obc voice

No thanks...

2008-04-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

..to the Indian Judiciary for seeing the truth and still trying to mask it. To the Indian Government for not apologizing for hiding the truth for sixty years. To the Indian media for never respecting the truth. And definitely no thanks to upper caste India, the only creamy layer in the country, for consistently opposing the truth. Yes, there were honourable exceptions of course, courageous individuals in all those classes and institutions, and I salute all of them.

Thanks to Jyotiba Phule, Dr.Ambedkar, Kaka Kalelkar, B.P.Mandal, and countless others who began, and still guide us in this long series of battles.

And who were the first to ask for data?

2007-04-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

Kaka Kalelkar and B.P.Mandal. And who were these gentlemen? They headed the First and Second Backward Classes Commisions. Listen to what Kalelkar had to say:

"Before the disease of caste is destroyed all facts about it have to be noted and classified in a scientific manner as in a clinical record. To this end we suggest that the 1961 Census be remodelled and reorganised so as to secure the required information... If possible, Census should be carried out in 1957 instead of in 1961."

That was a recommendation of the Kalelkar Commission outlined in its 1955 report. Let's see what the much reviled B.P.Mandal did to acquire data:

'Advisor to the Human Resource Development ministry for this Supreme Court case, P S Krishnan, told The Indian Express today: “B P Mandal had himself written to three successive Home Ministers and had repeatedly requested them to conduct a caste-based Census. But he was refused saying that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, independent India’s first Home minister, had decided in 1950 that there will be no caste-based census from 1951 onwards, when the first census took place in Free India.[...] Krishnan said that Mandal wrote “three DO letters to three home ministers, namely H M Patel in 1978-79, Y B Chavan in 1979 and Gyani Zail Singh in 1980.”'

So, who's afraid of data? And who stopped its collection in the first place? Definitely not the OBCs. Check who were the Prime Ministers when Kalelkar and Mandal made their requests - they were definitely not OBCs. Check who are the sociologists who first opposed and still oppose caste censuses? Andre Beteille and Dipankar Gupta are some of the names that strike you immediately. Aren't these the wiseheads who incidentally also happen to oppose reservations for the OBCs?

Why are you afraid of data? This is one of those umpteen accusations that are hurled at OBCs. Note the insouciance, at best, and brazen shamelessness, at worst, of those who hurl that accusation. If a caste census was carried out in 1961, reservations for OBCs would have started then - on a more comprehensive basis, even in states where they already existed. And perhaps, there wouldn't be as many OBCs now.

Did the OBCs stop the caste censuses forty/fifty years ago so that they could 'assert backwardness and then to claim that we are more backward than you' today? One would have thought the babalog fighting for 'equality' were the only denizens of Delhi who were capable of thinking up such filmi plots and (lines)- but one should've known better. There is a lesson here for the OBCs - if you think things have changed over the last forty/fifty years, you'll remain backward. Forever.

They stopped the collection of data then, because they didn't want to divide the country along lines of caste, they ask for data now because they don't want to divide the country along lines of caste.

Will they close down the IITs/IIMs and JNU etc.,?

2007-04-01T00:36:00.000-07:00

Now that it seems almost impossible that OBCs would be admitted to centrally run educational institutions this year, and the future doesn't seem too rosy either for students from these castes, one question that, you'll notice, nobody asks...needs to be asked:

Will all admissions at all centrally run higher educational institutions be stopped? Will they close down the IITs/IIMs, Delhi University and JNU etc., until the issue of admissions of the OBC students is resolved? Because how can the government or the courts permit the functioning of institutions that cater only to a few castes in the country and exclude the great majority?

The Supreme Court hasn't ruled out the need for reservations which indicates that it recognizes the fact that many sections of the population aren't represented in these institutions. So how can the government continue to run these institutions that serve so obviously parochial needs? Do only the upper castes in the country have a right to equality and the others don't? And if the lower castes aren't to be admitted into these institutions until the issue is resolved, how can the upper castes be admitted? And how can these institutions still remain public institutions if only upper caste students would be admitted?

In this post, I'd said: 'But crudely put , the government owns them. And they were started with the objective of providing quality education to the people of India. Certain sections of the people were not represented- so they're claiming their share now. Their share, please note.' Which is their right. And these rights, whatever the reasons/pretexts, have been violated for the last sixty years in centrally-run educational institutions. And in most state-run institutions for lesser, but not less critical, periods of time. Now that the violation has been acknowledged, I repeat, should these institutions be allowed to continue to violate these rights? Shouldn't they be closed down until a fairer admissions policy, that reflects an accurate picture of the current demographic composition of the country and meets the very exacting, very objective standards of the courts, is installed?

That won't happen- no upper caste student/job applicant was ever stopped from being admitted/recruited because a new policy of reservations was being questioned in the courts. No academic years were lost, no upper caste applicant was refused a job he'd been selected for because the issue was in the courts. Their rights are important, inviolable - the rights of the lower castes on the other hand are not. Their aspirations, their disappointments can be ignored. Their efforts and their time- well, beggars can't be choosers. They can't choose the time they will be served, right?

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the view held by the establishment, the ruling upper castes, that the lower castes shouldn't entertain any wrong notions about rights and all that rot. And be grateful for whatever crumbs, bheekh, khairat is thrown their way. Or not thrown.

It's your country

2007-03-28T23:48:00.000-07:00

'That's the OBC script. The OBCs don't exist. When Nehru was building one of the hugest public sectors in the whole world, building a large central government and was prodding the states on to do the same, and when the governments that followed were doing more of the same..generally acting like God and dispensing largesse and jobs left-right-and-centre, it looks like great care was taken to exclude the OBCs from the queues. Or, it looks like the Indian Government didn't know of the existence of the OBCs.'

That's what I had said a few months ago. For sixty years, the Government of India refused to count the OBCs because they didn't exist. Now the Supreme Court says they don't exist because they were never counted. More than an interesting paradox, doesn't that seem like a great con job? I congratulate the smart actors, the collaborators, in this drama, the great pillars of our democracy, I mean your democracy - the government, the courts, the parliament and the press. Their true motives were always quite plain, even if at times one or more of them seemed to have developed something vaguely resembling a conscience. It was only the lower castes, because of their inherent backwardness, their lack of merit, who couldn't see through this sham exercise in democracy.

'Don't divide the country for your votebanks!' How can there be any votebanks if the voters don't exist?

A triumphant commenter on the preceding post says: satyameva jayate! It's time the OBCs learnt the bitter truth that they don't have any place in this country.

Rerun

2007-03-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court will once again express its opinion tomorrow on an issue on which it had always expressed itself without reservations. Reservations? Hang them from the nearest lamp post.

The lower castes shall also decide - is it worth hanging on to this sorry 'democracy'?

Roots

2006-10-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

'On September 27th in a federal courthouse in Chicago an appellate panel will hear argument in the first case that seeks to hold major American financial institutions liable for their role in financing, underwriting and profiting from slavery in the United States.'

This article goes on to say - 'this recent lawsuit marks a new departure in the battle for reparations. Rather than seek to hold the government responsible for the general historic wrongs of slavery, this litigation targets the companies that specifically profited – often illegally – from slavery. The plaintiffs are descendants of slaves upon whom these financial institutions profited.'

Among the financial institutions in the dock are : JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Brown Brothers Harriman.

I am reminded of another people, who underwent a similar experience of uprooting..and transplantation as the Africans the article refers to - indentured Indian labourers in the Caribbean and elsewhere. In fact, the two histories are connected. This article says - 'the origins of what came to be known as the system of indentured labor owed everything to the abolition of slavery in 1838.' and it goes on to point out that the means employed to lure Indian labourers to plantations several continents away were..as unsavoury as those employed to trick Africans into slavery.

And I am also reminded of the lower castes in India. And of their inability to rise above their roots. And of the people who are still profiting from their misery.

Kanshi Ram ( 1934-2006)

2006-10-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

'On 25th November 1949, the Poona Pact was 17 years old. At that time, the impact of the Poona Pact was not fully realised by our people. even though it was known to us that to get Baba Saheb elected to the Constituent Assembly, he had to be taken to Jesore and Khuina of Bengal. That was the main reason of his Hope that his People will Revolt against the unequal Brahminical Social Order. Later events showed that Spirit of Revolt was killed by the Poona Pact, and we have entered a New Age. Today, we know it well, as the Chamcha Age.'
- Kanshi Ram, the rebel who fought to overthrow the Chamcha Age. The visionary who breathed new life into the term Bahujan.

Pundits, I write about you

2006-09-29T22:42:00.000-07:00

"No matter how hard they try, there's no escaping their identity. The merit list displayed on the notice board announces it. This rank is their introduction to upper-caste seniors, during friendly ragging sessions, which could later become an outlet for the frustration of general category students. Like the final-year AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences) student, who made a reserved category fresher sit on the ground while a brahmin fresher sat on a chair, next to him. The senior asked him to say, "I am from a lower caste," repeatedly, to show him his place in the premises, where he had gained an "easy" entry this year. Hostels then become ghettoes. In AIIMS, quota students chiefly occupy the top two floors of the hostel. An engraved message on the door of one quota student on another floor asked him to "get out of this wing". Final-year student Ajay Kumar Singh still recalls the day he shifted from room number 43, which had leakage problems, to number 45. The whole wing was otherwise occupied by general category students, who promptly put up a board on top of the common carrom board, "Everyone except occupant of room number 45 can play." A reserved category student, who managed to become the gym secretary of AIIMS, resigned from his post as the financial secretary (a general category student) refused to release him funds. "He was chased around and beaten up by the executive heads of the student council," says Sunil Chumber, sub-dean of AIIMS. It is believed that several professors are on the side of the anti-reservation battalion. That's why during the recent agitation, some pro-reservation students hid their faces behind their placards, so that their professors wouldn't spot them. Once their pro-reservation rally was even mistaken by newspapers as an anti-reservation demonstration. Dalit students survive through a hard skin formed after a whole life replete with insults." Times.

Also at AIIMS : "The second student, who resides in Hostel 2, apparently incurred the wrath of his seniors for coming to the rescue of his friend on several occasions. "I have been subjected to mental and physical torture from my very first day in this institute...I was abused on my caste and...in the last few days my room had been locked from outside because of which I was unable to attend classes," his complaint reads. Both students are from the reserved category. Their complaints were submitted on Friday, along with a memorandum signed by 40 students recounting several cases of caste-based abuse in recent times — including the instances of a seventh-semester student "who...was forced to shift after abuses were written on his door." "

A pundit on Desipundit implies in a snide comment here that I write about 'sanskriti and parampara'. I think I write about institutions, formal and informal,..that block/censor/kill anything that questions our 'sanskriti and parampara'. Like Desipundit... which has certified, more than once, that the students (whose sankriti and parampara the newsreport describes), fighting for 'equality' are non-political, non-violent.

The poor, illiterate...oppressor

2006-09-20T02:26:00.000-07:00

"In sum, an Upper Caste Hindu in either rural or urban India is significantly more likely to be less illiterate, have lower drop-out rates and therefore be better educated, hold better jobs and have much higher consumtion levels than all other social groups. Given that Upper Caste Hindus are a lot less illiterate and far better educated they are least likely to be poor. Equally importantly, the higher the consumption level the more likely the presence of Upper Caste Hindus. Whereas the these differences are true for both Rural and Urban India, they are far more marked in Urban India where Upper Caste Hindus are over-represented. Finally, in Urban India, STs, Scs and OBCs are far more similar than dissimilar in terms of education attainments and consumption levels.
In Rural India, relatively, it is the SCs that are worst off followed by STs, OBCs and with the Upper Caste Hindus at the top. In Urban India however it is the relative position of OBCs which is the worst, followed by SCs, STs and finally the Upper Caste Hindus at the top. Equally importantly, in Urban India, the differences between STs, SCs and OBCs in terms of relative positioning are very similar and they look a lot more like each other and very different from Upper Caste Hindus."

Read this.

