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Dilemmas of Democratic Deepening in India: Notes from two North Indian states
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 October 2020
Abstract
The political assertion by subalterns (specifically lower and backward castes) that India witnessed from the 1990s onwards, and the formation of governments by parties representing these groups in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two electorally critical North Indian states, contributed significantly to the deepening of India's democracy. But these lower caste governments met with vehement resistance from privileged strata, and from a section of state actors themselves, in particular, the bureaucracy. These governments adopted a range of strategies to counter this resistance in turn, which had the effect of bringing the procedural and substantive elements of democracy into sharp conflict. The project of lower and backward caste empowerment was defined by a politics of levelling, which placed great value on instantly visible egalitarian outcomes, even when these could only be achieved by denting the rule of law and weakening public institutions. But it was precisely on account of its ability to deliver instant egalitarian fixes (albeit on an ad-hoc and sporadic basis) that this politics commanded so much legitimacy among subordinate groups. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Uttar Pradesh, and secondary literature on backward caste politics in Bihar, this article explores the consequences that this prioritizing of right outcomes over proper procedures had on public culture in North India. It argues that this prioritizing of consequences over means bred a widespread impatience with a procedural conception of democracy, which was seen as obstructing the modalities that went to secure justice in real life.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
I thank my former colleague Ashok Acharya for inviting me to the Law, Institutions and Political Philosophy conference, held at the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, on 21–22 August 2015, where I first presented the arguments made here, in skeletal form. I am grateful to Narendra Subramanian and Niraja Gopal Jayal for their comments on an early draft, and to the anonymous reviewers at Modern Asian Studies for their immensely helpful feedback.
References
1 The term ‘lower castes’ refers to the formerly Untouchable castes, who have been designated ‘Scheduled Castes’ (SCs) by the Indian Constitution. SCs, who remain listed in a separate schedule of the Constitution, were made eligible for affirmative action benefits (reservation of jobs in the public sector and seats in state-funded educational institutions as well as in national and state legislatures) right from the time the Constitution came into effect in 1950. The term ‘backward castes’ refers to those groups that are located above SCs in the caste hierarchy, but who have also lagged behind. Backward castes are also referred to as ‘Other Backward Classes’ (OBCs) and have been awarded reservations on a national scale since 1990. I use the terms ‘lower castes’ and SCs interchangeably, and the terms ‘backward castes’, ‘backwards’, and OBCs interchangeably as well.
2 The resulting change in the sociological profile of these legislatures is documented in Jaffrelot, Christophe and Kumar, Sanjay (eds), Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar.
3 In this article, I only cite interviews conducted in Jaunpur and Azamgarh districts. The names of the fieldwork villages have been altered to protect the identity of respondents. I refer to the main fieldwork village in Jaunpur as Dehri and to the subsidiary village as Dumri; and to the main village in Azamgarh as Baraipar, and to the subsidiary village as Sakatpur. Fieldwork in the subsidiary villages helped verify the findings emerging from fieldwork in the main.
4 See Witsoe, Jeffrey, Democracy against Development: Lower-Caste Politics and Political Modernity in Postcolonial India (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Kaviraj, Sudipta, ‘A State of Contradictions: The Post-Colonial State in India’, in his The Imaginary Institution of India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2012), pp. 210–33Google Scholar, at p. 212.
6 Ibid., pp. 222–3.
7 Ibid., p. 221.
8 Ibid., p. 220.
9 Ibid., pp. 225–6.
10 Ibid., p. 222.
11 Ibid., p. 224.
12 Ibid., p. 225.
13 Ibid.
14 Gupta, Akhil and Sharma, Aradhana, ‘Globalization and Postcolonial States’, Current Anthropology, vol. 47, no. 2, 2006, pp. 277–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 280.
15 Nicholas B. Dirks and Bernard S. Cohn provide two excellent accounts of the social mapping exercises undertaken by the colonial state in British India. See Dirks, N. B., Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, and Cohn, B. S., ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’, in his An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 224–54Google Scholar.
