Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 71

The Backwards Turn Right in the Hindi Belt: Trajectories and Implications 1 Mohd. Sanjeer Alam Indian Politics & Policy • Vol. 3, No. 1 • Spring 2020 Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in New Delhi, India [email protected] Abstract In India, various social groups have long been seen as constituting and behaving as voting blocs. The social group officially known as Other Backward Classes (OBCs), has also been marked by preferential political choice in many parts of India for decades, leading to considerable restructuring and reconfiguration of party politics both at the national and state levels. One important aspect of this phenomenon has been the rise of state level parties, representing the “third space” in India’s democratic polity. Although political mobilization of OBCs around the issue of social justice fizzled out too early, a few state-level parties arising out of the social justice movement continued to receive support from sections of OBCs and did well electorally. But, of late, a new trend seems to have set in. This paper, based on empirical evidence culled from National Election Studies (NES) 2 (post-poll surveys) conducted by Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, demonstrates that at least in the Hindi belt, OBCs have shifted toward the BJP in a big way, making it the largest recipient of their votes. The paper argues that the drift of sections of OBCs away from social justice parties and toward the BJP has been multi-layered and incremental rather than accidental in nature and that the 2014 Lok Sabha (LS) election was the tipping point. Not only has the new trajectory of political behavior of OBCs introduced a new phase of political competition and reconfiguration, it appears to have created deep existential crisis for social justice parties. Keywords: backwards, constituency, Hindi belt, mobilization, OBCs, political choice, political restructuring, social group, social justice, state-level parties, support base, voting behavior 67 doi: 10.18278/inpp.3.1.6