Friends of South Asia

2006-09-15T06:53:00.000-07:00

"We believe that affirmative action policies such as reservations play a key role in the empowerment of historically marginalized communities. The reservation policy in India is designed to compensate for centuries of caste-based oppression faced by lower-caste communities, and the subsequent inequalities that have resulted. Hence we are disappointed and saddened by the recent spate of protests by students of elite institutions and urban professionals in India against the Indian federal government's proposed policy to provide reservations for an array of socially and economically disadvantaged communities, officially designated as Other Backward Classes (OBCs). It is furthermore disappointing to note that such sentiment of holding on to privilege and denial of real inequalities in India finds support among Indian Americans in the SF Bay Area. We call upon members of the Indian/Indian American community to reject positions that seek to further upper-caste privilege at the expense of true social justice, and seek solutions that truly benefit ALL of Indian society. "

Came across this press release from the 'Friends of South Asia' very late. I guess not all Indians in distant lands are myopic. Thank you, FoSA.

Don't

2006-08-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

'..He said as soon as they will get a copy of the bill, the medicos will consult lawyers and move the Supreme Court against the proposed legislation.' Read more about what the agitating medicos plan to do now that the Bill has been introduced in parliament.

Move the courts? Nothing new. It has been a favorite tool with those seeking 'equality' since independence. Perhaps no other class of legislation have been challenged as often and as vigorously as policies advocating reservations..One of the many reasons why a majority of the States in India and the Centre itself did not even attempt to correct the criminally skewed representation in jobs and higher education until very recently. But the most important reason why legislation was so rarely sought to be introduced and so frequently sought to be challenged was very simple : most of the governments were(/are) upper caste led and most of the 'rights' -conscious challengers were(/are) upper caste too. That doesn't add up, in your view..? Let me put it more bluntly - both the 'stallers' in government and the 'challengers' from civil society were both motivated by blind prejudice. Until now.

So blinded were they by prejudice that they'd overlook all the facts, evidence..data piling up before their own eyes (as powers that be in government)...and brush away all the proof of discrimination, exclusion..and inequality they'd witness every day (as constituents of civil society). And stall..and challenge. Until now.

And it seems like, even now.

I'd like to tell the challengers : Don't. Does that sound aggressive..like a warning? (If it's interpreted as one, it'd be a rarity in this blog's history - usually, I've been at the receiving end of dire threats about what would happen to the OBCs if this legislation went through). I'm only trying to tell the savarnas that the OBCs aren't the enemy- their own prejudices are...

I'm only trying to look into the future and see where..all this might lead upto.

Looking for a Pulitzer?

2006-08-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

Barkha Dutt promotes a movie, made in the U.S., for Indian-Americans living in the U.S., on NDTV. The characters, according to one reviewer, might have Indian-sounding names and they might look Indian..but the movie isn't about Indians. Nor about India. So why is it being shown in Indian homes, you ask? That's okay, I guess, most of the Indian television media sounds like it's just come visiting anyway (recall how Barkha feels that caste isn't so very important in India)...covering the daily disaster that's India - and 'analysing' with as much knowledge as any short duration visitor can gather. And would leave as soon as the Pulitzers are announced ..to collect them.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who bruits around the 'knowledge' that OBCs are 'oppressors' without offering any 'substantive proof', tells CNN-IBN that there is no 'substantive proof' that Pakistan is involved in 'terrorist activities' in India. Another 'knowledgeable visitor' ? Is he lobbying to become a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department?

Good Wishes !

2006-08-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Found this at one of the numerous 'non-violent, non-political' websites dedicated to opposing reservations -

'...have a look at mumbai on dec 6th when the hordes of backwards visit on the pretext of ambedkar jayanti ..they travel ticketless, defecate in public.. grope and tease women flock and make a mess out of the city..
its these scum of society that will become doctors and engineers? for them might is right and vandalsing is their birthright ....
but they do one good thing...have sex with the whores of kamathipura which hopefully shud kill them of aids.. ..'

- an anonymous commenter.

Who paid for your free lunches?

2006-08-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Prime Minister is discussing the reservations issue with a group of ministers.. mulling over the Moily report, the news channels tell you. All the channels reporting on the issue 'inform' you reservations in central educational institutions are going to cost the government 17,000 crores. No, it's not the expansion envisaged in these institutions to accommodate upper caste students who might lose seats that requires this 'investment' -it's those damned OBCs...who are going to cost the country this colossal 'expenditure'.

If the institutions had been expanded, without making any provision for new reservations, I'm sure the media would have found a lot of 'merit' in that .. colossal 'drain' on resources.

one bc voice

2006-07-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

The state has blocked my voice. So I tried to infiltrate into the Indian etherwaves through Pakistan, by assuming a new identity (http://pkblogs.com/obcvoice). Would that work? Not everyone likes a proxy warrior. So, I have opened another front (http://onebc.blogsome.com) .

onebc ? Because someone has stolen my identity too. The state ignored the existence of the OBCs for half a century - now, a patriotic blogger has decided I should remain non grata.

I would continue to post as obc voice at blogspot - but I’d be posting as onebc at blogsome.

I’ve managed to retain the title at blogsome..but only just. The title is Obc voice (note that only the first letter is in uppercase) at blogsome and obc voice (all lowercase) at blogspot.

If obc voice continues to remain stifled, now you know who to tune into - onebc.

'Jitenge ya losenge..'

2006-07-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

When Rajiv Gandhi said that, more than two decades ago at an election rally, he revealed not just how little he knew about the language and idiom of the Indian people..but also about Indian reality. But the Indian people, in their largeheartedness, laughed that away and gave him the biggest majority ever in Indian history.

Now, I present to you a piece of advice from a gentleman who, unlike Rajiv Gandhi, went to a University and actually studied and..excelled there.., but seems to be as out of touch with Indian reality as the former Prime Minister..and as capable of provoking unintended humour. Listen to Pratap Bhanu Mehta ::

'We should refrain from accepting the blocks the Indian polity assigns us to- SC, ST, OBC, OC and the like. These identities should be given up by us!!'

So, that seems a good piece of advice..what's funny about it, you ask? There's nothing funny about the advice (I find it disingenuous, in fact)..it was his choice of audience that was funny - he was talking to a group of upper caste students fighting for 'equality' at JNU when he said that.

When will reservations stop?

2006-07-15T05:06:00.000-07:00

How long will the policy of reservations be continued? As long as the upper caste elite in the bureacracy in particular and the country in general ...and the rats eating away the 'steel framework' of the Indian state want it to.. Read what Sharad Yadav, President of the Janata Dal (United) has to say here about the implementation of the reservations policy by the UPSC.. An excerpt:

"Under the reservation policy, 49.50 per cent of the seats is reserved. The remaining 50.50 per cent is open to all. Candidates who qualify for the civil services by dint of their merit alone should be enlisted in general open categories. After all, there is no bar on SC and ST candidates fighting elections for general seats. Many leaders, including Kansi Ram and B.P. Maurya, have fought and won from general seats. General seats do not mean seats reserved for people belonging to non-reserved categories. Similarly, general open seats in the civil services are not reserved for people belonging to non-reserved categories. The Government of India has not reserved hundred per cent of the seats of the civil services. In fact, it cannot do so. There is a 50 per cent ceiling placed on reservation by the Supreme Court. But in effect, the UPSC and the DOPT are implementing reservation policy to ensure 50.50 per cent reservation for the unreserved categories that are supposed to form just 15 per cent of the Indian population.

For the last civil services examination, around 214 of 425 seats were general open merit seats. Out of the first 214 candidates, 50 were from reserved categories. Forty of them were from OBCs. But the UPSC refused to allow reserved category candidates to enlist themselves as general candidates. Twenty seven per cent of 425 is 117: this is the exact number of candidates belonging to OBCs who were declared successful. Even those in the top 10 were classified as reserved category candidates! By doing this, the UPSC has denigrated meritorious candidates from the reserved categories. It has also denied jobs in the civil services to an equal number of reserved category candidates. In fact, 157 candidates from OBC categories should have been selected: 40 on the basis of merit and 117 on the basis of the 27 per cent reservation extended to them. "

I find the term 'bizarre', that Sharad Yadav himself uses, an accurate description of the attitude that seems to inform the UPSC. 'It has transformed' as he says, 'the policy of reservations into a policy of communal awards'. And Mr.Yadav also cites several rulings of the highest court in the land to point out how this attitude clearly violates the essence of those rulings.

Mr.Yadav concludes : " The interesting question arises: who is perpetuating reservation? If people from the SCs, STs, and OBCs get representation according to their population, the scheme of reservation will come to an end. But who is depriving the meritorious from getting jobs as general category candidates? "

I thank the excellent blogger mineguruji, whose blog is a veritable repository of some of the most interesting news and the best writing on reservations related issues, for posting Mr.Yadav's article in full.

Know your Dharma : know your place

2006-07-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Wandering, looking for other information.. I found this little article in a newspaper, two days ago. A glittering, timeless nugget of wisdom (it was titled Age of wisdom : caste jobs - the day's 'quota' of spiritual victuals, I suppose, in that newspaper), I just couldn't let it lie there.. I thought it could make all of us a little 'wiser'. So I'm posting/pasting it here :

' All Hindu religious and legal treatises always stress on the importance of the caste system and keep repeating the importance of keeping it pure by adhering to the tenets of occupation, inheritance and even interaction among the four castes.

According to the Vasishta Dharmashastra, the six lawful occupations for Brahmins are studying the Vedas, teaching, performing sacrifices for self and for others, giving and accepting alms. For Kshatriyas, the three lawful occupations are studying, performing sacrifices for self, and giving alms and gifts. With knowledge and security issues taken care of by the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas, the service tasks fall in the lot of the Vaishyas and Shudras.

The legal treatises provide a loophole for people who cannot or are not willing to follow the traditional occupations prescribed for their castes. These people are allowed to adopt the lawful occupation of other castes, but the castes should be lower than theirs. So, in effect, no one can take over (the) work of a Brahmin.'

So all aspirations to move up are unlawful.

Bad Treatment

2006-07-05T02:25:00.000-07:00

Dr.P.Venugopal, Director - AIIMS, has been dismissed... by Dr.Ramadoss. Politicians treat their fellow politicians very badly at times.

CNN-IBN seems to agree - its headline for the story is 'Bad Treatment'. I agree it's bad treatment.Wonder what CNN-IBN, in retrospect, would call the treatment - abuse, innuendoes..the jokes meted out to 'quota doctors' by the students, doctors employed by AIIMS from its hallowed, 'autonomous' precincts ? Good, clean fun?

The oppressors and the OBC script

2006-06-29T05:13:00.000-07:00

Blogger MK had posted a comment parroting the old, unsubstantiated charge that 'OBCs-are-Oppressors' here. I did not think his barely hidden animosity towards the OBCs needed a response... but I responded nevertheless because I felt this would give me an opportunity to crystallize my own thoughts on an issue that is increasingly being used by anti-reservationists of all hues (whatever mukhota they might be wearing, red or saffron) to paint all OBCs with the same brush. This is the response I posted there :

'MK,
I noticed your interesting comment very late..You have alluded to me in your comment, so I assume its import is meant for my enlightenment too.

'You are posting a great Chandrabhan Prasad article about dalits, and then expecting us to just replace the word dalit with OBC and accept the import of the article. ' you said (to shivam vij, another blogger).

Some other bloggers here have also made this point, in fact at least one of them has been running what could only be described as a 'campaign' to press home this point - using his knowledge and data about the OBCs in one particular state. One out of twenty five odd.

The charge goes : the OBCs are stealing the Dalit script of oppression, and are, in fact, oppressors themselves.

I am an OBC - so this kind of sweeping charge places me in the dock, too. I am assuming you have visited my blog (and gathered that I am in favour of reservations) because you have so very openly hinted that I needed education on certain issues. If you haven't visited my blog I fail to understand how you can draw any inferences about my opinions. And even if you have visited my blog, I assume you haven't read any of my posts because nowhere in any of my posts do I indicate that the OBCs' claim to reservations is premised chiefly on oppression, as understood in the context of the claim of the Dalits. And wherever I linked to avowedly Dalit sites (this was less than half a dozen times in around 30 odd posts) I cited the articles (referred to) only to illustrate the nature of caste. I mentioned Chandrabhan Prasad's name only once ..and in passing.

Chandrabhan Prasad says "It is not the majority [bahujan] which is oppressed, it is the minority, it is the Dalits. Do you think Shudra communities such as Thevars, Vanniyars, Chettiyars, Gaudas, Lingayats, Vokkaligas, Kammas, Reddies, Jats, Yadavs, Gujjars, Kurmis, Patels, Marathas are oppressed communities?"

