Anxieties of the dominant At the root of the insecurities of Marathas, Jats and Patels lies lack of education and employability

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Anxieties of the dominant
At the root of the insecurities of Marathas, Jats and Patels lies lack of education and employability
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At the root of the insecurities of Marathas, Jats and Patels lies lack of education and employability (Express Photo by Arul Horizon)
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The recent clash in Pune district between the Mahars and Marathas reflects the anti-Dalit prejudice of the latter, but it needs to be analysed in the context of the changing status of dominant castes, not only in Maharashtra but across India. The claims of Patels, Jats and Marathas to be considered as OBCs have been dismissed by many observers simply because these dominant castes are not socially backward. Certainly, they are ahead of lower castes in terms of income. But this socio-economic reality needs to be qualified from two perspectives. First, poor Patels, Jats and Marathas are now lagging behind affluent OBCs (sometimes even the Dalits). Second, their demand for quotas reflects anxieties regarding education and jobs. This is evident from the Indian Human Development Survey. While dominant castes do well in terms of income, they systematically lag behind other forward castes in terms of education, largely because of their rural background.

In Maharashtra, in 2011-12, the percentage of Brahmins who were graduates and above was about 26 per cent, against 8.1 per cent among the Marathas. The Dalits stood at 5.1 per cent and the OBCs at 7.6 per cent, but among the latter, the Malis had reached 9.5 per cent. More importantly, from 2004-05 to 2011-12, the Dalits and OBCs have gained at a faster rate in education. The percentage of graduates among the Dalits in 2004-05 was 1.9 per cent and has more than doubled to 5.1 per cent in 2011-12. The corresponding figure for the OBCs was 3.5 per cent and has doubled to 7.6 per cent in 2011-12, while the Marathas were at 4.6 per cent in 2004-05 and have come up to only 8 per cent in 2011-12.

The Marathas not only resent the rise of the OBCs and the Dalits in the educational system because of reservations, they also cannot compete with upper castes because of their under-representation in the English-medium colleges. As a result, the Marathas have not benefited as much as upper castes from the rise of the services, including IT, in post-1991 liberalised India. And only the richest among them could profit by the government’s support to export-oriented agriculturists.

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The Patels are similarly affected, despite their increasing presence in expensive private universities. The percentage of graduates among the Patels was 9.8 per cent in 2011-12, against 19.1 per cent for the Brahmins and 11.7 per cent for other forward castes. The OBCs and SCs were far below, at 2.4 per cent and 4.8 per cent respectively. But the OBCs have gained in education during 2004-05 to 2011-12. The percentage of graduates among them was abysmally low at 1.1 per cent in 2004-05 and went up to 2.4 per cent in 2011-12. Although it appears a marginal increment in terms of percentage, the actual number of graduates has doubled among the OBCs. The SCs have almost doubled their percentage of graduates too, from 2.7 per cent in 2004-05 to 4.8 per cent in 2011-12. The Dalit mobilisation sparked by the Una incident has to be seen in this light.

In Haryana, the percentage of graduates among the Jats, at 5.1 per cent, is not only lower than that of the Brahmins (15.7 per cent) and other forward castes (14.4 per cent), but also of the OBCs (5.4 per cent). And the SCs and OBCs have gained in education more than the Jats from 2004-05 to 2011-12. The percentage of graduates among the Dalits has more than doubled from 0.8 per cent in 2004-05 to 2.1per cent in 2011-12. The Jats pay the price for their historical neglect of education even more than other dominant castes.

To sum up: During 2004-05 to 2011-12, the percentage of graduates among the SCs, OBCs and Marathas/Patels/Jats has respectively increased by 171 per cent, 121 per cent and 71 per cent in Maharashtra; 94 per cent, 114 per cent and 38 per cent in Gujarat; and 135 per cent, 77 per cent and 70 per cent in Haryana. These dominant castes feel threatened, more so because they could not get as many salaried jobs as they would like.

The current services-led economic growth demands a certain level of education, social skills and attributes. The dominant castes often lack these assets, and while the SCs and OBCs miss them too, they partly make up for this because of reservations. The salaried jobs they get are often valued because of the stability and the average income they offer compared to the informal sector and agriculture. For instance, the average annual per capita income in a household headed by a cultivator is Rs 37,818 in Haryana whereas, for the salaried, it is Rs 54,899. Any salaried job is placed over casual labour or petty self-employment as a surer way of mobility.

The percentage of salaried people among SCs is about 28 per cent in Maharashtra, 27 per cent in Gujarat and 21 per cent in Haryana, as against 30 per cent among Marathas, 19 per cent among Patels and just 11 per cent among Jats. The OBCs are also doing rather well. The salaried among them are 23 per cent in Maharashtra, about 17 per cent in Gujarat and 19 per cent in Haryana.

This rise of the SCs and OBCs in salaried jobs has generated resentment among many dominant castes which are still over-represented in agriculture, at a time agriculture is becoming increasingly unviable and incomes are less than from other occupations in rural areas. For instance, about 63 per cent Kunbi Marathas and 44 per cent Marathas in Maharashtra, 40 per cent Patels in Gujarat and 67 per cent Jats in Haryana were agriculturists in 2011-12. The corresponding figures for OBCs for these states were 31 per cent, 28 per cent and 26 per cent. The percentage of cultivators among the SCs is even lower as they hardly own land — a blessing in disguise. They are about 11 per cent in Maharashtra, 20 per cent in Gujarat and 6 per cent in Haryana.

