Caste survey: A political pawn in a player's game ahead of Assembly polls

Is Nitish's masterstroke a strategic checkmate against BJP's Hindutva-welfarism mix? ARCHIS MOHAN writes

In contrast to the Congress, which has dived headlong into calling for a nationwide caste census, making the demand to breach the 50 per cent ceiling on caste-based reservations its vital plank for the forthcoming Assembly elections, the Narendra Modi government’s strategy to blunt the Opposition’s broadside will involve fine-tuning the delivery of its welfare schemes to the beneficiary class, ‘Labharthi Varg’, that it has shaped over the past nine years, increasing allocations in some and emphasising that poverty has no caste.

The Bihar government’s caste survey, released last Monday on Gandhi Jayanti, could pull asunder the Bharatiya Janata Party’s