Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 81

The Backwards Turn Right in the Hindi Belt: Trajectories and Implications
BJP in 2014 received almost the same
proportion of OBC votes as the SP had
done in 1999. In 1999, the SP pushed the
BJP way behind and become the largest
beneficiary of OBC votes. In 2014, the
BJP turned the tables, and did even better
in 2019 to lower the SP’s vote share
among OBCs to one-fifth, the lowest
ever since 1999.
In Bihar, the story is slightly different
and a bit more complicated. Here,
RJD had a much stronger base of support
among OBCs than the SP in UP, as
evident in Figure 2. Unlike the SP in UP,
RJD’s vote share among OBCs (44 percent),
as the post-poll survey data suggests,
was double that of the BJP in the
1999 LS election. RJD suffered a jolt in
1999 as its vote share came down to 33
percent. One of the reasons for this was
the division of votes between RJD and
its parent party (JD) from which it had
only recently broken away. 26 With this,
the gap between RJD and the BJP was
reduced considerably, although the latter’s
vote share among OBCs increased
only marginally (from 20 percent to 22
percent). But RJD bounced back in the
next LS election held in 2004 to prove
its obituary writers wrong. By being
able to cause a huge swing in its favor,
the party attained almost the same level
of support among OBCs as in 1996. In
contrast, the BJP witnessed a steep fall
in its vote share among OBCs.
The 2004 LS election can be regarded
as an important reference point
in the context of electoral politics in Bihar
for two reasons. One, it turned out
to be high watermark in terms of RJD’s
vote shares among OBCs in the post-
1990s era. Despite being in alliance with
the JD (U), the BJP’s vote share among
OBCs touched the lowest ever mark.
Two, for RJD, it also proved as the point
of no return. In the subsequent 2009
LS election, as can be seen in Figure 2,
RJD’s support among OBCs appeared
to fall off a cliff and continued to move
downward. The BJP, on the other hand,
gradually expanded its support base
among OBCs to narrow down the gap
between it and RJD. Eventually the time
came in the 2019 LS election when the
former nudged out the latter.
While the BJP has been able to
make inroads into OBCs, it still appears
to remain far from making an impact as
wide and deep as it did in UP. A major,
if not the sole reason, has been the presence
of yet another popular backward
caste leader (Nitish Kumar) heading
yet another backward-based party – the
Samata Party, later rechristened as JD
(U). The BJP has been in alliance with
the JD (U), except in the 2014 LS election,
since the early years of the latter’s
formation. Over the years, Nitish Kumar
has been successful in placing his
party as an alternative choice for a large
section of OBCs. 27 In short, the JD (U),
being a critically important constituent
of Bihar’s political ecosystem, prevented
the BJP from making as much of a
dent among OBCs as it did in UP.
The BJP’s success in Bihar in
terms of cutting into the OBC bloc as a
whole may not appear to be as huge as
in the neighboring state of UP, but if we
scratch the surface, the party seems to
have gained astounding ground where
it could and should have made it, that
is, among the lower OBCs (an expression
often used to refer to OBCs minus
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