There are some seats which are reserved for the Scheduled Caste (SC) in both parliamentary and assembly elections. This is done to ensure fair representation of the group of people who have been subject to historical injustice. Currently, West Bengal has 68 constituencies reserved for the SCs. In the wake of the upcoming assembly elections, the Trinamool Congress recently announced a 60-day outreach programme aimed at these constituencies. The programme, Tapashilir Sanglap is supposed to defend the rights and dignity of the Dalit communities against the BJP.
To this end, a glance at the historical performance of these constituencies can be useful in understanding some patterns about how these constituencies vote. A glance at the repository on Indian Democracy data provided by Lok Dhaba of Ashoka University can be useful for this purpose. Lok Dhaba has built a data repository of election results, compiling large volumes of data from authentic sources, which can be studied to understand the pattern of electoral outcomes over the years. We look at the election results in these constituencies since 1991, focusing only on the Assembly elections. The number of seats reserved for SC has changed since then. One of the first things to note is that voter turnout has increased from 77.4 to 85.02 per cent over these 30 years.
Male dominance in electoral outcomes is evident: over 30 years of analysis, only 51 women have been elected as MLAs from these constituencies, compared to 389 men. We note how the major parties performed over the years. We consider the Left Front, the Indian National Congress (INC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). This shows the Left Front’s declining relevance, winning 58 seats in 1991 to 0 in 2021, and the BJP’s increasing influence, starting with 0 seats in 1991 to 32 in 2021. While AITC has been in the driver’s seat since 2011, the number of seats it won declined from 49 to 36 between 2016 and 2021.
It must be noted here that AITC was in alliance with INC under the United Progressive Alliance in 2001 and 2011, and was part of the National Democratic Alliance with the BJP in 2006. Additionally, the Left Front and INC formed a coalition in the 2016 and 2021 elections. The decline of this coalition is especially evident in 2021, when the alliance did not even secure second place in any of the SC seats. Along with the number of seats won, we can also look at the average vote share these parties secured in reserved seats over the last 30 years. While the lion’s share of the vote generally went to the Left Front or the INC in the earlier period, the pattern soon shifted in favour of the AITC and the BJP. The average vote share of the Left peaked in 2006 at 53.98 per cent and fell to 8.03 per cent in 2021.
Concurrently, the average vote share of the BJP has increased from 12.36 per cent in 1991 to 42.67 per cent in 2021, and that of AITC in 2021 was 46.31 per cent. The INC’s share has also fallen from 32.81 per cent in 1991 to 8.36 per cent in 2021. The BJP’s growing foothold in these seats should be seen through the lens of the promises it made in its 2021 manifesto. These included granting citizenship to the Matua and other Hindu refugee communities. They had also promised an annual cash transfer to each Matua family. The Matua community formed an important voting chunk for BJP. The BJP also focused on the Rajbanshi community in North Bengal.
Amit Shah, in his speeches, had brought up the Rajbanshis’ battle against the Mughal armies and had promised to name a battalion in the Central Armed Police Force after Narayani Sena to honour the Rajbanshi community. These helped BJP make inroads into these constituencies and led to a spectacular performance in SC seats in 2021. The issue of caste has always been an uncomfortable topic of discussion among the West Bengal elite. The common narrative is one of denial that caste-based differences exist in West Bengal. Therefore, any notion of reservation or affirmative action has often been frowned upon. A brief look at the latest labour statistics (from the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24), however, would show that caste still plays an important role in determining where a person ends up.
Comparing these statistics with those at the All-India level shows that West Bengal is probably not doing as well in this regard as we would like to believe. We can compare the percentage of SC and Upper Caste (UC) workers employed as Regular Waged and Salaried (RWS) Workers. This type of employment is generally considered the best, offering a monthly income and stable security. At the all-India level, 20.59 per cent and 30.32 per cent of SCs and UCs, respectively, are employed as RWS. The corresponding figures in West Bengal is 17.53 per cent and 25.61 per cent. Along with a caste difference, the broader lack of good job opportunities in West Bengal is also evident in this data. In India, about 35 per cent of SC workers and only 11.68 per cent of UC workers are employed in elementary jobs, such as cleaning, assisting, and manual labour.
The corresponding figures for West Bengal are 31.78 per cent and 16.07 per cent. About 18 per cent of UC workers have a college degree or higher. The corresponding figure for SCs is 6.4 per cent. The disproportionate access that the SCs have to education and employment in West Bengal demands more attention, but the binary between AITC and BJP has generally been a contest between the promise of recognition and welfare schemes. Much of BJP’s success in the SC constituencies is due to its promises on citizenship. But the Matua community may be more sceptical about the BJP’s intentions now, especially because a large number of voters were not mapped in the recent SIR. Many of the refugee families have been in a state of legal limbo since the promised citizenship. If there is a shift in votes away from the BJP in these seats, it may be because the BJP failed to keep its promises.
(The writer is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics in Christ University, Bangalore.)