sociology.du.ac.in/index.php/people/faculty?id=124, http://people.du.ac.in/~sdeshpande/HmPg+1_CV.html, has a Ph.D. in sociology (1991) from University of California at Santa Cruz (USA).

The article refers to the 'Mandal moment'. This is a reference to the Mandal commission report and efforts to implement it later on. From the associated wiki page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandal_Commission:

The Mandal Commission was established in India in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educationally backward." It was headed by Indian parliamentarian B.P. Mandal to consider the question of seat reservations and quotas for people to redress caste discrimination, and used eleven social, economic, and educational indicators to determine backwardness. In 1980, the commission's report affirmed the affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby members of lower castes (known as Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST)) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these quotas, increasing them by 27% to 50%. Mobilization on caste lines had followed the political empowerment of ordinary citizens by the constitution of free India that allowed common people to politically assert themselves through the right to vote.
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Update on 9th Nov. 2015

Bihar assembly (state) election results declared yesterday (8th Nov. 2015) have given a landslide victory to the "Grand Alliance" (Mahagatbandhan) of Mr. Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal (United) party, Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav led Rashtriya Janata Dal party and the Mrs. Sonia Gandhi & Mr. Rahul Gandhi led Indian National Congress party, over the Mr. Narendra Modi and Mr. Amit Shah led BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) and its allies. You can see the final tally/numbers here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bihar_Legislative_Assembly_election,_2015#Result.

This article gives some supposed views of BJP leaders on the caste factor influence in these election results, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/bihar-polls-in-bjp-war-room-caste-only-caste-is-the-winner/.

It seems to me (Ravi) that caste groupings continue to be a very important factor in Indian democratic politics today, as the caste groupings factor seems to be very powerful in rural and semi-urban parts of India which seems to constitute the majority of the Indian electorate. Note that I am limiting myself to simply observing and understanding democratic politics in India today as that affects policy making in the government (at the state level and at the central/federal level).

[I thank Wikipedia and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]