Comment: Upsurge in political participation among the marginalised communities in the Indian General Elections during the last two decades. (2010, 20 Marks)
Yogendra Yadav, reading the Lokniti-CSDS National Election Studies, called it the second democratic upsurge (“Understanding the Second Democratic Upsurge”, in Transforming India, 2000). The first upsurge, of the late 1960s, carried the intermediate peasant castes into power. The second, from about 1989, brought in Dalits, Adivasis, lower OBCs, the poor, rural voters and women. Its core finding is that the social gradient of turnout was inverted.
The inversion: who votes
| Axis | Pattern until the 1970s | Pattern from the 1990s |
|---|---|---|
| Caste | Upper castes voted more than Dalits and Adivasis | The gap closed and then reversed; the turnout lag in ST seats nearly vanished |
| Class | The prosperous voted more | The poor voted as much as or more than the rich |
| Locality | Urban turnout ran ahead | Rural turnout exceeded urban |
| Gender | A 16.7-point gap in 1962 | The gap narrowed steadily and closed by 2019 |
In most Western democracies turnout rises with income and education. India reversed that relationship, which is why the case matters theoretically. The upsurge also went beyond turnout, with more people attending rallies, joining parties and reporting a sense of political efficacy.
What drove it
- Mandal (1990): Vishwanath Pratap Singh‘s decision to implement OBC reservation made backward-caste status a national political resource. The Ram temple campaign answered with a religious counter-mobilisation.
- Parties of their own: the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP, founded by Kanshi Ram in 1984) turned the Dalit vote from a Congress vote bank into an autonomous bloc. Mayawati became the first Dalit woman Chief Minister in 1995, and the BSP won a majority in Uttar Pradesh in 2007 (206 of 403). The Samajwadi Party (1992) under Mulayam Singh Yadav and the RJD under Lalu Prasad Yadav did the same for backward castes.
- Institutions: the reserved seats of the 73rd Amendment, the creation of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh (2000), and ECI reforms against booth capture, which had long kept Dalits from the polls.
- Expressive value: Mukulika Banerjee‘s ethnography (Why India Votes?, 2014) found that the vote gives dignity to those denied it elsewhere.
Significance
- Christophe Jaffrelot (India’s Silent Revolution, 2003) saw power passing from upper to lower castes through the ballot, without insurrection.
- Yadav and Suhas Palshikar tie the upsurge to a third electoral system after 1989: fragmented, state-centred and coalition-based.
- It ended the Congress system’s mobilisation through notables.
Limits
- Participation without representation: upper castes regained ground among Hindi-belt MPs in the 17th Lok Sabha, and money now filters who can contest.
- Uneven gains: dominant OBCs such as the Yadavs and dominant Dalit jatis such as the Jatavs gained most, while EBCs and non-Jatav Dalits felt left out. The BJP later recruited these groups.
- Clientelism: Kanchan Chandra (Why Ethnic Parties Succeed, 2004) reads ethnic voting as a rational bid for patronage, not programmatic empowerment.
- Ashutosh Varshney‘s distinction applies: the battle for elections has been won, but not the battle for everyday governance.
Carried forward to 2024
- Women voted at 65.78% against men’s 65.55%, the second straight election in which they led. Women-targeted cash transfers now make them a distinct constituency.
- Dalits remain mobilised but mobile: the NDA’s Dalit share fell by about five points, amid fears over reservation, and the BSP again won no seat.
- Adivasis swung the other way, with just under half backing the BJP.
Conclusion
The upsurge is real and durable, and the strongest evidence that Indian democracy has taken root below the elite. But it democratised voting faster than it democratised power. The marginalised now choose freely among parties; they are still far from equally represented in legislatures, in the gains of office or in what government delivers.