I can name a few more such castes - castes, referred to by the approximation 'intermediate castes', who, according to Dipankar Gupta 'now (wish to) convert their political and economic assets, which are primarily rural, to urban assets in terms of office jobs.' But what's significant is Chandrabhan Prasad echoes similar views in almost similar words :'When Phule talked of uniting with Shudras, the Shudras then were only the social police of the Brahmans; they were tenants. Today, they own land, most of the rural assets and institutions. They have a fair share in the media, cinema, and urban assets as well. All the four chief ministers in the South are of Shudra origin, including the CMs of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar. Thus, ten major States are ruled by Shudra Chief Ministers. What is the condition of Dalits in these States?' (Link). Let's also consider a milder variant of this charge - Rajiv Gandhi had this to say on the issue : 'Many castes that are listed in (this) list are forward castes and are scheduled castes ... I know for a fact that Brahmins are included, Reddys are included, Vokkaligas are included, Kammas are included, Lingayats are included, Gounders are included, Chettiyars are included. Are these backward castes? Do they need the help?...'

Now you echo this very 'original' charge. There had been no policy action of positive discrimination favoring the OBCs at the central level until 1991 and at the regional level, a majority of the states hadn't taken up reservations until as late as the eighties and the nineties. What am I trying to say? I am trying to point out that the script of the OBCs hasn't evolved fully until now (if it had been, and the OBCs had been as articulate as the upper castes in voicing their concerns, and as conscious of their rights, the present round of reservations would have happened in 1990..no in 1980 itself) - but its critique has already been conceived, fashioned, crystallized and fleshed out and even converted into (easily digestible, remembered) popular memes such as the one you chant and and the nuggets offered by upper caste students who say : 'casteism DOES NOT EXIST at the highest peaks...divisions are characteristic of the lowland...'

Allow me to deal with your charges in two parts :
first, I'll explore the term oppressors as used in relation to the OBCs,
second, I'll attempt to ponder over the question whether the term 'oppression' fits the OBCs' collective state of mind.

I've taken the liberty to detail/define the contours of the term (your term) 'prosperous upper-OBCs' by naming some of the castes. I've borrowed the names of the castes identified by Chandrabhan Prasad and the late Rajiv Gandhi..and in the course of my argument I will add to the list. Let's see who they are and are not:
Thevars, Vanniars, Chettiars are included in the list (I am following Prasad's order). I don't know who exactly he means by Gaudas. I am assuming, he means the Gounders of Tamil Nadu, who again are in the List . If he means the Gouds of Andhra Pradesh (also known as setti balija/srisayana/idiga etc., in different regions), yes they are included too. But the traditional occupation of the caste is toddy tapping - or drawing out and selling palm liquor. If you have ever seen any wiry individual, with nothing but a handmade rope and the barest langot scaling up a tall palm in any part of South India - that's the toddy tapper(oppressor?). There are some members of this very large community who've made it big in liquor contracting and brewing in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. But a great number still scale the palms (unlike the nadars of Tamil Nadu, also associated with toddy tapping, or the Ezhavas of Kerala who claim kinship with the Idigas across the south). If he means the gowdas of Karnataka - their names appear again further down his (Prasad's) list. An unnecessary repetition? Yes, the Lingayats, Vokkaligas (and the Kurubas, among others who call themselves goudas) are there in the national list. A similar inclusion is the Patels - he probably means the farming, trading Patels of Gujarat. They are not in the list. A great number of communities in western India use the surname Patel, including some tribal communities in South India. The Kammas and the Reddies are in the list. As are the Jats, Yadavs, Gujjars, Kurmis. To understand why these well-known (therefore obviously 'prosperous') communities are in the list (or the lists, because the NCBC list is a compilation of the statewise lists), we need to look a little more closely. A 'nuanced' scrutiny will reveal the following patterns :

# The listed castes are state-specific : the Kammas and Reddies appear in the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka lists (the reddies, curiously appear in the Kerala list too) and not in the Andhra Pradesh list where these two communities together have shared, between them, overall reins of the state's top leadership for the last fifty years. Members from other communities which have held the chief ministership of the state include a Velama, a Brahmin and interestingly, a Dalit. The Velamas are again regarded as a 'forward community' in Andhra but most of the Vellalas, in Tamil Nadu are backward communities. Yes, Andhra has had Shudra Chief Ministers but never a backward class chief minister. The Dalit who had been Chief Minister for a brief while (a compromise arrived at to resolve a conflict between intransigent rival reddy claimants), was the rare exception when a low caste hindu reached the highest echelons of power. YS Rajasekhar Reddy is a Christian, but it's his caste that has earned him his position. Up north, the Jats are in the Rajasthan list but don't appear anywhere on the Punjab, Haryana or the Uttar Pradesh lists. In Punjab and Haryana, of course, they have held the key to the chief ministership for several decades. In Uttar Pradesh, the backward classes coalition they tried to forge so very assiduously in the sixties, seventies and eighties failed to materialise because most of the other backward classes never considered them truly backward. Charan Singh who tried so very hard to project himself as a pan-Indian kisan leader never managed to rise above his limited status as a jat leader. Deve Gowda of the Vokkaligas, from the south, shares similar ambitions ..and history. The Marathas are missing from the Maharashtra list- some of them appear in certain other states' lists. The Gujjars are not listed in the Gujarat and J&K lists but they appear elsewhere.

# The listed castes are region-specific: For example - not all the Chettiars are included in the Tamil Nadu list. Chettiars from specific districts are excluded. This region-specificity applies to many 'prosperous upper-OBCs' with some notable exceptions (which I will touch upon later). It applies to the Jats of Rajasthan too. Jats, from certain districts are excluded from the Rajasthan list.

# The listed castes are sub-caste specific: The Munnuru Kapus from Telangana are included in the Andhra list - the affluent Kapus from Coastal Andhra are not. The Lingayats, as you are probably aware, claim allegiance to a faith of their own - different from Brahminical Hinduism- and have their own small caste system. The Navaliga (Hadapad), Madiwal and Kimbhar are the backward castes among the Lingayats. The smaller communities of Lingayats in Andhra and Maharashtra are listed as backward.

# The listed castes are varna-blind. The Rajputs in Karnataka, a very small group originally from northern India, are listed as backward because that's what they are in that state..They're listed backward in Andhra Pradesh too, under a different name. Dbobis/rajakas are listed as a Scheduled Caste in certain states, and sub-castes from different regions of the same states are listed as backward.

# Only the Yadavs, Kurmis are listed as backward in almost all the states they are found in.
Those are some of the parties one can identify on looking more closely at the lists (I am referring to the lists so that you don't have to take my word for any of this, check for yourselves). What conclusions can we draw from these patterns ?

1. That substantial sections of these 'prosperous upper-OBCs' are excluded from the lists. Most of the Jats are excluded, a majority of the Reddies, Kammas, Patels and Marathas are excluded, large sections of the Lingayats are excluded. If they are listed anywhere, they appear only as minorities in those states. These exceptions are not the typical OBCs.

2.That those castes which still remain largely listed, like the Vokkaligas, Thevars, Vanniyars, Ezhavas, some Vellala castes from Tamil Nadu...are those exceptions the typical OBCs?

3.That the Yadavs and Kurmis, who are listed in all states where they live, aren't exactly the typical 'prosperous upper-OBCs' in most states. In states outside the Hindi belt, or more accurately outside U.P and Bihar, the Yadavs/Kurmis don't hold the same kind of economic/political clout. They don't play such an important role in political equations because their representation is either very limited or non-existent in the upper ranks of most political parties. The yadavs/kurmis of UP/Bihar are the exceptions among the yadavs/kurmis.

So, to summarise, the 'prosperous upper-OBCs' you refer to are either not listed as OBCs or they do not typify the OBCs.

They do not typify the Shudras either. Let me explain:

Chandrabhan Prasad says 'Today, they own land, most of the rural assets and institutions. They have a fair share in the media, cinema, and urban assets as well. All the four chief ministers in the South are of Shudra origin, including the CMs of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar. Thus, ten major States are ruled by Shudra Chief Ministers.' Prof.Dipankar Gupta of JNU concurs.

I'll begin with the northern castes. If you consider the Jats, Gujjars, Yadavs/Kurmis, Marathas, Patels etc., all of them share certain common attributes:

# they all claim a status equivalent to Kshatriyahood. They have each formulated elaborate theories, supported by part history and part mythology and much folkloric legend to support this narrative of 'lost' kshatriyahood. THe Jats support their claims by referring to five medieval kingdoms spread across Gujarat, Rajasthan, to Madhya Pradesh and Pakistan. History does support the existence of such kingdoms. The Jats have converted to other faiths in large numbers but their refusal to relinquish their caste should serve as an indicator of what value their 'status' holds for them. The Marathas have devised an even more detailed narrative - their ancestry is traced to puranic 'vanshas', their legend to kingdoms spanning half the country (from Bagalkot in the South to Ayodhya in the North) and their brotherhood binds together '96 clans'. History too supports their pre-eminent role in the medieval ages. The Patels & Gujjars have their own claims, which are once again bolstered by history. The Yadavs/Kurmis of Aryavarta do not have to justify their claim to 'kshatriyahood' at all- they just have to point to the Mahabharata which honours them with an 'almost-kshatriya' status.

# they are all dominant castes in at least one of the the States they belong to (with some exceptions). All these castes are part of an elite club of three-four castes (in each state) who constitute the political leadership of those states. Most other backward castes are characteristically small, peasant-artisan groups. These castes dominate through sheer numbers, and the strength of their chequered histories of dominance. If we take 1980, the year Mandal finished his study, as a kind of landmark.. you'll find that representatives from most of these castes had already come to occupy top executive positions, at least once, in their respective states. Actually, every time a chief minister is chosen in any of these states, there is a very good chance that an aspirant from one these castes stands a good chance at least one out of three times. In some states, two times.

# their ascendancy predates independence and land tenure reforms (with some exceptions). Most of these castes' ascendancy can be traced to around 1000 years ago. The advent of the Muslims only hindered their rise a little, in the beginning, but didn't stop it. One can gauge this truth from the phenomenal expansion of the Maratha empire during the later period of the Mughal rule and the strength of the Jats from the audacity with which they managed to raid Delhi almost at will in the middle ages. Apart from accommodating the interests of the savarna princes, the British had to acknowledge the power of these castes too in their efforts to build their own empire.There were Rajahs and Zemindars/Jagirdars from these castes before independence, before the beginning of the last century. Land tenure reforms only helped small and medium sized farmers from these castes consolidate their 'rural assets'. As for acquiring 'urban assets', some of these castes were as quick as the upper castes in doing so. Cinema, media, other assets - we tend to forget that Dadasaheb Phalke, the father of Indian Cinema was a Maratha. And who can ignore the role of the Jats in the growth of cinema in Lahore and in Mumbai? And the Patels started establishing a global prescence in business even before independence. Their presence isn't/wasn't entirely rural, and their ownership of urban assets is old as that of rural assets. Reservations didn't help them acquire any of these 'urban assets' because they came into effect in most of north and western India less than two decades ago. Only the Yadavs/Gujjars/Kurmis lag behind these other 'intermediate castes' in this race to acquire urban assets.Shudras?

Let's move on to the South now:

Despite all the noise that is made about 'how different things are down there' you'd notice some striking similarities between the so-called 'upper-OBCS' of the North and the South.

# they all lay claim to a 'higher status'in the varna order, too. And some of them have gone beyond 'kshatriyahood' to create a sub-caste of 'brahmins' within their castes. Lingayats would tell you how tough it is to be one - their faith, Veerashaivism, lays down stricter codes of conduct, diet and rituals than Brahminism. The Thevars claim they are an 'indigenous martial caste' (meaning the Tamil equivalent of Kshatriyas), the Ezhavas now claim kinship with a rajput sub-caste of Nepal, the Nairs believe they're kshatriyas. T.Ramaswami Chaudhuri, a Kamma poet & scholar went to great lengths to 'prove' the Kshatriya credentials of the Kammas. Like the Mudaliars, the Kammas also tried to evolve their own class of priests who'd officiate at all ceremonies. Again, history supports their claims (they can all trace their ancestry to not just kingdoms but vast empires) but the scriptures don't.