16 Another official was J. A. Baines, census commissioner for the 1891 Census. Baines and Risley argued against the view that caste was a system of occupational specialization. They believed race to be the basis of the caste system, and traced the origins of caste to the ancient colonization of India by the Aryans. A parallel thus emerged between Aryan and British colonialism, with racial difference coming to be ‘seen as a … laudable basis for the genesis of an imperial social system based on separation …’. Given these beliefs, it was not surprising that Brahmans—who presided over the caste hierarchy and whose fair skin was attributed to their Aryan descent—were identified as the most reliable source of information on the caste order. See Dirks, Castes of Mind, p. 210.
17 Ibid., p. 218.
18 Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985), p. 159Google Scholar.
19 Horowitz argues that the ‘advanced-backward’ dichotomy triggered ethnic conflict across several post-colonial contexts. Ibid., pp. 147–228.
20 The IAS is an all-India service. Its recruits are central government employees who are assigned to specific states, but who can also be deputed to other states and to the centre in Delhi.
21 Goyal, Santosh, ‘Social Background of Officers in the Indian Administrative Service’, in Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order, (eds) Frankel, Francine R. and Rao, M. S. A. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993), Vol. I, pp. 425–33Google Scholar, at pp. 429–31. The term ‘upper castes’ refers to Brahmans, Kshatriyas (or Thakurs), Kayasths, and Vaishyas (or Baniyas).
22 Ibid., pp. 429–30.
23 Ibid., p. 426.
24 Witsoe, Democracy against Development, pp. 84–5. Further, only seven IAS officers came from the OBC groups (Yadav and Kurmi) that were politically dominant in Bihar at the time. This highlighted the discrepancy between the caste profile of the legislature and that of the bureaucracy.
25 Sebastiaan Maria van Gool, ‘Untouchable Bureaucracy: Unrepresentative Bureaucracy in a North Indian State’, PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2008, p. 135, fn. 143.
26 In contrast to IAS officers, officers in the PCS serve in their home state alone.
27 Thus, van Gool notes that ‘[b]etween 1984 and 1990, upper castes … predominated in all important Group 1 and 2 positions in the UP bureaucracy’, which are distributed between IAS and PCS officers. They accounted for ‘never less than two-thirds of principal secretaries and secretaries (the senior-most positions in government departments), 80 per cent of the heads of department, 72 per cent of special secretaries, 90 per cent of joint secretaries, 80 per cent of district magistrates, 75 per cent of deputy and under-secretaries, 84 per cent of class 1 secretariat officers and 79 per cent of section officers’. See van Gool, ‘Untouchable Bureaucracy’, pp. 134–5, fn. 143. However, SC representation in the PCS did increase between 1985 and 1996; the percentage of SC employees in Group A, B, C, and D jobs in 1996 stood at 9, 10.9, 16.4, and 20.6 per cent respectively, in contrast to 6.8, 7.5, 13.6 and 17.8 per cent in 1985. See van Gool, ‘Untouchable Bureaucracy’, p. 133, Table 2. This is probably because of the priority given to the implementation of SC quotas by the BSP, which ruled UP twice in coalition in the early 1990s. Given that the BSP ruled twice more in coalition between 1996 and 2003, and on its own in 2007–12, SC presence in the PCS may have risen still further. Likewise, the 27 per cent OBC quota that came into force in 1990 was zealously implemented by the Samajwadi Party (SP), which catered to backward castes, when it governed UP, in coalition in 1993–95 and on its own in 2012–17. Yadavs, the OBC community that formed the SP's base, were accorded preferential treatment by the party in the filling of reserved posts, and there were innumerable media reports alluding to ‘Yadav raj’. However, with no available recent study of the PCS in UP that tracks any changes that may have occurred in its caste profile over the last 20 years, there is no hard data confirming that the service now accommodates more lower and backward castes.
