While on Sunday at a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) event as part of its Dalit outreach, a world record was attempted by cooking 5,000 kg of ‘khichdi’, on Monday the Central government announced 10% reservation for ‘economic backwards’ to reach out to upper castes. The resultant political crisis leads to absurd complexities whereby reservation is sought and promised as the remedy for agrarian distress. It succeeded vis-à-vis Bahujan discourse on account of the two-fold internal social contradictions: between Dalits and OBCs on the one hand, and between dominant OBCs and lower OBCs on the other. and Bihar, its policy priority should be the lower OBCs whose electoral fluidity may stem trouble for the party. Appealing to upper castes through a judicially unviable proposition at this juncture is neither good policy nor smart politics.

Source: The Hindu January 08, 2019 18:32 UTC