The caste-class tension is not limited to just villages
Agriculture is not the only area where the Opposition sees a big capital versus petty capital (in this case the farmer) conflict. The Opposition, from time to time, has also tried to raise this contradiction in the non-farm sector. Some such examples are the criticism of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as being biased towards big business and the latest criticism of the government’s disinvestment proposals and the NMP initiative. The last two were a part of Tikait’s speech at the farmers’ gathering.
It is likely that the formalisation push and proposed reform initiatives, whether or not they unleash future value, will create a set of losers among the relatively well-off among small business and existing public sector employees in government-owned businesses. However, the pains from such changes are once again likely to hurt the upper castes more, given their greater representation in such businesses and jobs.
This can be seen from the fact that upper castes (those who do not come from OBC, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories) have a bigger relative share among the top quartile of earners among salaried workers and the self-employed in India. This is in sharp contrast to the caste composition of casual workers, who have the lowest incomes.
Given their higher stakes in public sector employment or petty businesses, the upper caste population will have to be an important constituent of political pushback against policies such as disinvestment or squeeze on small businesses, etc. Any political party which champions a politics of othering upper castes is unlikely to succeed in this effort.
To be sure, the Opposition is not the only one which is likely to be facing these contradictions.
The upper caste and trader community has been part of the BJP’S core support base since its inception. While this cohort might still feel the biggest ideological alignment to the BJP’S politics of Hindutva, it is bound to become more restless as its economic fortunes come under squeeze. The upper caste anxiety would have been much lower had the economy been firing on all cylinders. With the back-to-back shocks of economic slowdown and the pandemic-driven contraction, political palatability of the proposed reforms might not be very high.
There is still a lot of time for the 2024 contest. Even the 2022 Uttar Pradesh polls are six months away. But the developments above show that the future of political competition will play out in a landscape where loyalties of caste, class and identity will perhaps be more agile than they have ever been.