Indian Politics & Policy Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2020 | Page 82

Indian Politics & Policy
Yadavs, Koeris, and Kurmis). The party
received, as evidence indicates, a whopping
53 percent of votes of the lower
OBCs in the 2014 LS election. 28 This is
what makes BJP’s position enviable and
the politics around OBCs quite interesting
in the state. There are at least three
reasons for it: (a) the BJP received this
much support even without allying with
the JD (U); (b) the lower OBCs constitute
a large socio-political constituency,
accounting for nearly 30 percent
of total population (based on survey
estimate); and (c) the lower OBCs, by
virtue of demographic weight coupled
with a tendency to vote for a particular
party in a big way, exert tremendous
influence on the poll outcomes. With
the forward castes solidly behind, the
BJP, by taking away the largest slice of
lower OBC votes, was able to swing the
poll outcomes in its favor in the 2014 LS
election. It is therefore not surprising if
the BJP has refused to play second fiddle
in the NDA alliance.
Figure 2: Vote Share of the BJP and RJD among OBCs (Bihar)
Note: Figures are weighed by actual vote share of BJP and RJD in the state and
rounded
Source: NES, respective years
IV. Explaining the Drift
What accounts for the drift
of a wide section of OBCs
away from the social justice
parties and largely towards the BJP, at
least in Bihar and UP? A host of factors
seems to have been at work. The first set
of factors is largely internal to the group
and the parties professedly representing
it. First and foremost, as the parties
championing the cause of the backward
castes became rooted in power, they began
to be afflicted with many ills. At one
level, these parties began to be captured
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