28 For the benefits that affirmative action provides, see fn. 1.
29 Jaffrelot, Christophe, ‘The Rise of the Other Backward Classes in the Hindi Belt’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 59, no. 1, 2000, pp. 86–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 87–8.
30 The first Backward Classes Commission, appointed in 1953, established 2,399 castes as being socially and educationally backward and in need of affirmative action. The Commission's report was rejected by Nehru's government, which objected to the use of caste as a criterion for identifying backwardness. The second Backward Classes Commission, appointed in 1979, also concluded that the OBCs were coterminous with lower castes. The Commission's report was ignored by successive Congress governments as they were worried that the implementation of its recommendations would alienate the party's upper caste base. It was not surprising that it was the National Front coalition, which included socialist parties, that finally implemented OBC quotas. Socialists in India believed that caste-based discrimination could not be eliminated by addressing material inequality and economic injustice alone. Ibid., pp. 88, 94.
31 The Indian Constitution also schedules tribal communities and makes them eligible for affirmative action benefits.
32 UP and Bihar are considered critical states electorally. UP sends 80 representatives to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, while Bihar sends 40. The Lok Sabha has 543 elected members in total.
33 The legitimacy it earned from having led the national movement allowed the Congress to rule unchallenged in many Indian states for the first few decades of the post-Independence period. It ruled UP more or less continuously up to 1989, with the Janata Party being in power once from June 1977 to February 1980, and the Bharatiya Kranti Dal ruling the state twice, in 1967–68, and again in 1970. In Bihar too, Congress rule was broken by the Janata Party, which governed from June 1977 to February 1980; earlier, the Janata Kranti Dal and the Socialist Party had ruled in 1967–68 and 1970–71 respectively. In both UP and Bihar, it was parties with socialist orientations, representing backward castes, that ousted the Congress for short periods in the 1960s and 1970s.
34 For a detailed account of the Congress's decimation, see Chandra, Kanchan, ‘Post-Congress Politics in Uttar Pradesh: The Ethnification of the Party System and its Consequences’, in Indian Politics and the 1998 Election: Regionalism, Hindutva and the State, (eds) Ray, Ramashray and Wallace, Paul (New Delhi: Sage, 1999), pp. 55–104Google Scholar.
35 See fn. 33.
36 Zamindars and talukdars were the two classes of tax-collecting intermediaries, placed between the cultivator and the state, that the British established in the United Provinces, from which the state of UP was formed. Both classes were eliminated by Zamindari Abolition, undertaken by the Indian government in the 1950s, following which cultivators established direct contact with the state. There was one class of cultivators who were also tenants. Of this class, occupancy tenants particularly benefited from Zamindari Abolition, which upgraded their status to that of landowners. The reference here is to this category of landowners. See Brass, Paul R., Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 11, 229Google Scholar.
37 Ibid., p. 230.
38 Jaffrelot, ‘The Rise of the Other Backward Classes’, p. 91.
39 Sohini Guha, ‘Ethnic Parties, Material Politics and the Ethnic Poor: The Bahujan Samaj Party in North India’, PhD thesis, McGill University, 2008, pp. 116–20.
40 Hasan, Zoya, ‘Representation and Redistribution: The New Lower Caste Politics in North India’, in Transforming India: Social and Political Dynamics of Democracy, (eds) Frankel, Francine R., Hasan, Zoya, Bhargava, Rajeev and Arora, Balveer (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 146–75Google Scholar, at p. 155 (translation mine).
41 Jaffrelot, Christophe, India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Low Castes in North Indian Politics (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), pp. 396–7Google Scholar.
42 Chandra, Kanchan, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Witsoe, Democracy against Development, pp. 48–9.
44 The tactics the Congress adopted to portray itself as neutral are discussed in Chandra, ‘Post-Congress Politics in Uttar Pradesh’.
