A great deal of confusion exists on how to discuss, and theoretically characterize, political developments in India during the last decade and a half. There is, of course, a consensus that the Congress party, a towering political colossus between 1920 and 1989, has unambiguously declined. While there are legitimate doubts about whether the decline of the Congress party will continue to be irreversible, it is clear that much of the political space already vacated by the Congress has so far been filled by three different sets of political forces. The first force, Hindu nationalism, has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention (Basu 1997; Hansen and Jaffrelot 1998; Jaffrelot 1993; Varshney 1993). The second force, regionalism, has also spawned considerable research of late (Baruah 1999; Singh forthcoming; Subramanian 1999). A third force, not so extensively analyzed, covers an array of political parties and organizations that encompass groups normally classified under the umbrella category of “lower castes”: the so-called scheduled castes, the scheduled tribes, and the “other backward classes” (OBCs). How should we understand the politics of parties representing these groups? How far will they go? What are the implications of their forward march, if it does take place, for Indian democracy?

The politics of ethnicity—caste, religion, and language—has been central to politics in twentieth-century India. However, as the dominant Indian National Congress declines in favor of a number of smaller parties, the manner in which ethnic identities are being invoked in the political arena is being transformed. The key aspect of this transformation is not, as it is usually understood, the replacement of a single multiethnic party with a collection of monoethnic parties. Many of the smaller parties are in themselves multiethnic, although the coalitions that they seek to build are usually narrower than those built by Congress. Rather, the key aspect is the change in the type of ethnic politics that dominates the political arena. Congress plays a coded ethnic card, invoking ethnic identities quietly in its selection of candidates but not openly in its identification of issues; targets certain ethnic groups without openly excluding others; builds differentiated ethnic coalitions across constituencies and states; and courts the support of these ethnic coalitions through the distribution of patronage but never through the rhetoric of identity.

This paper reports on the economic and political consequences of reserving government and public-sector jobs for members of the Scheduled Tribes in the Indian State of Bihar. It also contributes to a more general debate on the system of compensatory discrimination that has existed in India since the 1940s, and which was made tangible for middle class Indians by the decision of the government of V. P. Singh (1989–90) to adopt some of the recommendations of the Second Backward Classes Commission (1979–80: chairman B. P. Mandal). The Mandal Commission report advised that a system of reserved jobs in central government could usefully be extended from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes of India (roughly 15 and 7.5 percent of the population, respectively) to embrace a broader collection of Socially and Economically Backward Classes.1 In August 1990 V. P. Singh found it expedient to act upon Mandal's suggestion that up to 49.5 percent of all jobs in central government services and public undertakings should be reserved for the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

The rise of the other backward classes (OBCs) is certainly one of the main developments in the Hindi-belt politics over the last ten years. The OBCs are castes in the Indian social system that are situated above the Untouchables but below the forward castes (the “twice born,” Brahmins, Kshatriyas [warriors] and Vaishyas [merchants]) and the intermediate castes (mostly peasant proprietors and even dominant castes). They form the bulk of the Shudras—the fourth category (varna) of the classical Hindu social arrangement. The OBCs, whose professional activity is often as field-workers or artisans, represent about half of the Indian population, but they have occupied a subaltern position so far. Their rise for the first time seriously questions upper-caste domination of the public sphere.

In diplomatic settings, the King of Chosŏn Korea showed different faces to different people between 1392 and 1592. The monarch looked toward the Emperor of Ming China as a status inferior and acted as a status equal with rulers of Japan and Ryukyu. In a recasting of the Chinese precept that diplomacy should not be conducted with subjects, he sat upon the throne as status superior to Japanese and Ryukyuans who had been permitted or denied tributary relationships. And he was the “sovereign” before Japanese and Jurchen “subjects” upon whom he had bestowed nominal appointments to military posts. Each posture necessitated a complex of policies, regulations, rites, and practices, including concealment of the tributary from imperial view.