# they are all dominant castes in at least one of the States they belong to, too (with some exceptions). The Lingayats and Vokkaligas together make up about one-third of the population in Karnataka. And between them they have held the reins of chief ministership in the State for more than three-fourths of the time. The Brahmins have also have had a fair representation at the top. The Ezhavas constitute around one-fourth of Kerala's population and despite their numbers, it's the Upper castes in Kerala who have managed to hold the top executive position for more than 80% of the time. The Reddies, Kammas, Velamas, together with the Brahmins have shared the top chair in Andhra Pradesh for nearly all the time since the State was formed in 1956. For a very brief period of two years, a Dalit held the post of Chief Minister. No OBC has occupied the top chair until now. The Nadars, the Nairs and the Mudaliars (and for a brief while, a Thevar) together with the Brahmins have shared the top position in Tamil Nadu for all the time since the State was formed. Dravidianism or not, the State strictly follows the pattern I have described until now - Brahmins, along with 3-4 other dominant castes have the brightest chances of occupying the top chair in any State in the South. Make that, any State in the country.

# their ascendancy predates independence and land tenure reforms, too. The Chettiars owned urban assets such as film studios, and the Mudaliars owned newspapers before independence. So did the Reddies and the Kammas. The Kammas owned mills and factories... All of them did have access to other urban assets like jobs, because of reservations, before independence too. And there were, among these castes, zemindars/jagirdars and rajahs. And since independence they have managed to consolidate their rural/urban assets. They did not need to 'consolidate' any assets now - they are looking to expand.

[A digression : So, is there any major difference between the northern and southern 'prosperous upper-OBCs'?

Yes.

In my view, reservations have helped the upper-OBCs in the south consolidate their assets and maintain their lead in most spheres of life, but they have helped some lower OBCs and artisan castes in a much more substantial way - they could gain access to education and jobs they never could have dreamed of given their social ranking and their access to resources - which were primarily rural, inadequate or non-existent. The difference between the northern upper-OBCs and the southern upper-OBCs would be much less than the difference between the northern lower-OBCs and the southern lower-OBCs. You could say reservations have transformed the lives of some southern lower OBCs as much as they have affected the lives of most Dalits who were helped by them.

You can see the difference between the States which have adopted reservations earlier and considerably later in the South itself : Andhra Pradesh was the last State to enforce reservations in the South. The State ranks lowest in terms of literacy (in fact, it is closer to the Bimaru States in this respect, than its southern neighbours. It also ranks lower on most of the Human Development Indices than its neighbours. It also has faced much greater strife arising from inequality between classes. Naxalism, which has successfully usurped the legacy and associated aura of the Telangana peasants' struggle, has wide, entrenched roots in the state. It's also the only state in the south with a long history of communal riots.. Sounds like I am referring to one of the northern states?]

My conclusions :

1. The castes, popularly referred to as 'upper OBCs' - don't typify the OBCs. The political/economic/social clout of some of these castes places them closer to the upper castes than the OBCs and the Dalits. In fact, they're the upper castes in the south because the strength of the savarnas is so very low, in terms of population, that these castes automatically rank the top positions in the local polity, economy and society of any of these states. In western India (Maharashtra, Gujarat) and some states of Northern India (Punjab, Haryana) too you'd notice the same phenomenon.

2. It would be wrong to classify many of these castes as Shudras anymore - strictly speaking, it's only a question of semantics now.. because it's a long established fact that it is these castes that always call/have called the shots in all states of the South (definitely since independence) and in many states in the west and the north. A peasant, who's done well, wraps himself in the mantle of a Mudaliar in Tamil Nadu, calls himself a Gowda in Karnataka and is referred to as a Reddy in Andhra. The Jats call themselves Chaudhuries (so do the Kammas) and ,more importantly, folks from the lower castes too address them as Chaudhuries.

3. The Lists of Backward classes exclude, as I said earlier, a substantial section of these mistakenly labelled Upper OBCs. Those who still remain in the lists, perhaps, still meet the criteria of 'social and educational backwardness'..like the Yadavs and Kurmis in UP/Bihar where reservations were introduced late.

4. A hundred years ago, if you had asked any Dalit in any of the States in which these castes are dominant, 'who are the oppressors?', he'd have pointed to one of these castes. You'd have got the same response if you'd asked one of the lower OBCs too.

But these sections account for not more than 3% or so of the total Indian population and only 6% or so of the OBCs.

Now, I want you to take a short trip for me - you suggested I come over to Delhi and to JNU, to perhaps learn more (about what?). I suggest a much easier trip for you - go to the National Commission for Backward Classes website, search for the Statewise Lists (the link is in the earlier part of this comment) and go through them. Identify them, or get someone who knows to identify them for you..by their occupations. Find out about their socio-economic status from whatever sources you can access. Or better still, go to the villages and find out who they really are. If you spot any castes among them who share the the same kind of clout/rank, as some of the 'upper OBCs' you mentioned do..come back and share the information with everyone here. Show us the 'knowledge'. Chandrabhan Prasad himself thinks some of the most backward classes live in worse conditions than the Dalits.. But, of course, you wouldn't have read that.

Show us the knowledge, or stop making noises about how oppressive the OBCs are.. Stop making these very unoriginal charges, that speak more of the prejudices you nurse towards the OBCs than your 'concern' for the Dalits, and extrapolating sweeping 'truths' from them.

That was part one of my argument, the part dealing with 'oppressors'.

Now I come to part two : about what's the OBC script.

You've called me Shivam's alter-ego. In your view, I don't exist on my own. I don't exist. That's what the Mandal Commission found out too.. Sociologist Satish Deshpande wrote ''It needs to be borne in mind that this large group of OBCs, who constitute close to 60 per cent of the population, had a negligible presence of about 4 per cent in government employment when these recommendations were implemented".

That's the OBC script. The OBCs don't exist. When Nehru was building one of the hugest public sectors in the whole world, building a large central government and was prodding the states on to do the same, and when the governments that followed were doing more of the same..generally acting like God and dispensing largesse and jobs left-right-and-centre, it looks like great care was taken to exclude the OBCs from the queues. Or, it looks like the Indian Government didn't know of the existence of the OBCs. And what the Indian Government, the largest employer (which avowedly strove to be a 'model employer' also) and educator was doing was being followed by private sector (organized and otherwise) too.

The wikipedia says 'The term oppression is primarily used to describe how a certain group is being kept down by unjust use of force, authority, or societal norms.' The OBCs were excluded from education and the best , or more accurately, two thirds of the organized sector jobs available in the country and the best institutions of learning (not that they got a fair share in the rest of the jobs, in the private sector, available either). The OBCs were being kept down... and in my view, by a very sophisticated combination of all the three means suggested.

What does that mean? It means oppression, in a way, is the OBC script too.

I had said at the beginning of this comment that the OBC script hasn't evolved until now - what I mean is it hasn't been rightly articulated until now. The 'dominant upper-OBcs', which you and everyone's guru from JNU seems to assume 'represent', in all the senses of the term, the OBCs do not speak for the overwhelming majority of the OBCs. If they did, Dravidianism would have become the language of all the OBCs in the South. The so-called Dravidian parties (would there have more than one 'party' if the original party had represented all the OBCs?) have failed to represent all the OBCs . That's the explanation for the growth of the caste-based parties in Tamil Nadu. Laloo and Mulayam's parties represent themselves. The rest of the OBCs haven't found a forum yet.
I have a translation of one of Gadar's songs - it says '..it's us at the plough, it's us at the kiln, it's us at the loom, it's us by the pyre, it's us with the cattle, it's us in the paddies, it's us in the mills...it's us in bondage, who's the oppressor?'

That, in my view, expresses the core of the argument for Dalit-OBC unity (that should also form the core of any true OBC script too, in my view). It's the Dalits who have reached out to the OBCs until now ..recent examples being the pro-reservations movement in 1990 and now. It's the lack of reciprocation by the upper-OBCs that forms the basis of Chandrabhan Prasad's justified angst. Don't twist his words to suit your own prejudiced arguments the OBCs. Specially since you seem to consider the issue of reservations itself a 'tertiary issue', an unimportant issue.. (if you consider it such an unimportant issue why did you feel the need to comment on it?) Why don't you try telling Chandrabhan Prasad and other Dalit intellectuals, activists reservations are a 'tertiary', unimportant issue?

To conclude, oppression is wrtten into the DNA of the caste sytem..and by extension, Indian society..Consider how often Gadar himself was sidelined, excluded, threatened by the Naxal top brass.. First by the PWG, and now by the Maoists. Consider how upper caste 'revolutionaries' like Varavara Rao and Muppala Lakshmana Rao have held sway over Naxal thinking in the so-called Red Corridor. Consider how often they have ignored reports of low caste, lower rank members in their own parties being 'oppressed'. Consider what made K.G.Satyamurthy, one of the founding members of the PWG and its leading ideologue for a long time..and a Dalit, call the Maoist Central Committee a 'savarna Kuru Sabha'.

Consider how he was expelled. Is hamaam mein hum sab nange hain.

I've decided to ignore the implied insults in your comment..and decided to respond to it because I'm hoping people less 'knowledgeable' and more open-minded than you'd read it.'

Now I welcome your comments.

Wipro maachis

2006-06-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

Azim Premji says: "We have no alternative but to hire the best talent available within India and the best talent available globally to man our positions - critical positions, non-critical positions, (and) programming positions".

A few days ago, Headlines Today, the television channel, did a story on a massive job racket in the IT/ITES industry in Bangalore. 'Job agents' who arrange/manage tests and interviews for aspirants at any of the top companies, including Wipro, Infosys, Satyam, IBM etc., disclosed on hidden camera how easy it is for them to 'provide' jobs at these companies for a price. The racket, of which HR Managers at these companies are a key component, has 'provided', until now, jobs for thousands of dubious applicants in the industry. (The job racket isn't confined to Bangalore alone - folks in the business know that it is spread all over the south and some cities up north). The top managers at these companies pretend not to be aware of this scam.. But the truth is, they prefer to look the other way because.. they need 'people'. And lots of them. And apart from certain basic skills, they don't really look for much else. And, of course, the top bosses all have their own extra-curricular agendas like running down reservations and collecting awards - who has the time or the inclination to be squeamish about 'merit'?

Twin mythologies : Merit & Citizenship

2006-06-15T05:49:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I had pointed out that OBCs are not (cannot be) the dominant castes in the countryside, and most of them cannot be 'oppressors' of the dalits because they lack both the economic clout and the social rank (a function of their traditional, caste-assigned occupations mostly) necessary. But the chief argument Dr.Gupta put forth against reservations for OBCs was that : it goes against what he calls the 'larger democratic principle of citizenship'. He explains, in the same article : 'Reservations for OBCs are objectionable not because they would lower merit, that comes much later, but rather because they take away from the democratic, secular content of what it is to be Indian. Do we want India to become a country where people think of caste first or of citizenship? Are we to decide on our civic life on grounds of reservations and quotas or on the basis of universal principles?'

So it was the perverting of 'citizenship' that reservations would entail, in his view, that Dr.Gupta objected to..Given his principled objection, why did he feel the need to discuss the merits of the claim of the OBCs at all? And spice it up with gratuitous, unsubstantiated, information on the 'ruthlessness' of the OBCs? Is it because everyone who's someone in the media, industry, academia has declared an open season on reservations, and by extension - OBCs, and the good professor felt obliged to add his bit?

I had linked to the article in my post, and I am surprised no one took up this issue of 'citizenship', in the comments on the post.. (I've learnt now that most visitors here jump to the comments section without bothering to read the post they're commenting on .. like I said, open season and all..).

Anyway, the Mandal report sets the record straight on the inclusivity of Indian citizenship - you can also look at these post-Mandal figures on OBCs in the Central Government (Human Development Report - Caste, Ethnicity and Exclusion in South Asia : The Role of Affirmative Action Policies in Building Inclusive Societies, prepared by D.L.Sheth for the UNDP - page 72). Judging from these reports, you can hardly be blamed for thinking 'citizenship' in India is akin to membership in a very exclusive club. So what does citizenship mean for most OBCs? It has shrunk to the size of voting rights and little else.

The professor is also concerned about merit, albeit in a roundabout fashion. His views have gained common currency now - folks on the street and on television chant his views, without knowing who formulated these ideas. Karan Thapar used them on P.Chidambaram a few days ago - to enlighten him on how reservations had actually lowered educational standards in the South. Nanopolitan (a.k.a. Abinandanan), who's been conducting a very diligent exploration of the idea of reservations in the past few weeks, has recently published on his blog, a very readable 'article' on the mythology of merit. I suggest that everyone who's concerned about merit should read it.

