ABSTRACT
In the late 1980s, the very systematic survey edited by F. Frankel and M. S. A. Rao on ‘the decline of a social order’ (that was its subtitle) in India almost eluded Madhya Pradesh — and more or less rightly so because in this state the old ‘social order’ then showed strong resilience. In particular, the Other Backward Classes (OBC) had not emerged as a significant force on the political scene. One of the appendixes of the first volume of the book showed that in 1984, Madhya Pradesh had the lowest proportion of MPs from this category in India, namely, 5 per cent (Frankel and Rao 1989: 422). However, things changed very rapidly since the late 1980s and in 12 years, from 1984 to 1996, the proportion of the OBC MPs jumped from 7.5 to 25 per cent.