45 For a discussion of the politics of the SC/ST Act, see Guha, ‘Ethnic Parties, Material Politics and the Ethnic Poor’, pp. 91–2, 178–9, 193–4.
46 Interview with the coordinator of the Azamgarh District Unit of the SP, Azamgarh, 6 July 2004 (translation mine).
47 Interview with a Yadav respondent in Dehri, Jaunpur District, 16 May 2004 (translation mine).
48 Guha, ‘Ethnic Parties, Material Politics and the Ethnic Poor’, pp. 91–2.
49 Interview with a Thakur respondent in Dehri, Jaunpur District, 20 June 2014 (translation mine).
50 The IPS, like the IAS, is an elite, all-India service.
51 Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, ‘Cracks to the Fore’, Frontline, 28 July 1995, p. 25.
52 Hasan, ‘Representation and Redistribution’, p. 160.
53 Interview with the coordinator of the Azamgarh District Unit of the BSP, Azamgarh, 2 August 2004.
54 Mayawati's ‘surprise’ visits to the districts had the lower administration on tenterhooks. Several officials working in the district administration in my fieldsites mentioned these visits to me.
55 The programme was named after B. R. Ambedkar, one of the leaders of the Indian national movement, who belonged to the formerly Untouchable Mahar caste. An eminent jurist, Ambedkar played a critical role in framing the Indian Constitution and securing the constitutional guarantee of affirmative action for SCs.
56 ‘Booth capturing’ refers to an electoral malpractice whereby voters are prevented from casting their votes at the polling booth and have their ballots stamped in favour of candidates they do not support.
57 Interviews with Chamar and Thakur respondents in Dehri, Jaunpur District, 15–25 May 2004, and Dumri, Jaunpur District, 28–30 May 2004.
58 Each Indian state has a number of administrative districts. A district administration is headed by a district magistrate.
59 Interview with the coordinator of the Jaunpur District Unit of the BSP, Jaunpur, 2 May 2004.
60 Gaon sabha land refers to village wastelands and arable non-holding land in the allocation of which landless SCs and STs are accorded the highest priority as a matter of government policy.
61 Interviews with BSP cadres in Dehri, Jaunpur District, 14 May 2004, and the coordinator of the Azamgarh District Unit of the BSP, Azamgarh, 2 August 2004.
62 Interviews with Thakur respondents in Dehri, Jaunpur District, 15–25 May 2004.
63 A power-sharing arrangement had been worked out, by which the chief minister's office would be held by the BSP for the first six months, by the BJP for the next six, and so on.
64 Venkitesh Ramakrishnan, ‘Divided they Rule’, Frontline, 4 October 1997, available at https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/article30160152.ece, [accessed 28 August 2020].
65 Thus, Mohammed Shahabuddin, a notorious criminal and RJD politician, ordered several murders from jail. See Kumar Anshuman, ‘Mohammed Shahabuddin: The Jail Superintendent’, Open Magazine, 26 May 2016, available at https://openthemagazine.com/features/india/mohammad-shahabuddin-the-jail-superintendent/, [accessed 28 August 2020].
66 Aman Sethi, ‘Rule of the Outlaw’, Frontline, 30 December 2005, available at https://frontline.thehindu.com/static/html/fl2226/stories/20051230004301700.htm, [accessed 28 August 2020]; Arvind Singh Bisht, ‘BSP Tops List in Fielding Candidates with Criminal Background’, Economic Times, 26 March 2009, available at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/bsp-tops-list-in-fielding-candidates-with-criminal-background/articleshow/4318186.cms?from=mdr, [accessed 28 August 2020]; and ‘BSP Candidate Yogesh Verma “Leads from the Front” with 28 Criminal Cases’, Times of India, 28 March 2019, available at https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/elections/lok-sabha-elections-2019/uttar-pradesh/news/bsp-candidate-yogesh-verma-leads-from-the-front-with-28-criminal-cases/articleshow/68603896.cms, [accessed 28 August 2020].