Ruthless truths

2006-06-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

Prof. Dipankar Gupta of JNU writing in indiatimes says : 'This is why opposition to the OBC reservation should not be approached from the angle of downgrading merit but from the larger democratic principle of citizenship. When Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were given reservations it was to make sure that they would get some help to pull themselves out of centuries of discrimination and disprivileges. But this was not the case with the OBCs. They were certainly never discriminated against and kept from going to schools and picking up an education. In fact, after land reforms and zamindari abolition these agrarian castes, that prefer to be called Backwards today, became the dominant communities in rural India. Further, it may also be recalled that many Scheduled Caste activists have pointed out that it is these dominant agrarian castes that are more exploitative and ruthless against the subjugated communities than members of the other three varnas.'

The Professor wants you to accept his opinion that the 'Backwards' are now the dominant communities in rural India as clinching proof that they do not deserve reservations. Here's what another egghead, Satish Deshpande has to say, with the help of some figures (from the NSSO's much disputed 55th Round, but figures nonetheless): 'Looking at the land ownership data from the 55th Round, we find that the ``Others'' comprise 50 per cent of all households owning more than 4 hectares of land, while the OBCs are 35 per cent, Scheduled Castes 6 per cent and Scheduled Tribes 8 per cent. Although this does not tell us how much land is owned by each group, it does suggest that popular stereotypes about the OBCs having ousted the upper castes from land ownership may be somewhat exaggerated.'

So, those figures tell us the OBCs haven't replaced the upper castes as the 'dominant communities' in rural India. But they still don't disprove the 'fact' that the these 'dominant (?) communities have been more 'exploitative and ruthless against the subjugated communities than members of the other three varnas'. The Professor must have exclusive access to every single record of 'exploitative and ruthless' acts against the Dalits for the last three thousand and odd years to conclude with such confidence that the OBCs have been 'more exploitative and ruthless' in the fifty odd years since Independence!

Let's look at Bihar, one of the chief akharas of Mandalised politics, for instance: '..A look at the 'chronology of massacres' in the rural south Bihar shows only a few incidents show the 'backward castes' or 'upper backwards' being involved in attacks on SCs - 11 out of 90 incidents...This means that roughly only about 10% of attacks, involved the 'upper backwards' attacking Dalits.' That was from a paper presented by Shaibal Gupta at the "Conference on State Politics in India in the 1990s'.

The well recorded incidents of 'ruthlessness' in States such as Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu can't be denied - but who did they involve? A few 'upper backwards' like the Yadavs and Thevars. And a few other castes whose names have been selectively picked and brandished as evidence that the OBCs are, not the 'oppressed', but active 'oppressors' by anti-reservationists cutting across IQ levels. These 'oppressing castes' - how many are they? Not more than a few dozen. Only two dozen or so perhaps. Out of 3700 odd castes across the country - most of whom traditionally practised such occupations as fishing, snake-charming, rat-catching..begging, among others. Apart from bead-making, pottery, stone-cutting, hairdressing, tailoring and...(this, as a blogger I have come to admire- Apurva Mathad suggested, deserves another post). Oppressors?

Don't you agree this 'exploitation and ruthlessness' needs to be seriously investigated before any judgments are passed?

This expansive use of generalisations, this mixing of 'the gossip of menials' (as JM Lyngdoh would have probably called it) with the language of academia and this parading of prejudices as 'proof'.. beamed across national television by a beaming media.. make reservations a very ruthless 'debate'.

Cui bono ?

2006-06-08T12:10:00.000-07:00

'do you have any data on the efficiency of the reservation system? the socio-economic backgrounds of those benefitting from it, for example?'

That was a question posed by an anonymous commenter here. It made me think of another question and as I felt the blog where the original question appeared wasn't the right place to ask it...I'm posting it here:

'Do you have any data on the efficiency of the 'scheme' called the 'Government of India'? The socio-economic backgrounds of those benefitting from it, for example?'

Unlike the first question, my question is for everyone - including anti-reservationists.

Molten lead in my shudra ears -or- The Scavenger's Drum 2

2006-06-02T19:03:00.000-07:00

I now return to the points of contention raised by the students fighting for 'equality' I referred to in the post - 'The Scavenger's Drum'. These points have now metamorphosed into a 'Charter of Demands' - a new age Magna Carta, if you go by the reverence with which the media is so painstakingly trying to drape this whole drama.You might assume that they have 'come down' a lot, that they have 'modified their earlier rigid stance', that they are being very 'reasonable' etc., and it's the government which is being 'adamant', and is 'showing no sign of trying to listen to them even 14..15..16 days after the strike began'. Your assumption is wrong on both counts : the charter is actually no different from the earlier points - only their phrasing has been changed, and the government isn't being adamant - it has already conceded considerable ground by making it clear that the seats would be increased to ensure no 'meritorious' general category student would be deprived of his chance of admission. And after several days of repeated posturing before the camera that the quota decision is 'irrevocable', the government is slowly revealing what it actually has in mind, what kind of hectic parleying is going on in the corridors of power.. to protect the 'gurukuls' of modern India from pollution. To ensure that upper caste students wouldn't have to face the compounded ignominy of not just sharing the same classroooms and hostels as the shudras but also actually having to give up some of their places to the unclean. Witness how politicians on either end of the ideological spectrum share so very identical concerns : 'merit' should not be compromised, the 'poor' among the upper castes also need reservations, 'the creamy layer' should be skimmed off. I don't remember either the Sangh cohorts or the communists ever having pleaded or argued for, or even raised the issue of implementation of that untouched part of the Mandal Commission recommendations (which mandated reservations for the OBCs in Central Government-run educational institutions) in the last thirteen years since the first part was implemented. Another vital component of this very sophisticated mechanism of dilution and derailment is/will be the involvement of twice-born-but-never-retired-and-much-lionised legal minds - which had actually begun the day this strike was announced but is coming out into the open only now.

Those who had witnessed the Act 1 of this Mandal drama in the early nineties must be feeling a sense of deja vu. Would this also take another three years to go through? Or would this also be implemented only in part and the OBCs would have to wait for another thirteen years, and another school-going generation, for the government to come around to the unfinished part?

The second point raised by the striking medicos outlined in my post 'The Scavenger's Drum' was this:
'...Two, when asked what if the seats were increased to accommodate students from the general category..he tried to explain to the reporter that given the infrastructure and the 'unsustainability' of the proposal (of the increase) he wasn't in favour of any increase,...'

What does that mean? It means that the medicos think a) that the existing infrastructure and faculty and staff can't support an increase in the number of seats and b) an increase in infrastructure, faculty etc., has been long overdue and as it hasn't been done until now there's no reason to believe the government will do it in the very short period it has before the quota is implemented. And I agree with the medicos. Just look at what happened to the promise of raising state spending on education to 6% of the Gross Domestic Product, an idea first mooted by the Kothari Commission in 1964 and endorsed by the National Educational policies in 1968 and 1986 and 1992. Over the last forty years, the Centre and the States, together, have been 'struggling' to raise spending to at least half the figure recommended. So don't you find the idea of increasing seats 'unsustainable'?

So if I agree with the medicos, what is this post all about?

It's about exploring a mindset that perceives reality in stark white and grey tones. Which looks at the world and sees : us and the unimportant. An attitude which says : heads I win, tails you lose. That will shirk off responsibility with the same ease as it would demand accountability from others.

'And you know the estimated cost of increasing facilities to accomodate quota candidates is put at Rs 8,000 crore,...' That was an anonymous commenter fighting for 'equality'. In his view, the increase is not due to the fact that the government wants to ensure the general category seats are not reduced - but due to the burden of implementing the quota. This about sums up the attitude I am talking about. An attitude which is emblazoned across the ultra clean T shirts pulled over their unburdened chests : not our problem.

This also comes across when they tell the OBCs : 'shouldn't you be fighting for an improvement in school education instead..?' Not our problem, you're told again. For the last forty years, the government had been promising the people and itself, that it'd start moving towards the goal that Kothari had set for it, next year. Every year. Consider this and this : in 2004-5, the centre and the state governments spent around 80,000 crores on education. Increasing this allocation to 6% of the GDP would have meant an additional expenditure of around 100,000 crores. More than three-fourths of this sum would have to come from the states. From states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu which work towards numbers more than overall quality, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh which believe in Vedic mathematics and Saraswati vandana more than basic arithmetic and sciences and Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh which don't seem to believe in education. And there are other states like Jharkhand, Orissa etc., which don't seem to have heard of education at all. The overall governmental spending on education hasn't moved anywhere near the goal of 6% of GDP in the last forty years. And going by the pace with which it has been moving in the last forty years, it would probably take another forty years to reach that goal and the elusive target of quality education for all sections of society.

So the 'pragmatic' people leading this fight for 'equality' who do not believe that an investment of 6000-8000 crores investment in the short run to accomodate an increase in seats is a 'sustainable' idea, given the record of the government in this regard, want the lower castes to believe in the 'sustainable' idea that an effort which would require several times more serious societal and political will and resources (more than a 100,000 crores and increments, every year ) would ensure a fair share for them in higher education? In effect, they're asking the lower castes to wait for another forty years (and hope and pray that it will be only forty years). Or until 2046-47 A.D., when India would be 'celebrating' a hundred years of independence.

But the central government has made it clear through several announcements and spokesmen that it does plan to make the investment required to increase the infrastructure in the centrally-run institutions and in the shortest possible time. The Oversight Committee it has set up would work out the details of expanding infrastructure, among other things, and submit a report in the next two months. But the striking students still object to reservations on the basis of caste in the prestigious institutions now being 'invaded'. Why? Is it an atavistic response to the sacrilegious idea of children of lesser gods daring to think of 'higher learning'? A throwback to the times when the prescription that molten lead should be poured into the ears of the shudras who even overheard a recitation of the Vedas by accident, was practised? Definitely a problem, they seem to think.

But the students are not entirely to blame, as it is now becoming clear. If you pull your eyes away and back from the cameras focused on the squatters on AIIMS grounds, you'll notice a wide phalanx of eggheads, as formidable as the Kuru patriarchs and heroes, providing all the logic, support and solace needed for this 'strike'. Experts from fields which the students would have considered 'pseudo-sciences' or at best 'lesser sciences' until yesterday. Anthropologists, economists, sociologists, jurists. Apart from businessmen, professors, lawyers. All with strong credentials and stronger surnames. And they all tell you : reservations are an 'easy' (chalu?), short term 'eyewash' of a solution while strengthening the schools is the 'real', long term solution to the 'problem'. Who can disagree with such wise men? Specially since they represent the 'intellectual cream' of our middle class? A middle class composed almost entirely of one section of our society - a middle class created, funded and supported almost entirely by a large government and a larger public sector through most of this country's post-independence history. A middle class which still 'owns', in a way, Yojana Bhawan, North Block, South Block and all other blocks to development. So why weren't adequate efforts made in 1955 when Kaka Kalelkar pointed to the warning signs, or in 1980 when Mandal submitted his report, by this middle class and its representatives who constituted, and still do, the overwhelming majority of the top, middle and lower rungs of this country's bureaucracy, the top and middle of the leadership of all 'national' political parties (including the naxalite groups), the parliament, the academia, the media, the organised industry.... to actually strengthen the schools in this country so that the lower castes wouldn't require reservations in higher education? There is a Hindi expression, which modified, would best describe this new age double-speak : ulta kotwal lock-up mein marnewale qaidi ko daante..! The only reasonable explanation for this hypocrisy is this : it was not their problem. Their kids didn't/don't go to those schools, so it wasn't their problem.

Every agitation, protest movement organised by the lower castes in this country since independence and several yugs before that carries an implicit appeal : we want education.

The Shudras are aware of both the options : the short term prescription and the long term plan. But they have also come to understand that the long term plan wouldn't work if the short term prescription is not enforced.

[Note: To those still reading this blog, I've decided not to delete any comments for now. Including spammers selling mouth-wash. So would some serial abusers reserve some space for others who would like to contribute their own share? And to plain old-fashioned commenters? ]

Defining image

2006-05-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

For me, the defining image of the week was Sagarika Ghose of IBN-Live crying out : ' Isn't there a single politician in the country who would speak for all sections of society?'

