How big a role does identity play in determining political participation in the developing countries? Discuss your answer with suitable illustrations. (2018, 10 Marks)
Identity politics is political action organised around ascriptive or cultural belonging (caste, ethnicity, religion, language, region), usually as a project to recover a group’s standing from exclusion and denigration. In developing societies identity shapes participation more than in advanced ones, for structural rather than cultural reasons. Its role is major, but not determining.
Why identity weighs so heavily
- It lowers the cost of mobilisation. Caste, kin and ethnic networks already have leaders and trust, so parties escape the collective-action costs Mancur Olson described. Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph’s The Modernity of Tradition (1967) showed caste associations becoming vehicles of democratic participation, and Rajni Kothari (1970) argued that caste gets politicised rather than politics simply becoming caste-ridden.
- It carries information. Kanchan Chandra’s patronage democracy shows that where the state controls scarce goods, ethnicity is the cheapest signal of who will be favoured, the logic behind the Bahujan Samaj Party and ethnic voting in Kenya.
- The state classifies. Colonial censuses fixed fluid groups into countable ones; today Bihar’s caste survey (2023) and the Union decision of April 2025 to enumerate caste in the coming census keep identity at the centre of claims on reservation and jobs.
Illustrations of its force
- South Asia: language, not religion, broke Pakistan in 1971 as Bengalis resisted Punjabi-dominated rule; Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majoritarianism provoked Tamil separatism and a war that ended in 2009; ethnic federalism dominates Nepal’s constitutional politics and armed ethnic groups still shape Myanmar’s.
- When a dominant group excludes others, the excluded participate more intensely through sub-national parties and movements.
- In India, Yogendra Yadav’s democratic upsurges show backward castes and Dalits entering politics through identity; the 2024 contest in Uttar Pradesh turned on a backward–Dalit–minority coalition.
Its limits
- Welfare delivery and performance now cut across caste and community, creating beneficiary constituencies.
- Identity is a floor, not a ceiling: leadership, incumbency and local factors override it, and blocs are split and rebuilt by political entrepreneurs.
- Cross-cutting identities (a poor Dalit woman in an urban job) make single-identity accounts misleading.
- Sri Lanka’s National People’s Power won 159 of 225 seats in 2024 and topped the poll even in Tamil-majority Jaffna, an anti-corruption vote that crossed the ethnic line.
Conclusion
Identity largely structures entry into participation in developing societies but does not fix its content. Its salience rises and falls with how the state distributes goods, so accommodative institutions (federalism, reservation, inclusive parties, as India’s experience suggests) convert it from a source of conflict into a channel of inclusion.