Mandal lives on The writer is a freelance journalist. When Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president L.K. Advani began the historic Ram Rath Yatra in October 1990, a pro-BJP journalist said something like Lord Ram was being invoked to slay the demon called Mandal. While the saffron party ultimately succeeded in clearing the ground for the construction of the Ram Temple it had vowed to build, Mandal has survived. The BJP now pays obeisance to what once it regarded as a demon, the latest evidence being its decision to augment the scope of caste-based quota: the 27 per cent reservation for other backward classes (OBCs) and 10 per cent for the economically weaker section (EWS) in the All India Quota (AIQ) Scheme for undergraduate and postgraduate medical/dental courses (MBBS/MD/MS/Diploma/BDS/MDS).