“The electoral behaviour of Indian votes is more or less caste-ridden, including the selection process of party candidates.” In the light of the above statements, critically examine the positive or the negative role of caste in the Indian political system. (1999)
The statement restates the popular claim that Indians “vote their caste”, and it rightly adds the supply side: parties build caste into the choices before voters reach the booth. It holds “more or less” — caste structures the Indian vote more steadily than class does — but whether that role is corrupting or democratising is the real dispute.
How far the statement holds
- Candidate selection: tickets are calibrated to each seat’s caste arithmetic. Under its PDA plank in 2024, the Samajwadi Party fielded only five Yadavs (all from its founding family) and twelve Kurmis in Uttar Pradesh, while the BJP-led alliance gave over half its unreserved-seat tickets there to upper castes. Cabinets are read as caste settlements.
- Voting: M. N. Srinivas coined “vote bank” for the bloc a dominant-caste patron delivered. Kanchan Chandra (Why Ethnic Parties Succeed, 2004) explains its persistence: in a patronage democracy voters treat a candidate’s caste as a cheap signal of who will favour them.
- The two are linked: where every serious party picks by caste, a caste-consistent vote may be the only choice available.
The positive role
- For Rajni Kothari (Caste in Indian Politics, 1970), politics secularises caste: to win, castes must bargain and ally, becoming interest groups.
- Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (The Modernity of Tradition, 1967) saw caste associations attaching peasants to democratic institutions through horizontal mobilisation.
- Yogendra Yadav’s “second democratic upsurge” saw Dalit, Adivasi and poor turnout overtake that of the privileged. By Gilles Verniers’ count, OBCs and upper castes each held about 26% of Lok Sabha seats in 2024 — the upper-caste share the lowest since independence.
The negative role
- Capture and reification: André Béteille warned that treating castes as blocks hides class differences within them; the gains of Mandal went disproportionately to Yadavs and Kurmis, leaving the Extremely Backward Classes to seek separate representation.
- Criminality and money: Milan Vaishnav (When Crime Pays, 2017) shows that candidates with criminal records win by projecting themselves as protectors of their community; 251 of 543 MPs elected in 2024 declared criminal cases.
- Programme crowded out: ascriptive voting weakens accountability on schools, health and jobs, and a caste coalition invites religious counter-consolidation to override it.
- Descriptive without substantive gains: a Dalit chief minister has not by itself altered land relations or ended atrocities.
Why “caste-ridden” overstates it
- The vote bank has become a negotiated bloc. In 2024 fewer than half of Jatavs voted for the BSP, and the NDA lost about five points of the Dalit vote over a perceived threat to reservation — entitlement, not caste loyalty alone.
- Welfare beneficiaries cut across castes, and voters increasingly demand recognition plus delivery, not identity alone. Abhiram Singh (2017) makes appeals to a voter’s caste a corrupt practice.
Conclusion
Kothari’s inversion is the better verdict: caste has been politicised more than politics has been made caste-ridden. Its role is positive where it breaks monopolies and widens participation, and negative where dominant sub-castes and criminal notables use it to protect a share. The remedy is intra-party democracy and sub-categorised justice, not a caste-blind politics Indian society cannot supply.