Vyapam Was a BJP Political Masterstroke That Went Awry

Vyapam, setup in the 70s, was supposed to be the trump card for political parties but has now turned into a nightmare

AAP activists protest against the Vyapam scam. (Photo: PTI)

• Vyapam was set up in 1970 and it was still a place open to petty corruption.
• Towards the 90s, the BJP began garnering support from the SC/ST and OBC by extending the ambit of reservations in education and jobs through Vyapam.
• More and more departments were brought under Vyapam at a time when socially backward castes formed a significant vote bank.
• With increasing urbanisation, more and more people from this vote bank became politically active creating a strong base for Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

If you thought that the levers of Vyapam, the Hindi acronym for the Madhya Pradesh (MP) Professional Examination Board, were twisted and turned over years so a few could benefit financially at the cost of many, you would only be partially correct.

Its expansion into a massive machine that propelled Madhya Pradesh’s students’ community into the employment market while ensuring that the unemployed found government jobs, at a price of course, has an ingenious political dimension.

Vyapam: From a Benign Institution to Political Mobilisation

Congress leader Digvijay Singh. (Photo: PTI)

When urbanisation, education and the rise of per capita income constitute the social and economic attributes of development — which began at a sluggish pace in the early 90s, even as MP remained a BIMARU (BIMARU is an acronym formed from the first letters of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh) state — political participation constitutes the major political correlate.

Vyapam was initially set up by the state government as a pre-medical test board in 1970. The pre-engineering board was constituted in 1981. The following year, the two boards were amalgamated and the PEB was assigned the responsibility to conduct entrance exams to various colleges. Till this point in time, Vyapam was still a benign institution open to petty corruption that was overlooked.

In the ’90s, the Congress held sway over the state, when the BJP was still not a force to reckon with. First under Arjun Singh, and Digvijay Singh later, the Congress expanded its political base among the socio-economically backward castes and classes across undivided Madhya Pradesh.

The Ayodhya Movement of 1989 was the turning point for the BJP. Hindutva formed the rallying point for mobilising voters, with caste Hindus and the trading community among its core. The Congress continued to command support, if not of the all Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Castes, of a sizeable section.

As Sudha Pai writes in her book, Developmental State and the Dalit Question in Madhya Pradesh: Congress Reponse, “the lower castes and tribes could be included in the system without upsetting the existing political order.” After assuming the position of chief minister in 1993, Digvijay Singh implemented the 14% reservation scheme for OBCs in government jobs, public undertakings and local bodies.

But to trump the Congress, the BJP engineered its own social churning that would help the party wean away the SC/ST and OBC voters to its fold. In the late ’90s, and early years after 2000, the party devised a strategy that combined the politics of expanding political rights of the socio-economically weaker sections and widening policy choice.

Vyapam would be the instrument to cleverly engineer this social heist in which ethnicity played a key role in this great transformation. By providing incentives — making available scarce “goods” such as admission to medical and engineering colleges and low level government jobs — and using discretionary authority and patronage, the BJP and the RSS gradually attracted the SC/ST and OBCs to its fold. SCs and STs constitute 21.35% and 27.46% respectively of the rural population in Madhya Pradesh.

A Trope to Garner SC, ST, OBC Votes

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. (File Photo)

A close scrutiny of the Excel documents maintained by the Vyapam scamsters indicates that due consideration was given to get SC, ST and OBC candidates “admitted” to medical and engineering colleges. In the little data that has emerged since the Vyapam scam became public, a similar pattern is noticeable in the admission of students from socially backward communities to private dental and medical colleges in Madhya Pradesh.

Around the time that more and more state government departments began to be included in Vyapam — keeping an eye not just on the bribes that could be collected, but also to widen the social justice net — a truncated Madhya Pradesh (a new state of Chhattisgarh was carved out in 2000) witnessed a frenzy of activity in what is called legal and illegal mining, especially sand mining, which fed the urbanisation of B-tier towns across the state. Politics was organised in significant part by the socially weaker sections for whom the pie had enlarged. The BJP had ensured the flow of once scarce resources across generations of SCs, STs and OBCs.

As the rural population moved to the urbanising towns such as Indore, Gwalior and Jabbalpur among others, they secured a degree of higher levels of schooling and achieved higher incomes, they also became more active politically. For the BJP, the convergence of its political goals and policy of social justice created a new constituency which explains Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s continuity. It had willy-nilly ushered in competition even though 77.5% of employers across MP reject the new engineering and medical graduates for poor skill levels.

Major Setback For the BJP

While the expansion of Vyapam was the BJP’s political masterstroke, the financial irregularities engendered by it, and the perception that many party and RSS leaders, with their moral flexibility, personally benefited by it, may have deleterious consequences that would impinge upon the BJP’s chances of returning to power in 2018.