Like the media in the country is speaking out for 'all' sections of society, Ms.Ghose?

Ask Nafisa Ali..

2006-05-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

"If there are no reservations at all....
Is there anything in the indian constitution stopping anyone, belonging to any cast or creed, from getting higher education, if he/she is intelligent and qualified enough for it ??"

I noticed this query elsewhere on the net - I agree with the commenter : there is nothing in the Indian Constitution, if there are no reservations, that'd stop intelligent and qualified people.

So, what's stopping some ? We demand the government to appoint an apolitical commission comprising Navjot Singh Sidhu, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and...

Manudal

2006-05-23T02:41:00.000-07:00

It has been said before.. but it looks like it has to be said again and again.. and a million times and more for it to sink into the minds of those finding excuses for this fight for 'equality' , that Manu was the original Mandal, that the majority of those working in/running the 'inefficient', 'incompetent' 'deficient-in-merit' Indian bureaucracy and public sector and organised industry are/were Manu's favorite children. And the backward classes? Until 1990 you could attribute less than 4% of this 'inefficiency' to them. Read on:
'It needs to be borne in mind that this large group of OBCs, who constitute close to 60 per cent of the population, had a negligible presence of about 4 per cent in government employment when these recommendations were implemented. Also worth bearing in mind is the fact that even this small representation in employment was restricted to the lower rungs of government jobs. In other words, the overwhelming majority of public services were monopolised by the small crust of upper castes. In one estimation made by sociologist Satish Deshpande, about 20 per cent of the population controlled about 95 per cent of all jobs. Deshpande has also recently calculated the poverty-caste relationship on the basis of the National Sample Survey Organisation consumption data which confirm the strong relationship between low-caste status and poverty. However, what is relevant here is not merely the incidence of poverty among different 'backward' caste groups but more importantly, the fact that even among the relatively better-off and educated sections of Dalits (the Untouchable castes) and OBCs, access to public employment, especially at the higher levels, is severely restricted. In other words, as Ram Naresh Kushwaha, an OBC parliamentarian had put it in a parliament debate in 1978, the upper castes have always had informal reservations operating for them in employment; jobs were reserved for them. Manusmriti itself, he had claimed, was nothing other than a reservation of certain jobs for only a certain category of people.'

Link, thanks to We-Support-Reservations.

The Bare Truth

2006-05-20T02:45:00.000-07:00

Sidharth, thanks for telling us the 'bare' truth about what you think of 'democracy'. Thanks for revealing all about your idea of 'equality'. Congratulations on seeing through your comrades' 'nautanki'!

The Scavenger's Drum

2006-05-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

Three days ago, I watch a television reporter stting on her haunches, patiently giving us a ground report on the day's events at the battlefield, AIIMS. No, she's not giving us an account of the body count inside the hospital but the 'determination and unmitigated commitment' of the striking medicos outside, in a tent. Despite the 'stubborn' attitude of the government and the refusal of the Prime Minister (don't you find that puzzling, dear viewer? shame on you for thinking the Prime Minister is not a tehsildar!) to come and talk to them.. It's now the turn of one of the medicos to speak, and the reporter, aware of the solemnity of the moment holds the mike as steadily as Barkha Dutt held the grieving, Kashmiri terror victim, and asks him, what do they want?

The substance, as I understood, of what he was trying to say was this: apart from the usual refrain that they would talk only to the Prime Minister (which rigid stance they seemed to have relaxed a little, the next day) and not to any underlings like Arjun Singh (who don't know their place), he made three other points. What were these?

One, he wanted the government to come clear on the latest proposal on reservations, if there was one (fair enough); and if there was one, it should be rolled back,
Two, when asked what if the seats were increased to accommodate students from the general category..he tried to explain to the reporter that given the infrastructure and the 'unsustainability' of the proposal (of the increase) he wasn't in favour of any increase,
Three, he wanted the government to undertake a review of all existing reservations and an appraisal of their efficiency..

I'll deal with the third point first: a review of the existing reservations would mean, given the context that the medicos are students of AIIMS, essentially a review of SC/ST reservations because there has been no provision for OBC reservations in Central Government run educational institutions until now.

So one goal of their fight for 'equality' is to secure a commitment to review SC/ST reservations in the light of experiences gained from fifty years of its existence?

So that's a primary goal : to question even the small efforts of positive discrimination made by the government and press for their repeal because, in their view, they have failed. (Yesterday I saw the same student, I think, repeat the outrageous demand on IBN-Live on a show hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai). I believe reservations (at the moment there is a backlog 22.5 lakhs unfilled jobs, reserved for the dalits in the central government and if you consider the figures from all the states the total backlog would touch a whopping 5 million) did not succeed to the extent envisaged only because the government did not try hard enough and civil society wasn't understanding enough . And the entrenched upper caste interest groups in the government were/are strong barriers to its success. But this commitment to promote dalit participation in national life is two decades older than our existence as an independent nation. It is one of the core values of our nationhood - without it, other ideals which hold our nation together become meaningless.

So that's their view- that caste based discrimination didn't/doesn't exist, that caste doesn't limit/restrict opportunities. And even if it did/does exist, caste shouldn't be given any weightage when admitting students into educational institutions.

Is that your opinion too educated, middle class India and all those signing petitions endorsing this idea of 'equality' that caste is irrelevant and it should be ignored ? Even when you consider a dalit applicant?

Let's consider this for a moment :' It became obvious during the conference that Indian diplomats, in their extreme activism to keep caste out of the final declaration of this world gathering and its work programme, not only brought the Indian government into high disrepute, but also brought down the moral standing of India before the eyes of the world. India lost any possibility of claiming to be a world leader in the promotion and protection of human rights until it changes its public position on the caste issue. The international conscience, which is being awakened to one of the cruellest forms of discrimination after many centuries of neglect, is naturally questioning the Indian stand and is asking "What kind of nation is this?"'

That was an observation of an NGO on what happened during the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance at Durban, in 2001, when the issue of Dalits came up. Here's another report. The Indian government did succed in keeping caste out of the agenda of the states meeting at the conference-but only by the skin of its teeth. But caste (and discrimination based on it) did make it to the agenda of the NGOs gathering which preceded the governmental conference.

And now caste discrimination, as directed against the Dalits, is on the watchlist of not just NGOs and human rights groups but also some governments and ordinary people, across the world. As the NGO says ' it is time the international community, particularly the human rights community, speaks with one voice in support of the Dalits and calls for a quickening of their liberation. It is also time to tell the Indian government: "Shame, shame." Likewise, it is also necessary to blame the United States and several European countries for their failure to support the cause of the Dalits. It is time as well to appreciate those countries which had the courage to support the Dalit issue despite heavy pressure not to do so. Above all, it is time to tell the United Nations, in particular Kofi Annan, the secretary-general, and Mary Robinson, the human rights commissioner, to show resoluteness and their proactive support for the cause of the Dalits. It is also time to remind everyone that history is in the making on this issue.'

Next time, the Indian government might not be so very lucky - going by the way it's trying its best not to displease some people fighting for 'equality', like one of the commenters on my previous post ('..truly a lallu') who observed that '.. and to be a bhangi one does not require any talents' implying a bhangi takes up scavenging only because he lacks talents and not because, as the section on Dalits in the declaration produced by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at their forum-Caste and Discrimination Based on Occupation and Descent, before the WCAR says "(21) 'Untouchability' is a manifestation of caste based discrimination that labels people as "polluted" or "impure", thereby denying them entry into places of religious worship, assigning them menial and degrading work such as cleaning toilets, skinning and disposal of dead animals, digging graves and sweeping ' And another commenter (non obc voice) think they work as bhangis because that is their core competency- '...we are open to have reservations in you core competency areas like bhangis, barbers, chamars for the ppl...' And yet another keen observer: 'Btw, u have done quite a good research on these pages.. seems work of some Upper caste..May be some blood in your veins ;-) '

Yes, next time the Indian government will have to own up to not doing anything about a system that breeds prejudices like those that I cited above.

Are those, like the student I referred to in the beginning of this post, fighting for 'equality' aware of the implications of what they are saying? At least, think of all those visas to the U.S., and Australia and wherever that might suddenly disppear.

To conclude I'd like to quote from the AHRC report again :'A little more should be said of the Dalits' drum, however. This was at one time called derogatorily the "scavenger's drum." After days of working under the most savage of conditions, these people, the poorest people of India, used to create a short spell of humanity in their own ghetto by dancing to the tune of their drums. The drum, therefore, was the sound of the ghetto and the sound of people who were silenced through the cruellest of punishments and religious sanctions.'

Now, the 'scavenger's drum' is echoing around the world. Beware.

Meritophilia

2006-05-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

'Because world class players (and earth shattering discoveries) are not made in a vacuum. They require huge infrastructural support, money and a culture of excellence. As we said in the comments section, Harvard alone has an endowment fund of 25 billion$, incidentally many times India’s education budget, do any of our IITs have this kind of support? How much is the pay of an IIT professor? How much is the research funding? What is the inducement to conduct independent research? Being a Professor in America is the second most coveted job, could you say the same for India? ...'
That's a 'meritophile' justifying the poor performance of IIT alumni in the world of discovery (as pointed out here) - sad to know that the IITians suffer from the same kind of problems as the OBCs . But we know the OBCs' sense of deprivation is fake - because they lack only India class facilities!

...truly a lallu

2006-05-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

'...rough estimates - without the benefit of cross-tabulations - seem to suggest that Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, OBCs and Muslims may together account for around 90 per cent of the population below the poverty line in both rural and urban India. If true, this is of immense significance for policy and deserves detailed investigation. ' Some interesting figures from the1991 Census analysed here.

What was Shri Laloo Prasad Yadav, so very expansively, promising yesterday ? '10% of the seats would be reserved for poor students from the upper castes.' The above figures tell you poor (below the poverty line families) from the upper castes constitute around !0% of the total poor in India. So what percentage do the poor from the upper castes amount to in the total population of India?

Laloo is looking at upper caste votebanks I suppose - why would he otherwise propose to reserve four times as many seats for a particular section of Indians as their percentage in the total population?

Is caste a barrier to professional success?

2006-05-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

Asks IBN-Live, and wants you to sms your answers. This announcement was preceded by the mandatory round-up of 'anti-reservations' protests across the country (the newsperson never fails to emphasize that) and a story on an OBC kid from Bihar who made it to IIT Kharagpur without the'crutches' (the newsperson can't stop herself from saying what she thinks of ..*&@ reservations) of reservations.The routine is repeated, more or less, across the channels with subtle and not-so-subtle insertion of hints that the Mandal recommendations are still up for questioning, meaning its very basis, recommendations and methods should be questioned (as if they haven't been questioned earlier) and directions (do it-that's the media's appeal to the anti-reservationists)...interspersed with wise heads like Dipankar Gupta and others almost saying that caste is an irrelevant issue and Mandal was flawed etc.,.. And a commenter on one of my posts, couched in much abuse and...asks me why do I consider 'anti-reservations protests' a nautanki ?
Recalcitrant OBCs and Dalits are routinely subjected to much more than lathis and water cannons in this country. Students from the lower castes have to routinely stage rallies, after having begged and pleaded with their school/college authorities and babus in social welfare departments in most states, to appeal to their state governments to release their 'merit-cum-means scholarships'. They are never allowed anywhere near the mantralaya/secretariat.. forget the minister's house or the Mukhya Mantri Nivas or the Governor's Bungalow..(they wouldn't even dare to think of going anywhere near those places). If you ever happen to witness any of these rallies, feast your curiosity on the sight of hundreds of scrawny, shabbily dressed kids scrambling for cover from the lathis, racing and diving and occasionally darting back to pick up their ..chappals. Watch them scale walls and skirt and avoid the lathis with such ease. You'd think it was a game for them. Except that, running through the minds of many of them is this choice : drought and starvation back home and free food in the hostel and education.. . Their names are routinely struck off the rolls of their colleges for not having paid their fees, thrown out of their hostels.. I think of all those clever people calculating how many OBC kids could get school education if the subsidy that would go to supporting an OBC student's education at an IIT/IIM were diverted to the schoolkids' cause. No, you wouldn't get any figures on how many upper caste kids' subsidised education at the IIT/IIMs or dozens of other fancy institutions, since the day they were started, could have supported how many OBC?Dalit kids' education. And those sensible people who suggest, so helpfully (why doesn't anyone ever think of these simple answers!), 'give them good schooling ..first' , they wouldn't know ,of course, just how whimsically state governments can scale down budgets for 'welfare' students. Scholarships for two lakh students last year.. scholarships for one lakh seventy five thousand this year..You are not supposed to ask: there hasn't been a fall in admissions, in fact there has been an increase.. then why this scaling down? None of the sensible people actually ask this question , routinely or otherwise. It's only when the Mandal issue, every fifteen years or so, crops up do they actually bother.
So when the elite says it's protesting, are we to understand that its appointees in the government aren't actually working overtime finding out ways and means to get over this..infernal mandal thing? That Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi and Advani and Yechuri and .. aren't as exercised over the issue as that loudmouth Sibal?

