||News|| Whoa.
As an addendum to the discussion on reservations, and because I know this will get drowned in rest of the spin, thought I'd highlight what the Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court is actually saying:
"The last caste census was done in 1931" and "all census since 1951 have break-up of population based on religion only" not caste. [...] The petition refers to the Kaka Kalekar Committee which in the 1950s had "enumerated approximately 1,200 OBC castes" and the Mandal Commission which listed some 2,200 castes as OBCs "based on social and economic criteria". [...] the OBC list has been increased further with some 3,200 castes being included.
"Mandal Commission had fixed OBC population in India at 52% based on fictitious data. (from article)
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the definitive political struggle for an entire generation of Indian students, one that had put the country on hold for weeks in 1990, and threatens to do so again now in 2006, is based on a twenty-five-year-old statistical lie.
posted by The Cydonian @ 10:13 am
3 Comments:
At 11:27 pm,
Mark said…
Perhaps the 93rd ammendment does not necessarily refer to "castes" but to the "socially and economically backward" populace in general. Unless of course the ammendment refers to "castes" in the fine print. The reservations seem reasonable enough, especially if they are for the poor people of the country. But, if it means that the subject of caste is brought back into the picture, then, council may actually have a point in contending the ammendment. Although I guess, to do away completely with the caste system (which seems to be the main objective here) in a place like India will probably be as easy as collecting water in sieve.
At 12:05 am,
The Cydonian said…
There's a long way to come here in this debate. :-)
First, the Mandal Commission Report specifically talks about what it calls as "Other Backward Castes", and claims that together with Scheduled Castes and Tribes, they form 52% of, either Hindu or Indian I'm not sure which, population (and hence, that 50% of all seats in educational institutions must be reserved for Scheduled Castes, Tribes and Other Backward Castes, with those specific names). My main point here is that this is essentially a lie; unless you take data from 1931, when India wasn't even partitioned, there's no scientific basis for any of the numbers being floated here.
We've been discussing the 93rd Amendment threadbare at the Indus Telegraph for the past few days now. Some great points raised there, and links provided to all the relevant Articles in the Indian Constitution; do drop in, take a look and comment if you feel like it. The two second executive summary though: while the Amendment per se broadly says "socially and economically backward classes and Scheduled Castes and Tribes", in actual governmental policy, this specifically refers to the 2000 or so castes that the Mandal Commission has listed.
Now, I don't know if the objective here is to do away with caste, particularly given that the political parties concerned seem to be appealing to (what we in India call as) those votebanks, so yeah.
At 11:13 pm,
adhyayan said…
hey thought should let you know that I have been checking often.. if you ahve written anything new??
-Prasanna
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