These data throw light on the dominant castes’ mobilisation but do not legitimise their demand for reservations. First, only a fraction of their members are lagging in socio-economic terms. Second, job reservations are no solution: How can the state provide enough work to 60 per cent of society, even if the judiciary permitted it? The priorities lie in improving the employability of the youth, and, in the short term, a genuine promotion of agriculture, a sector that has been neglected in public policies, as evident from the low MSPs that farmers get. But is the government prepared to attenuate its pro-urban consumer bias?

Jaffrelot is senior research fellow at CERI-Sciences Po/CNRS, Paris, professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s India Institute, London. Kalaiyarasan is faculty at Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai

Anxieties of the dominant
 
What lies behind it is the invisible congressi hand. That party has always pursued anti national and divisive policies for power.

With Dalits voting for BJP in 2014 with unprecedent results for BJP, congress truly woke up the the "threat" of unity amongst hindus, even if it is for development.
 
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Reactions: Aravind, Ironhide, Aditya10r and 2 others
Path for job growth in India lies in quality poly-technics. We need to train people who can manufacture goods using modern techniques so a lot of manufacturing which is happening in China can be moved to India. We messed up by making our poly-technics jokes. We don't need to put a degree of engineer on everyone's resume but to train people in useful skills in short duration of time.
 
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These chaps fighting for reservations are all lazy buggers. Most government services in Maharashtra at least, are filled with incompetent bloody rascals. Congress and BJP add fuel to the fire with their vote bank politics . When the kids are young itself they are aware of the fact that some relative will get them a decent government job once they graduate from some third grade college.
 
The last laugh would be with all those political parties promising sections of the populace caste based reservations.

The present and future state of the economy being what it is , we're going to see rapid divestment and privatization of PSU's , Nationalised Banks , other government companies including vast sections of the government administration machinery due to advances in IT , AI , etc and the bulk of the reservations go out of the window .
 
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Behind Maharashtra bandh: Politics to unite backward castes, isolate BJP
CPI(M) supports bandh; Congress and NCP call unrest ‘handiwork of divisive communal forces’
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People watch a protest at Thane station on Wednesday.(Janak Rathod)
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AFTER a day of protests, road and rail rokos, and sporadic violence, the massive shutdown across Maharashtra called by Ambedkarite groups and parties was finally called off around 4.30 pm.

But Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar’s grandson, Prakash Ambedkar, who was leading the agitation, made a bold political statement minutes before calling it off. “It wasn’t a protest of the Dalit groups alone. The bandh’s success shows that people from all oppressed sections participated in the stir. I would say 50 per cent of Maharashtra took part in the bandh,” said Ambedkar.

Just as he maintained that the protest was spontaneous, senior political observers said that bringing all oppressed sections falling in the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Castes under one umbrella formed the larger political subtext behind the agitation.

The gamble comes at a time when the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been trying to appropriate the legacy of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar by pushing the long-pending project of building his grand memorial on the defunct Indu mill land in central Mumbai. As part of its social engineering in Maharashtra, the BJP has been trying to consolidate itself among the dominant Maratha vote bank and the Dalit vote bank, which was traditionally loyal to the Congress but had swung decisively in the BJP’s favour in the 2014 assembly polls.

READ | Why tensions in Maharashtra represent a tussle between competing nationalisms

While the Maratha community accounts for nearly 30 per cent of Maharashtra’s voter base, the Dalits constitute another 10 per cent.

In what is being perceived as a shrewd attempt by Ambedkar for uniting Ambedkarites from various castes, he has singularly blamed right-wing hardline leaders, Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote (who is also a former BJP corporator), for the violence at Bhima Koregaon on January 1, which had triggered the agitation. “The Ambedkarite movement has its origins in anti-right wing politics,” explained a senior leader, who was a part of the protesting group.

Sensing an opportunity to corner the BJP on the issue, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which is looking to rebuild in Maharashtra, lent active support to Wednesday’s bandh. “There is a need to mobilise all sections against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. What you saw on Wednesday was a people’s struggle, the next step is to do the same mobilisation on a political platform,” said CPI(M) leader Dr Ashok Dhawale. “We will now lead a statewide campaign over the issue,” he said.

ALSO READ | Dalit protests shut down Maharashtra, RSS blames ‘Breaking India Brigade’

The Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, on the other hand, see this as an opportunity to corner the BJP. Leaders from both the parties projected the agitation as a “handiwork of divisive communal forces” while blaming the Devendra Fadnavis government for failing to prevent the violence.

“The government has to be alert and apprehend mischievous elements. What was it doing? Someone (in the government) must own accountability for the lapse,” said former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan. “The BJP design of caste polarisation with the help of its sleeper cells (read fringe groups) has been exposed,” said Sachin Sawant, Congress spokesman.

Isolated politically, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis blamed “outside elements” for triggering the unrest. Senior BJP and RSS leaders tried to put the blame for the violence on Gujarat MLA and Dalit activist Jignesh Mevani and Jawaharlal Nehru University scholar Umar Khalid, but even party insiders conceded that the messaging had not evoked the desired response. BJP’s ally Shiv Sena was also seen distancing itself from the BJP over the issue.

Bhima Koregaon clash: Three women blame Hindutva duo, but say they were not seen in clash zone

Ambedkar, meanwhile, also used the bandh politics to project himself as a pan-Maharashtra leader. While he has been a prominent Republican leader, Ambedkar’s clout so far has been limited to the Vidarbha region. While he had also tried to grab the spotlight following the row over the demolition of Dadar’s Ambedkar Bhavan, the chief minister had come up on top that time.

It could also mean trouble for Union Minister Ramdas Athavale, the most popular Republican leader in Maharashtra, who had aligned himself with the BJP in the run up to the 2014 polls. Anticipating Ambedkar’s rise, Athavale has been pitting the violence as a Dalit versus Maratha fight

Behind Maharashtra bandh: Politics to unite backward castes, isolate BJP
 
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