India’s divisive politics

Two of India’s presidents came from the poorest social strata, shattering the mythology of backwardness. A rickshaw puller’s son rejected the reservation benefit and entered the Indian Institute of Technology competing with the forward classes. A boy who was a roadside fast-food vendor graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, ranked equal with Harvard and Wharton business schools. A person comes up in life through perseverance and investing in learning. Education is free in all government schools. If some of these classes regard their children as breadwinners, they have themselves to blame.

There is now a competition among communities to remain backward with the blessings of the ruling coalition and the opposition. The Supreme Court observed two days ago that the proposed 27 per cent backward classes quota in all federal educational institutions “is capable of dividing this great nation on caste basis” and issued notices to the federal government and six of its ministries asking them to answer what was the “rationale” behind the classification of a class of citizens as “other backward classes.” Appeasing certain sections of the people for votes has been a tradition of the Congress party, now adopted by every other party. Together they divided India into thousands of castes, generating not a million mutinies as Naipaul says but a billion.

Another serious flaw in this plan is that the government does not have statistics on what are now called the other backward classes. A government commission had estimated in the 90s that they are 52 per cent of India’s population. This figure was not based on any scientific computation. Though this controversial plan will come into force from June 2007, the government is yet to ascertain the strength of this community. The latest census, conducted in 2001, did not collect information on OBCs. Minister Arjun Singh recently confessed he did not have precise figures.

"There is no final, conclusive empirical evidence of the size of OBCs in India . That could have come only from the census," said Yogendra Yadav, noted social scientist and professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Studies. "In my opinion, the OBC population of our country is between 40-44 percent. I am basing this on the national election studies conducted over the past two decades by our centre." Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes form an estimated 25 percent of India's population, though the veracity of this figure has also been challenged. The government’s plight now is comparable to that of a person riding a tiger.

Dasu Krishnamoorty
India
Pravda.Ru