The reluctance of the ruling state government of Maharashtra to conduct an empirical inquiry into the backwardness and refusal of the union government to share the Socio Economic and Caste Census data of 2011 has resulted in a conundrum over the Other Backward Class es reservation in the local self-governance bodies. The responses of the ruling state government and the opposition to the retention of the OBC reservation are explored. The impact of this decision on the OBC politics is also analysed.
The Shudras: Vision for a New Path edited by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd and Karthik Raja Karuppusamy, New Delhi: Vintage (Penguin Random House), 2021; pp 272, ₹699.
Drawing on long-term multisite ethnographic fieldwork in Allahabad and Meerut, this article examines how educated unemployed young men, from different socio-economic backgrounds, struggle for employment and engage with politics and religion in the age of neo-liberalism.
Ahead of the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its allied organisations are making concerted efforts to achieve better coordination on the ground to consolidate the Hindu votes and crack the complex caste arithmetic of the state. With the Hindutva card unlikely to cut much ice with the backward castes and Dalits, it is crucial for the BJP, to calibrate its campaign strategy to offer these less empowered communities more political representation to reap electoral dividends in the impending polls.