The malady of India lies elsewhere

2006-05-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

What does Justice Krishna Iyer think of 'efficiency' lost because of reservations?
"Trite arguments about efficiency are a trifle phoney. ... We are not impressed with the misfortune about the governmental personnel being manned by morons, merely because a sprinkling of harijans and Girijans happened to find their way into the service. The malady of modern India lies elsewhere, and the merit monger are greater risks in many respects than the native tribals, and slightly better off lower caste. .. The fundamental question arises, as to what's 'merit' and 'suitability'? Elitists, whose sympathies with the masses have dried up, are from standards of Indian people, least suitable to run the government and least meritorious to handle the state business. ... A sensitized heart and vibrant head tuned to the tears of the people, will speedily quicken the developmental needs of the country... Sincere dedication and intellectual integrity - these are some of the components of merit and suitability- not a degree from Oxford or Cambridge, Harvard or Simian. Unfortunately, the very orientation of our selection process is distorted and those like the candidates from Scheduled Castes whom from their birth, have a traumatic understanding of the conditions of agrestic India, have in one sense more capability than those who lived under affluent circumstances and are callous to the human lot of the sorrowing masses."

gatekeepersoftheshrine

2006-05-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

Noticed this at a blog with the name - entrancetotheshrine :
'Just when we thought it was time to give the reservation quotas the boot, the Centre declares that 49.5 percent of the total seats in IITs, IIMs and Central Universities will be reserved for the Backward Classes.'
Who are 'we'? Obviously not the Dalits or the Backward Classes- and definitely not the Muslims or the Christians who are having a hard time in some places saving themselves from policemen's boots. Who's left?
And the blogger goes on to ask: 'And weren't we all geared up to abolish the caste system?'
By giving the quotas - and by extension the reserved classes, the boot?
This is a mere sampler, an indication of what passes for 'sane', sensible, informed opinion among the elite in India over the reservations issue. From 1990 till now. And before that. We don't object to the arrogance, it's expected of any ruling class in the world, but the intemperance of language... And the veiled abuse. Bury the Bill this session and the next. Direct it back to the service entrance and one group-of-ministers after another, from this parliament to the next. But we'll wait, the language will keep searing our soul and so we'll wait.

Thanks Al, pal

2006-05-09T13:17:00.000-07:00

It feels nice getting noticed. Ask Bajaj, or Nilekani or Mittal. It doesn't matter what you get noticed for: producing slipshod copies of someone else's idea, or doing the nuts-and-bolts work on someone else's design, or riding to success on someone else's backbone. It's a shame that these guys don't get due credit- ask any old fortysomething homemaker what brand would she associate with quality, and she'd instinctively reply -Kanjeevaram sarees. Ask any fifteensomething teenager about service and he'd point to his Kolhapuri chappals and not to Mittal. You won't even get info on the next train to Agra (oh those pedhas!) on those phones, he'd complain. Ask any wise sixtysomething paanwallah/stockbroker/babu about craftsmanship and he/they'd go on and on..about silks from Banaras or carpets from Kashmir or dhurries from Warangal or silverware from Bidar or ... I ask you, are these India's top brands? And to think that the folks who make those products aren't even qualified - have you ever heard of a tailor or a weaver or any of those other no-good charlatans learning his craft at institutions like NIFT or NID? How can anyone trust them?
But there does seem to be someone who actually trusts them, listens to them.Reads them. Even though he lives in a place other than my India. Thanks Al, hope to meet you someday in our India.

The nautanki has started

2006-05-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

The nautanki has started now. Piddling little rallies at India Gate, lighting of candles, distributing of pamphlets, shouting of jingle-like slogans, wearing of badges and other promotional merchandise and waving of banners. Their strength is so very low that the TV channels have to step in with constant vocal support and clever camerawork to make it seem like Dandi or Jallianwallah Bagh.And 'Rang de Basanti'. 'Another minister speaks against reservations.." divisions within the reserved classes..' 'Arjun Singh's tactical silence..' "Arjun Singh in a tight spot..'. Token OBCs supporting these rallies are bandied around channels like trophies. And Baqwas Dutt speaks again of the alleged 'siege mentality' of the OBCs. Yes, they are under siege.. Isn't that the reason why the elite speak of 'invasion and ..intrusion into institutions of excellence..' etc on her programme?. And take out rallies against a government order that hasn't even been formulated or brought before the central cabinet yet?
Ms.Dutt, who's displaying the siege mentality? The OBCs have waited since independence for a share in educational institutions, jobs and ..What makes you think they don't have the perseverance to fight this out now?

Time warp

2006-04-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

Romila Thapar writing on the past (the History of India, Volume 1, page 85):
'Divisions of caste split India's heart and soul. The historical beneficiaries of this model of governance were the upper castes, led by the Brahmin caste. The system that they developed over thousands of years is known as Brahminism: a collection of social regulations that amounted to the world's most comprehensive system of repression. Through a small percentage of the population being able to gain total control of the vast majority, Brahminism was able to create extreme self-contempt among the larger part of the population, and extreme self-confidence among the ruling minority.'
Watch this 'extreme self-confidence' in action when upper-caste kids preen and smirk in talk-shows on television: nothing has changed.

Who's afraid of the numbers?

2006-04-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

'However, Indians may well ask: what is after all the relevance of these studies of caste in pre-British or ``traditional'' India? Hasn't it changed significantly today?
The sad fact about the state of Indian sociology today is that we have no empirical data to answer such questions. The Indian state and its supporting intellectuals have been antagonistic to gathering caste data, as indicated by the continuing refusal to collect data on ``caste'' identification in the census - and sociologists have, if anything, been more backward. For instance, while in the U.S. there is not only official data on race linking it with economic position and other criteria, but race/ethnic relations has been the subject of much research, including studies showing the rates of inter-marriage among different ethnic groups. In India there is nothing: we can search our experience, look at matrimonial ads in newspapers and make guesses that, well, some things have changed but most marriages remain traditional - but we have absolutely no scientific surveys to test any hypotheses. There are no studies of actual inter- mariage rates, almost no studies in a region larger than a village that test the correlation of jati with economic position. '
So do OBCs need reservations, or more importantly, are they socially, economically, educationally backward? How does one answer this question? One simple indicator would be their number in jobs in government- at the centre and in the states and in government companies, agencies etc., Let's take the year marked by Mandal, not the earlier years that Mandal studied, 1990, as the period to be studied. It's my view that the figures would shock everyone.
In 2006, there are 22.5 lakh unfilled jobs, reserved for the SCs, in government. And they remained unfilled mostly because ..the elite isn't in any hurry to fill them and not just because there aren't enough qualified applicants to fill them.
And the OBCs who managed to secure reservations in the Central Government around ten years ago?

Defining consideration,... for them.

2006-04-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

'Untouchables have also become a strong and organized political force who refer to themselves as Dalits. In a recent interview with Emily Guntheinz, Arundhati Roy was asked to comment on the caste system. Her reply follows: It's the defining consideration in all Indian politics, in all Indian marriages...The lines are blurring. India exists in several centuries simultaneously. So there are those of us like me, or people that I know for instance, to whom it means nothing...It's a very strange situation where there's sort of a gap between...sometimes it's urban and rural, but it's really a time warp.'
Noticed the above paragraph in the website of a western university commenting on caste in India. For 'people like us' caste is good literature.. but how does it affect us?

Caught in a matrimonial column

2006-04-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

V.M.Tarkunde too agrees endogamy is an essential characteristic of caste. So if you 'think' you are above such narrow considerations as caste, it doesn't mean that you don't belong to one. Or that you are breaking down the caste system.
'Caste is an extension of a joint Hindu family. However, while the family remains a laudable social institution, the caste system is undoubtedly harmful. It is harmful for two reasons. In the first place, there are social gradations in the caste system, some castes being higher and superior in status to those below. The higher castes had till recent times the monopoly of education as also of economic resources. The lower castes remained educationally, economically and socially backward. There was, and there still exists to a large extent, a definite social hierarchy between all castes, from the Brahmins at the top to the Scheduled Castes at the bottom. The second defect of the caste system, which really sustains the first, is that every caste continues to be endogamic. Marriages are confined almost always to couples belonging to the same caste. The caste system is stabilised by endogamy as well as by social gradation. It is a harmful social institution but its harmfulness is increasingly greater as we go down in the social gradation and reach the level of the Scheduled Castes.'

Classes that became castes

2006-04-16T02:43:00.000-07:00

First, there were four classes.' Particular attention has to be paid to the fact that this was essentially a class system, in which individuals, when qualified, could change their class, and therefore classes did change their personnel. At some time in the history of the Hindus, the priestly class socially detached itself from the rest of the body of people and through a closed-door policy became a caste by itself . The other classes being subject to the law of social division of labour underwent differentiation, some into large, others into very minute groups. The Vaishya and Shudra classes were the original inchoate plasm, which formed the sources of the numerous castes of today. As the military occupation does not very easily lend itself to very minute sub-division, the Kshatriya class could have differentiated into soldiers and administrators.
This sub-division of a society is quite natural. But the unnatural thing about these sub-divisions is that they have lost the open-door character of the class system and have become self-enclosed units called castes. The question is: were they compelled to close their doors and become endogamous, or did they close them of their own accord ? I submit that there is a double line of answer: Some closed the door : Others found it closed against them.'
An explanation of how classes turned into castes.

Meet Krishna- caste's brand ambassador

2006-04-15T16:19:00.000-07:00

"It is better to engage in one's own occupation, even though one may perform it imperfectly, than to accept another's occupation and perform it perfectly. Duties prescribed according to one's nature are never affected by sinful reactions." (From Bhagavad-gita 18th chapter).
Mind your own business, you tailor/weaver/carpenter/stonecutter/ratcatcher... don't ever think of your superiors' occupations.

Foulmouth

2006-04-15T15:26:00.000-07:00

A psychoanalyst looks at caste:
"It is the persistent, obsessive fear that the top, clean mouth might be contaminated or defiled from the bottom," he said, "that underlies and permeates the entire caste system. This explains why a higher caste cannot accept food from the hands of a lower caste -- for fear of contamination. Feet...are dirty because they are in contact with the outside ground where feces might lurk."
Replace mouth with merit in the above paragraph and you'll understand why the elite opposes reservations.

US and them

2006-04-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

Gail Omvedt looks at affirmative action in India and the U.S.,:
'Caste is also being raised as a factor of discrimination in the U.S. A Bengali professor in engineering at the University of Michigan has gone to court on the issue, claiming that he was discriminated against by the former head of his department, a Brahman. And, following the international Dalit conference at Vancouver, a team of U.S.-based Dalits led by Dr. K.P. Singh joined Jesse Jackson's "Rainbow Push Coalition" in Chicago June 21-25 to discuss hiring practices with American corporations. Thus the issue of caste discrimination has been brought to the head offices of some of the important multinationals. Some of them- for instance, MacDonald's - have promised to look into the issue of their employment in India.'
Here comes the part relevant to the current OBC issue:
'What is important, here, though, are the different underlying assumptions in the two countries. In the U.S. it is now assumed by most that that there is an equal distribution of capacity among all social groups, that apparent differences are social and not biological - and that the very existence of diverse social groups means that the businesses which seek to provide commodities for their markets have to have representation. Thus U.S. companies supported the affirmative action case not out of altruism, not out of some perceived recompense for past oppression, but out of their own perceived self-interest.'
Perceived self-interest? The Indian elite doesn't seem so very perceptive - it would have started being nicer to the OBCs ages ago if it had been that smart.
Omvedt concludes:
'Terms like "merit" are insulting - and erroneous. They allow the reality of ongoing processes of exclusion and discrimination in the society based on social identity to be shoved aside, ignored. In fact, the processes of caste discrimination begin from birth, both from poverty and lack of opportunity and from the real prejudice faced by Dalit and (to a lesser degree) OBC students in schools. In hiring for jobs, and in making judgements about "merit" and "qualification," caste and kinship links and identities are rampant, a fact everyone knows. That they continue even when Indians move abroad is shown by the current University of Michigan case. The discourse on "merit" itself is highly questionable. It is only when this is recognized and all-around remedial steps began to be taken - at the level of providing for all the poor and discriminated against by measures such as truly universalizing education, and at the level of affirmative action designed speed the attainment of diversity -that Indian society will truly universalize itself, and Indian industry will achieve goals of true competitiveness and efficiency.'