67 Tarique Anwar, ‘The Gangs of Purnea: The Journey of Gangsters from Intimidation to Elections’, Firstpost, 12 October 2015, available at https://www.firstpost.com/politics/the-gangs-of-purnea-the-journey-of-gangsters-from-intimidation-to-election-2465124.html, [accessed 28 August 2020]; ‘Dreaded Bahubali from Bihar: All You Need to Know about Shahabuddin, the Don Who Made Siwan Tremble’, India Today, 12 September 2016, available at https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/mohammad-shahabuddin-criminal-record-bihar-siwan-all-you-need-to-know-340582-2016-09-12, [accessed 28 August 2020]; and Arvind N. Das, The Republic of Bihar (New Delhi: Penguin, 1992), p. 136.
68 Amitanshu Verma, ‘The Figure of “Bahubali”: Politics, Criminality and Violence in Uttar Pradesh’, MPhil thesis, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2014, pp. 26–9.
69 Ibid., pp. 29–31.
70 Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), ‘Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2017 (Phase 1–7): Analysis of Criminal Background, Financial, Education, Gender and Other Details of Candidates’, ADR, New Delhi, 2017, p. 8, available at https://adrindia.org/content/uttar-pradesh-assembly-elections-2017-phase-1-7-analysis-criminal-background-financial, [accessed 28 August 2020].
71 The Janata Dal (JD) was formed in 1988 when the Janata Party merged with some smaller parties. In 1994, two members, George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar, quit the JD and formed the Samata Party. The JD split again in 1997 when Lalu Yadav quit and formed the RJD. In 1999, the JD decided to support the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance coalition at the centre. This move was opposed by Deve Gowda, a JD leader, who quit the party to form the Janata Dal (Secular). What remained of the JD was designated the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U). In 2003, the JD(U) was reconstituted following its merger with the Samata Party and other smaller parties.
72 ADR, ‘Bihar Assembly Elections 2015: Analysis of Criminal Background, Financial, Education, Gender and Other Details of Candidates’, ADR, New Delhi, 2015, p. 4, available at https://adrindia.org/research-and-report/election-watch/state-assemblies/bihar/2015/analysis-criminal-and-financial-4, [accessed 28 August 2020].
73 Seshan was the chief election commissioner (CEC) at the time. The ECI was headed by one official, the CEC, up to October 1993, when two additional election commissioners came to be appointed.
74 ‘Bogus voting’ refers to an electoral malpractice whereby dead and absent voters have ballots cast in their name.
75 Indo-Asian News Service, ‘Former CEC T. N. Seshan: A No-Nonsense Man, He Cleaned up India's Electoral System’, India Today, 11 November 2019, available at https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/tn-seshan-no-nonsense-man-tn-seshan-cleaned-up-india-electoral-system-1617702-2019-11-11, [accessed 28 August 2020].
76 Ibid.
77 E. Sridharan and Milan Vaishnav, ‘Election Commission of India’, in Rethinking Public Institutions in India, (eds) Devesh Kapur, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Milan Vaishnav (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 417–63, at p. 441.
78 Milan Vaishnav argues that the financial heft accruing to criminals from their illegal activities allows them to finance their own election campaigns and contribute to party coffers, and that this is precisely why parties accommodate them: see M. Vaishnav, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Noida: Harper Collins India, 2017), Chapter 4. This overlooks the constraint (resistance from the bureaucracy) that lower caste parties specifically face when governing and the powerful incentive for nominating criminals that this provides them. In Chapter 5, Vaishnav argues that criminals have an advantage over other candidates where social cleavages are politically salient due to group contest over local dominance and where, additionally, the rule of law is weak and the state is unable to provide basic goods and services. Here, opportunities arise for politicians to step in as substitutes for the state; again, with social conflict being sharp, they have reason to serve constituents from their own group exclusively. Leveraging their money and muscle allows criminals to excel at extracting benefits from the state; they are hence preferred to other candidates by co-ethnic voters in these circumstances. I have only one disagreement with the above analysis. Vaishnav assumes that the state in India remains neutral between groups. It follows from this assumption that where voters rely on ties to individual politicians, those voters who have co-ethnic representatives in positions of power fare better than others. This ignores the systemic bias against subalterns that has skewed the functioning of the state in North India, and which has persisted even when lower castes have, in a significant reversal, elected co-ethnic representatives in droves. To be fair to Vaishnav, my argument regarding state bias pertains to North India, whereas his is a general, pan-Indian analysis. He does further admit that the demand for criminal-politicians responds to highly contextualized factors, the salience of which may vary within a single country (ibid., p. 22).
