Sidhi/Satna: At a small tea stall outside the Congress office in Churhat in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh, Vaidyanath Patel, 62, rues the underdevelopment of the Vindhya region. At the same time, he credits a local and former chief minister, the late Arjun Singh of the Congress, for initiating Other Backward Classes (OBC) politics in the state in the 1980s by promising reservation, which catapulted him to the national political arena. Forty-three years down the line, the Congress is again banking on OBC politics to return to power in the Central Indian state.
“Arjun Singh provided us the first hope of reservation in 1980 much before the Mandal politics started in the country,” Patel said, wondering whether the Congress promise of caste census to identify the proportion of OBCs in the state to increase reservation for them will benefit the party electorally. “We were jobless then and we are jobless now,” Patel, who is from OBC community, said.
In his first term as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Arjun Singh in 1980 set up the Ramji Mahajan Commission to provide reservation in government jobs to OBCs. In 1983, the commission submitted its report estimating that 48.8% of the state population belonged to OBC communities and recommended 25% reservation in government jobs for them. Singh could not implement the recommendation and the Congress replaced him with Motilal Vohra as chief minister in 1985.
Singh in 2008 was, however, able to implement 27% reservation for OBCs in central educational institutions when he was Union human resources (now education) minister; this was done through the 93rd amendment of the Indian Constitution, and withstood legal scrutiny. The decision, an extension of the Mandal commission’s recommendation on 27% reservation for OBCs in government jobs, was said to be one of the reasons for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to return to power in 2009.
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A senior Madhya Pradesh Congress leader said that even though Singh was a Rajput, he championed the OBC cause and sought to create a combination of the two communities. “There were two reasons that it did not happen. First, the Ramji Commission recommendation was not implemented as Congress leadership thought it would alienate upper caste votes from the party. Second, there was a move to appoint Subhash Yadav, an OBC, as the chief minister in 1993 and Singh supported Digvijaya Singh, a Rajput,” added this person who asked not to be named.
Vindhya: Once a political powerhouse
In 1956, Vindhya Pradesh merged into Madhya Bharat (present-day Madhya Pradesh minus Chhattisgarh) and since then the region has given two Rajput chief ministers to the state — Govind Narayan Singh and Arjun Singh.
Govind Narayan Singh became the chief minister in 1967 after defecting from the Congress with legislators from Lok Sewa Dal after rebelling against then chief minister Dwarka Prasad Mishra. He formed an alliance government and was chief minister for two years. His two sons, Harsh Narayan and Dhruv Narayan Singh are Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs from Rampur Baghelan, Govind Narayan’s assembly constituency, in Vindhya region and Bhopal respectively.
In 1980, another Vindhya leader, Arjun Singh, became the chief minister for the first time after winning from Churhat. “Singh became a taller leader than Govind Ji. After being shunted out of MP in 1985, he became governor of Punjab and negotiated the Rajiv-Longowal Accord for peace. The same year he was appointed as a Union minister in Rajiv Gandhi Cabinet, but returned as chief minister of MP in 1988. Then, he resigned within a year because of the Churhat lottery scam,” the Congress leader quoted above said.
Govind Narayan Singh’s grandson Vikram Singh is contesting from Rampur Baghelan on a BJP ticket and Arjun Singh’s son Ajay Singh is contesting from Churhat as a Congress candidate after he lost from there in 2018 to BJP’s Shardendu Tiwari, whose grandfather CP Tiwari, a socialist leader, contested against Arjun Singh.
Ajay Singh spoke about how his father first promised OBCs reservation in 1980, a pledge the Congress has officially adopted. “My father worked tirelessly for backward communities and now the Congress has promised them rights as per their proportion in the population proportion.”
The Congress has promised a caste survey in Madhya Pradesh, if it comes to power, and its leader Rahul Gandhi has said that OBCs should get benefits as per their proportion to the population. “Jitni aabadi, utka haq,” Gandhi had repeatedly said at public rallies, introducing population based rights pledge of the party for the first time before five state elections.
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In 2018, the BJP won 24 of the 30 assembly seats in the Vindhya region. The BJP was not able to replicate the performance in other regions of MP, helping the Congress to return to power after 15 years. However, Congress’ rule was short-lived; 22 MLAs rebelled against Chief Minister Kamal Nath and resigned, helping the BJP to claim power in March 2020.
Underdeveloped Vindhya
Although constituencies of chief ministers, both Churhat and Rampur Baghelan in Satna district are underdeveloped.
Churhat has only one college and it offers only one course — BA (pass). “Most of the students, who didn’t go out for studies are BA pass here in Churhat. “There is no factory in the area, there is a major water crisis and houses are not of concrete,” said Ramadan Patel, 70, a resident of Kelheri village.
Raju Kushwaha, 28, a voter in Rampur Baghelan, said that people vote for Govind Narayan Singh’s family out of loyalty. “But, we have not seen any development here. The roads are in bad shape, there is no assured power and water supply and there are no local employment avenues,” added Kushwaha, a vegetable vendor, who belongs to an OBC community.
According to a NITI Aayog report of 2023, of the 10 districts in Madhya Pradesh having the highest multi-dimensional poverty, a measure that factors in access to essential services, three are in Vindhya region, Sidhi (33% poor), Singrauli (31% poor) and Rewa (28% poor). Of the eight districts in the region, six have the lowest credit deposit ratio, as per the state’s 2023 economic survey.
Considering the backwardness of the region, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, promised a ₹7,500 crore irrigation project and the country’s biggest solar power plant in Rewa. In April, he also handed over four lakh homes to poor people under the PM Awas Yojana. “We have done a lot in 18 years and only the BJP can ensure Vindhya’s development,” said Rajendra Shukla, a state minister and BJP candidate from Rewa.
Jairam Shukla, a political analyst, said OBC politics in MP started from Vindhya but now there is a lot of division among OBC voters on caste lines.
Kushwaha sees hope in Congress’s promise of an increase in reservation for OBC communities after conducting a caste census. “If we get more jobs, development will also happen,” he said. Vidyanath Patel said Arjun Singh had promised the same. “Nothing happened,” he said, pointing at his tea stall, which he started outside the Congress office 42 years ago.
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