India now has a minority rights party composed of 50 IIT alumni who quit their jobs

On the morning of April 23rd, the Twitter account of the Bahujan Azad Party went live with a celebratory tweet. The party pointed out that the news of the party’s launch was the sixth highest trending topic on the platform.

Congratulations guys, our party is trending!! pic.twitter.com/gPi7JF1kQM

— Bahujan Azad Party (@BahujanAzad) April 23, 2018

The Bahujan Azad Party is composed mainly of 50 IIT alumni, all of whom reportedly quit their jobs to join the party. It will be led by Naveen Kumar, who graduated from IIT Delhi in 2005. The party has already applied to the Election Commission of India for approval, and expects to hear back in a fortnight.

Bahujan Azad Party

The group’s Twitter bio reads, “A political party for the the upliftment for SCs, STs, OBCs, women and Minorities”. Most of the members of the party are from these minority groups, having benefited from the reservation policy for SCs (15%), STs (7.5%) and OBCs (27%) at IITs. The party’s primary focus is on increasing education and employment opportunities for these groups, not only in terms of reservations but also by improving the infrastructure for education and skill development.

The title of the Bahujan Azad Party translates to “freedom for the majority of people”. This is not ironic. Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes comprise more than 70% of India’s population, with OBCs alone accounting for over 40%, according to estimates from a decade ago by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).

Interestingly, while the quotas of SCs and STs are in line with the proportion of India’s population they represent, the same privilege is not afforded to OBCs, who usually get a maximum quota of 27%. This unleashes its own set of problems, as relatively well off OBC groups like Yadavs are vying with weaker OBCs for a disproportionate amount of seats and faring better. In order to rectify this, India’s President, Ram Nath Kovind, established a commission in late 2017 that was tasked with levelling the playing field for different OBC groups.

The announcement of the Bahujan Azad Party’s launch is timely for another reason. The last few weeks have seen a spate of protests in India by Dalit groups and activists over the Supreme Court’s proposal to safeguard suspected perpetrators from immediate detainment under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The protesters feel that this could encourage crimes against minorities, going against the very purpose of the act itself.

The party is starting small. It is limiting itself to Bihar for the medium term, where it will contest the state’s legislative assembly elections in 2020 before moving on to Lok Sabha polls in 2024. West Bengal and Rajasthan have also been mooted as possible states to expand into after the party solidifies its position in Bihar.

Why the party was formed

Speaking to the Press Trust of India, Naveen Kumar explained that he and his associates took part in Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption protests in 2011 and initially supported the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). However, they decided to form their own party after being “disillusioned” by the lack of minority representation in educational institutions and the judiciary.

In what seemed a thinly-veiled reference to the AAP, Kumar tried to highlight how the party’s strategy was different from other upstarts. “We do not wish to do a hurried job and end up being reduced to just one of those small political outfits with big ambitions”. He also said that the party did not plan on positioning itself as a rival of any other political party or ideology.

As a fledgling party promoting a single agenda, the Bahujan Azad Party would do well to learn from the mistakes of the AAP. The AAP, which counts former IIT Kharagpur alumnus Arvind Kejriwal as its leader, rose to prominence as an anti-corruption, citizen-first party bent on shaking up the status quo of Indian politics.

After winning the Delhi state election in a landslide in February 2015, the party has been unable to make good on its initial promise, faltering in elections in Punjab and Gujarat, falling prey to infighting and cronyism and being stymied at every turn in Delhi by the BJP’s central government. Additionally, the party’s commitment to transparency was called into question in May last year, when Kejriwal was accused of accepting a bribe from his health minister.

Cautionary tale

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), led by Mayawati, also stands out as cautionary tale, given its core focus on Dalit and minority rights. The party was started by Kanshi Ram, a prominent Dalit rights activist, in 1984 to represent the rights of SCs, STs and OBCs. After helming three coalition governments in UP, Ram’s protege Mayawati drove the party to a significant majority in the 2007 state elections by wooing upper caste groups like Brahmins, much to the chagrin of its core Dalit support base. The BSP lost the state elections in 2012 and failed to win even a single UP seat in the general elections in 2014 as upper caste voters migrated to the BJP.

The Bahujan Azad Party should keep its political ambitions in line with its founding goals and maintain its focus on its target base. In order to achieve its mandate effectively, it also needs to be more than a social movement agitating for reservations. Higher reservations don’t guarantee long-term change. As data from the NSSO shows, while higher reservations in educational and government institutions have translated into higher employment rates for minority groups, these are mostly for low-skilled occupations. Reservations need to be supported by adequate vocational training programmes and structural improvements in the quality of educational institutions.

The party’s members have their work cut out for themselves over the next few months. They will leverage their IIT credentials to drum up financial support. They are employing a grassroots approach by onboarding members and supporters from youth hostels in Bihar and striking partnerships with social activists. It will be interesting to see how they fare.