79 Witsoe, Democracy against Development, pp. 58–9.
80 Ibid., p. 106.
81 Bhumihars, a landed caste, are found specifically in Bihar and eastern UP.
82 This is how some of Witsoe's respondents summed up the situation. See Witsoe, Democracy against Development, p. 81.
83 Each Indian state has a High Court, which is the apex court for that state. The Supreme Court stands above the High Courts and is the highest court in India.
84 The CBI has the legal mandate to investigate and prosecute offences anywhere in India and works under the jurisdiction of the central government.
85 Farzand Ahmed, ‘With CEC Likely to Postpone Polls in Bihar, Laloo-Seshan Confrontation Occupies Centre-Stage’, India Today, 15 March 1995, available at https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/19950315-with-cec-likely-to-postpone-polls-in-bihar-laloo-seshan-confrontation-occupies-centrestage-807036-1995-03-15, [accessed 28 August 2020].
86 Farzand Ahmed, ‘CEC Postpones Elections in Bihar for Fourth Time’, India Today, 31 March 1995, available at https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/19950331-cec-postpones-elections-in-bihar-for-fourth-time-laloo-asked-to-head-caretaker-government-807124-1995-03-31, [accessed 28 August 2020].
87 As Seshan was a Brahman, this was, among other things, a reference to his caste.
88 Ahmed, ‘With CEC Likely to Postpone Polls in Bihar, Laloo-Seshan Confrontation Occupies Centre-Stage’.
89 Witsoe, Democracy against Development, pp. 73–4.
90 Chaudhary, S. N., Power Dependence Relations: Struggle for Hegemony in Rural Bihar (New Delhi: Har Anand Publications, 1999), pp. 241–2Google Scholar, cited in Witsoe, Democracy against Development, p. 88.
91 Santosh Matthew and Mick Moore, ‘State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story’, Working Paper No. 366, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2011, pp. 17–18, cited in Witsoe, Democracy against Development, pp. 89–90.
92 Witsoe, Democracy against Development, p. 68.
93 Ibid., pp. 67, 78, 91.
94 Ibid., pp. 94–8, 173–4.
95 Ibid., pp. 173–4.
96 Ibid., p. 174.
97 Ibid., pp. 66, 188–9.
98 Ibid., pp. 190–1. Overarching administrative categories, such as SC and OBC, inevitably remain differentiated by class within. These class-based differentiations come back to bite politicians who, while mobilizing these broad caste categories, attempt to address economically weaker sections within them.
99 Ibid., pp. 63–4. The JD slogan ‘vikas nahin, samman chahihye (we need dignity, not development)’ signalled the prioritization of the politics of dignity. Witsoe mentions this slogan on p. 63, citing Raj Kamal Jha and Farzand Ahmed, ‘Laloo's Magic’, India Today, 30 April 1995, p. 54 (translation original).
100 Bhadra Sinha, ‘Supreme Court Says it Can't Ban Criminals in Politics, Leaves it to Parliament’, Hindustan Times, 25 September 2018, available at https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/should-netas-facing-criminal-cases-contest-elections-supreme-court-to-to-decide-soon/story-1Wu3771SusfAsUUu4eDatJ.html, [accessed 28 August 2020].
