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'Don't be surprised if the Census forms come with a caste box.'
'I will be surprised if it doesn't. It will be a point conceded to Rahul Gandhi and his allies,' asserts Shekhar Gupta.
The 'C' word that has just popped up in our national headlines refers to what should have been routine -- the Census.
As we know, however, these haven't been particularly routine times in our political history.
In the past decade, many old rules have been reinvented, some buried, and many put in cold storage.
One of those was the decennial Census. The news that the Narendra Modi government is finally making preparations for the long-delayed decennial Census of 2021 leads us to examine a larger reality, represented by three more Cs.
If this government is Modi 3.0, we could call this its 3C trap.
The first indication of its significance is that the Census is finally being planned.
The three Cs are, of course, caste, coalition and the Constitution. For a decade, the Modi machine could take all three in its stride.
The caste-based parties in the Hindi heartland had been decimated and Modi's rise was held out as the Bharatiya Janata Party's commitment to backward and lower castes.
The BJP fielded a large number of Other Backward Class candidates, gave us an OBC prime minister, a Dalit President, and then one from a tribal community.
The Congress had never given Indian non-elites such wide and powerful representation, all in one decade.
The Modi-era BJP had the caste and the underclass issues safely locked in its electoral closet. That Modi era no longer exists.
To understand the return of caste, witness the double-quick retreat on lateral entry into civil services.
Sixty three officers had been recruited through the same route over the past five years and protests, if any, were tossed with contempt.
This time, just a few tweets from Opposition leaders, especially Rahul Gandhi, resulted in an immediate, even panicky, withdrawal.
This summer's setbacks in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, the BJP think-tank has concluded, were mostly caused because of the old, wide scheduled/backward caste coalitions coming back together alongside the Muslims.
The Muslims the BJP can and will do nothing about. If at all, you've seen its key leaders, especially chief ministers, targeting them even more aggressively, hoping to bring the Hindus back under its large tent.
The last thing it wants to be seen doing now is to let the resurgent Opposition build further on the theme that the BJP and the Hindutva forces cater to upper caste elites.
And by implication, not to all Hindus.
Lateral entry will make a comeback, but now with pre-allocated quotas. It will beat its purpose.
This will take away the 'pick-and-choose' discretion that the Congress, non-BJP coalitions and even the Janata Party government (1977-1979) used in the past.
So smudged is this now that even the prospect of getting, say, a finance secretary from outside, as a minority government (under P V Narasimha Rao) did with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, is now over.
The BJP is so scalded by the caste cauldron that it won't touch that hotpot even with gloved hands.
That's why we need to watch the progress on the Census closely. Since our decennial Census started in 1881, it's been held every decade.
It was missed only in 1941: There was a World War on.
The 2021 edition was delayed because it was the year of the second Covid wave.
The fact, however, is that even until Covid came, there wasn't a rustle in the Census machinery.
It was widely believed that the Modi government would take its time.
Just about 10 months before these general elections, the government inaugurated with much fanfare the new Census office building: Janganana Bhawan.
You can see it across the road from New Delhi's familiar landmark, the Taj Mahal hotel on Mansingh Road.
But while the fancy new 'bhawan' came up, there was zero buzz that a Census was on the way.
It was widely accepted that the BJP does not feel particularly bound by the idea of following the British-era tradition of a decennial Census.
It could wait for a more opportune time.
Opportune, in this case, was a time close to the next deadline for delimitation of parliamentary constituencies.
Let's try and understand it better.
Delimitation was seen as too divisive an issue to touch, given that population growth patterns vary greatly among states, especially among the coastal, economically and socially progressive states and the Hindi heartland.
A delimitation at any point will result in the relative share of the states with high birth rates going up and that of the states more responsible on population growth decline.
This could create instability, regional rivalries and centrifugal pressures.
That is why successive governments have been kicking this can down the road. Atal Bihari Vajpayee's was the last.
In 2001, his government moved a Constitutional amendment pushing the delimitation by 25 years.
It was to be based on any Census held after that, or say, after 2026.
It is possible -- and plausible -- that the BJP would have liked to wait until then when it had its third majority and was headed for a fourth. That ended this June 4.
Railroading a politically fraught delimitation is no longer an option.
It makes no sense, therefore, to delay the Census forever and be asked embarrassing questions, especially in Parliament.
In the last session, Rahul Gandhi asserted that he will make sure a caste census is held within this House.
And here was the BJP not even talking of the long delayed 2021 Census. This was now politically unsustainable.
And don't be surprised if the Census forms also come with a caste box.
I will be surprised if it doesn't. It will be a point conceded to Rahul Gandhi and his allies.
The other side of the coin is, one of the main Opposition weapons would then be rendered obsolete.
The other two Cs are hyphenated with the first. It was the caste compulsions that alarmed the BJP's coalition partners over lateral entry.
There's no way the two Bihar partners, for example, can expect to survive the state elections next year if their government is seen to be finding a way around reservations.
Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena may be silent, but he's more paranoid, having suffered severely in the Lok Sabha election.
Finally, the Constitution. The prime minister was the first to acknowledge the new reality when he bowed to it as this Lok Sabha first convened.
Until the election campaign, there were boasts and arguments for major amendments once the target of 400 seats or thereabouts was achieved.
Besides others, even the BJP candidate in Ayodhya had spoken about it.
There were debates also on whether the Supreme Court's 13-judge Constitution Bench's order defining the Basic Structure and holding it sacrosanct was 'relevant' any more.
Among the deprived castes and classes, this was read as an attack on reservations.
Of course, the Opposition spread this vigorously too; and why wouldn't they?
The upshot now is that the Constitution has been elevated to an unalterable scripture that it never was.
It needs to be amended from time to time as the economy, society and politics evolve. It has been amended 106 times.
The history of these amendments would show you that mostly these were carried out with a wider consensus, after taking at least some of the Opposition on board.
Is a Modi government in its third edition willing to do so?
Without consensus, it will be too scared to touch the Constitution.
The final point, then, is that these three Cs will drive the BJP to a fourth: Consensus.
And if it isn't willing to embrace that, it will be a setback to governance.
By special arrangement with The Print
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