Caste and unmanageable technology

2006-04-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

Anil Saari Arora poses some relevant questions in this article:
'For instance, about ten years ago, in his voluble and forcefully argued essays and pamphlets against the OBC reservations proposed by the Mandal Commission - Arun Shourie, one of the more widely respected intellectuals of the modern Indian elite, asked his readers whether we should accept doctors, engineers, etc, who were not qualified to perform the critical professional assignments that their new status would grant them if the Mandal Commission’s recommendations were implemented?For Arun Shourie’s target audience, his question assumed the force of a rallying point : Indian society had to be “saved” from the incompetence and the professional maladies which the Mandal Commission’s recommendations would unleash upon India. Of course, both Shourie and his intellectual disciples ignored the empirical data in this regard – that is, the number of recorded engineering and construction scams (including the poor quality of earthquake-ruptured apartment houses in Ahmedabad and Bhuj, in January 2001) and several well-known medical blunders that owed their origin to the doings and misdoings of educated, upper class, upper caste Indians. Arun Shourie’s populist argument was thereafter to prompt us to wear blinkers regarding the increasing deterioration of professional competence among upper class Indians. Not simply the OBC, the Scheduled Caste or Muslim professional and entrepreneur alone.Now that Arun Shourie has become one of the intellectuals-in-administration (a minister in the NDA government) perhaps he could do a good turn to society at large by undertaking an empirical collation of data regarding the managements of the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) that he has to “privatize’ as the Union Minister of Disinvestment.It would be helpful to the understanding of the equation between Caste Identity and Management-Technical Skills, if we had the data listing the caste-wise identification of all the heads and departmental heads of the “sick” Public Sector Undertakings, over the years. To more fully understand the validity of Arun Shourie’s caste-linked theories about vocational skills, a caste-wise listing of Public Sector chairpersons, managers and senior technocrats should also be collated as essential data.Only after this empirical data is collected and analyzed can we arrive at an honest evaluation of four important questions: (i) How competent and capable are professional and technological standards prevailing in the country? (ii) Is there a relevance for a Caste-based qualification in the contemporary era, regarding senior-level appointments? (iii) What is the caste-wise division of those senior managers and technocrats of the Public Sector Undertakings who have not worked in the public and the national interest, because they have been guilty of financial mismanagement, misappropriation and misguidance, which has made the numerous public sector units financially unviable, sick, industrial units? (iv) Whether there is a justification in believing that the principle of hereditary caste identity, ipso facto, imbues those born into certain castes with an intrinsic “superiority” and those born into certain other castes with an intrinsic “inferiority”, as far as human intelligence, competencies and skills are concerned?'

Significant Contribution

2006-04-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

'The IITs in the past have made a significant contribution to development of technology in India to the level that outsourcing is becoming a serious concern for the developed world.' That's a former IITian's opinion. So there you have it: outsourcing is probably the only significant contribution that even an IITian can think of when evaluating the performance of the IITs.
He goes on: 'They can now relax. This process is being brought to a quick end soon. The excellence at the IITs was in any case an anomaly for a nation where so much else does not work quite as it should. It was a pleasant romance while it lasted. Indians have been used to poor quality for a long time, they will adjust to it again without a whimper. The worst sufferers will be the OBCs who with hopes raised will end up with something that is worthless.'
Yes, the Americans had better start looking for codeslaves elsewhere.

Classes, not individuals

2006-04-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

Interesting point of view on classes, backwardness, castes and individuals: 'What is, however, argued is that it is not the `upper' castes or the social groups, but the poor individuals in the groups who should be entitled to reservation. As has been pointed out earlier, reservation has been provided in the Constitution for `classes', not individuals. If the individuals have to be provided with reservation on the economic criterion, then those satisfying the said criterion and belonging to any caste and social group, irrespective of any distinction will be entitled to it, including the individuals belonging to the backward classes and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. For, such reservation will fall in the general category and all will be entitled to it whether there is reservation on other grounds or not. A backward class person may choose to apply for reservation on economic criterion, instead of the reservation made for his class, or if he does not get a seat on the basis of class reservation, he may claim a seat on economic grounds and if he is qualified for it, he cannot be denied the same. On the other hand, he may qualify for it better if the poorer are entitled to it. Since economic criteria, whatever these may be, will run common through all the social groups, it will be contrary to the right to equality and therefore unconstitutional to keep them confined to any particular social group or groups.'

Principle on the bench

2006-04-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

I find it amazing how some people, successful professionals, can be so very ignorant. Especially, people who flaunt bylines with neat surnames, smirk from syndicated columns and express 'opinion' supposedly derived from much knowledge and experience. I refer again to Barkha Dutt.
'Life has turned full circle, and I’m finally stepping out from the shadow of political correctness, to think, maybe we weren’t so wrong back then; our reasons may have been uninformed and uneducated, our motives questionable, but we had batted on the right side, even if by accident.'
Why does she think she had batted on the right side? (Such an ironical choice of words- you were batting for your side, how can you decide it was the right one? There are no right sides in cricket, only two sides).
' It’s a tough nut to crack but my own view is that quotas would probably be most effective at the school level, but here too there should be an economic benchmark.'
So she subscribes to a principle. But then what she was doing all these 10 years or so she was with NDTV., and what were her fellow champions of the anti-reservations movement doing all these years when reservations were being implemented in most states in the country without taking into account the economic benchmark? Simple, they were either a. unaware of it b. the principle should be applied to only central universities and institutions or c. she has just formulated the principle.
Actually the principle isn't new. There have been anti-reservation stirs in the country in the seventies, the eighties and on the threshold of the nineties. States which could see quite plainly the underrepresentation of the OBCs in the government and in educational institutions had to take measures to bridge the gap, at least partially. And of course political advantages to be gained from bringing in reservations were part of the motives. And the anti-reservationists brought up the economic principle everytime this was done.
In 1989 Ms.Dutt was too young to actually check the figures -how grossly underrepresented the OBCs were in the Central Government. And in the States. Why can't she check those figures now ? Find out for herself whether it's simple economics or something much more complex that's blocking the OBCs entry into the higher echelons of education? The figures she quotes are, to say the least, meaningless. She refers to vacant reserved seats in vocational institutions and engineering colleges. What kind of vacant seats and where? Dalit or OBC seats? In the States or in institutions run by the Centre? When were the figures collected?
And why bring up the figures now, and why not earlier if she (or other like-minded folks) was/were ever serious about persuading people about the economic principle? The principle is brought up everytime there is a renewed threat to the hegemony of the elite. It's flaunted along with a wide plethora of theories, emotions, theory-emotions, theatrics etc., to block, stall and dilute attempts to broaden opportunities for the OBCs. And it's forgotten as soon as the moment passes . The elite doesn't ever take the reservationists seriously- a fatal error of judgment, in my view. Because the reservationists have shown more character, resilience and strength than the elite who oppose reservations. So everytime the issue grabs the attention of the media, the elite makes the mistake of thinking it's yet another freak catastrophe- it'll pass. And doesn't see the need to develop a coherent, informed response to the issue.
Such a shoddy, haphazard, uninformed approach to a serious issue. And this from people who value competence over everything else.

V.P.Singh, messiah of the twice-born

2006-04-14T03:10:00.000-07:00

Kancha Ilaiah was dismissed with condescending laughter when he said on "the Big Fight' on NDTV, last Saturday, that V.P.Singh had actually saved the upper castes when he brought in Mandal in '89. Would you find a dumber elite anywhere else in the world? If VP Singh hadn't brought in Mandal the resentment and disaffection among the OBCs would have developed into something much more concrete- and destructive than it is now. Mandal tokenism assuaged OBC feelings - for a while. That's the cold truth India's elite doesn't have the common sense to recognize.

The ground rule

2006-04-14T01:20:00.000-07:00

Blogger Falstaff has certain objections. They give me an opportunity to reassert certain ground truths.
For instance, he says :'At any rate, the whole point is that the IIMs / IITs are the few institutes that have truly meritocratic admissions - to the best of my knowledge no one's ever argued for nepotism / favouritism in the selection of candidates.' Maybe. But crudely put , the government owns them. And they were started with the objective of providing quality education to the people of India. Certain sections of the people were not represented- so they're claiming their share now. Their share, please note. You can't dispute the merit of this claim.
"Why should we assume that those who benefit from quota admissions, say, will all automatically be poor students?"If that's not true they don't need reservations do they? You can't have it both ways - either they aren't good enough and need state assistance to get in - in which case you're destroying value - or they are good enough in which case there's no case for reservations at all. '
I think this point is irrelevant given the logic of the first point I made.

Baqwas Dutt

2006-04-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

What's Barkha Dutt's idea of rebellion? Protesting Mandal recommendations in 1989. Standing up for the status quo is rebellion? And where did she learn her first lessons in rebellion? Under a 'bodhi tree' at St.Stephen's, Delhi. What's St.Stephen's? A place so exclusive it's reserved only for those who have 'been' the establishment for at least more than a couple of generations. Carpenters's sons like Jesus would never find a place there.
'Reservations have become a joke. We all know the statistics. More than 80 per cent of Dalit students never make it past Class X; more than 80 per cent of the reserved seats in vocational institutes remain unused; and in engineering colleges it’s even worse — more than 90 per cent of seats in the reserved category just lie empty.'
She's reeling out some handpicked stats used by the FICCI Secretary General on her programme oh-so-rebelliously titled 'We The People' on NDTV last Sunday. All numbers, you'll notice, are rounded off - gives you an idea about the kind of strictly cordoned off world she lives in. The stats? What does 'more than 90 percent of seats in the reserved category lie empty' mean?. She means reserved seats in engineering colleges. Where did Amit Mitra get this dubious figure? And I remember he wasn't talking of dalits alone when he quoted this figure. So much for the figures.
' What does this say? Two things. First, what’s the point of all these reservations if there aren’t enough qualified people to make use of them? But second, and more importantly, who should take responsibility for this gap between promise and possibility? Surely, this is the failure of governance, the failure of the State?'
That's exactly what some 'sane' objecting people like Ms.Dutt used to say in 1989. And were quite happy that the recommendations were stalled from implementation in the Central Services until 1994. And the prescription for the educational institutions was delayed until now. The State was okay in the last fifteen years, i guess. Of course they didn't speak about expanding the reach of schools in this period of 'sanity'. Nor about all the seats and jobs that the OBCs were excluded from. In the period between 1989 and now. Between 1947 and now.
'Left behind in the audience were mostly those who had opposed the quotas to begin with. It seemed to me that those who had walked out had displayed a siege mentality, a heightened sense of victimhood and bias, a feeling of not being heard even when everyone was listening to them on a readymade platform.'
This about the OBc students who left her programme midway. Ms.Dutt, the students left not because they felt besieged , but because they realized the moderator was taking sides. People who had obviously never given the idea of reservations any thought in their lives until then, were allowed to pontificate on how the hungry must be served 'dal, roti' and not 'caviar'. Kids who spouted illogical stuff about reservations creating caste were cheered on and the dissenters were abruptly cut off with a curt 'you've made your point'. If the programme were to be telecast again most viewers would notice how much time was given to people who opposed reservations. Chandrabhan Prasad's limited objections to blanket reservations for OBCs were interpreted as disagreement.
Ms.Dutt asks' Are we sure this is the India we want?'
You didn't find much wrong with it until yesterday- you mean you don't want an India in which OBCs occupy even token positions in the bastions of the elite?