101 S. Y. Quraishi, who was the chief election commissioner from July 2010 to June 2012, expressed profound disappointment with the SC's 2018 ruling. See his contribution to the debate: ‘Has the SC Missed a Chance to Keep Criminals out of Polls?’, Hindu, 12 October 2018, available at https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/has-the-sc-missed-a-chance-to-keep-criminals-out-of-polls/article25194981.ece, [accessed 28 August 2020].
102 Aneesha Mathur, ‘Publish Details of Candidates’ Criminal History on Websites, SC tells Parties’, India Today, 13 February 2020, available at https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/supreme-court-election-candidates-criminal-background-1645982-2020-02-13, [accessed 28 August 2020].
103 Press Trust of India, ‘Criminal Record? Advertise Thrice’, Telegraph, 11 March 2019, available at https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/criminal-record-advertise-thrice/cid/1686607?ref=also-read_story-page, [accessed 28 August 2020].
104 Vaishnav, When Crime Pays, p. 306.
105 Ibid., pp. 160–1 (italics original).
106 ADR, ‘Lok Sabha Elections 2019 (Phase 1–7): Analysis of Criminal Background, Financial, Education, Gender and Other Details of Candidates’, ADR, New Delhi, 2019, p. 10, available at https://adrindia.org/content/lok-sabha-elections-2019-phase-1-7-analysis-criminal-background-financial-education-gender, [accessed 28 August 2020].
107 ADR, ‘Lok Sabha Elections 2014: Analysis of Criminal Background, Financial, Education, Gender and Other Details of Winners’, ADR, New Delhi, 2014, p. 14, available at https://adrindia.org/research-and-report/election-watch/lok-sabha/2014/lok-sabha-2014-winners-analysis-criminal-and-finan, [accessed 28 August 2020]; and ADR, ‘Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Analysis of Criminal Background, Financial, Education, Gender and Other Details of Winners’, ADR, New Delhi, 2019, p. 23, available at https://adrindia.org/content/lok-sabha-elections-2019-analysis-criminal-background-financial-education-gender-and-other, [accessed 18 February 2020]. The BJP had 282 MPs in 2014 and 303 MPs in 2019. ADR analysed the data for 281 MPs in 2014 and 301 in 2019.
108 The ECI's failure to check the BJP's violations of the Model Code of Conduct is discussed in Siddharth Bhatia, ‘The Reputation of the Election Commission Has Been Severely Tarnished’, Wire, 20 May 2019, available at https://thewire.in/government/elections-2019-election-commission, [accessed 28 August 2018]; and ‘Election Commission Weak-Kneed, Say Former Officials’, Telegraph, 9 April 2019, available at https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/election-commission-weak-kneed-say-former-officials/cid/1688448, [accessed 28 August 2020].
109 Sridharan and Vaishnav, ‘Election Commission of India’, pp. 425–43, 462.
110 The BJP winning the 2017 UP assembly election led to a remarkable surge in upper caste representation. Upper castes make up 44.3 per cent of MLAs in the new assembly, 12 percentage points more than in the previous assembly, elected in 2012. This is also the highest share upper castes have had in the assembly since 1980. The BJP's resurgence thus reversed the gains in representation made by SCs and OBCs under the BSP and the SP. Significantly, this happened despite the BJP projecting itself as a party keen to empower these groups. See Gilles Verniers, ‘Upper Hand for Upper Castes in House’, Indian Express, 20 March 2017, available at https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/bjp-narendra-modi-rajnath-singh-adityanath-devendra-fadnavis-upper-hand-for-upper-castes-in-house-4576599/, [accessed 28 August 2020].
111 Galanter, Marc, Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 179–87Google Scholar, and Subramanian, Narendra, Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization: Political Parties, Citizens and Democracy in South India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 207–8Google Scholar.
112 Jaffrelot, ‘The Rise of the Other Backward Classes’, pp. 86–7.