Caste consensus
Vikas Pathak, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, May 10, 2010
First Published: 00:07 IST(10/5/2010)
Last Updated: 00:10 IST(10/5/2010)
"If the government can count trees and nallahs (drains), what is the
problem in counting castes (in the census)," other backward caste
leader Mulayam Singh Yadav asked in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
Just as one thought the star of north India's best-known OBC leaders,
Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad, was falling, the duo seem to have
been revitalised with the government conceding their demand to include
caste in the census.
Two emotive issues on the OBC political agenda have lost steam: quotas
in government jobs, implemented in the early 1990s, and reservations
in education, taken up during the United Progressive Alliance's first
avatar (2004-09). OBC chieftains, without much success, tried to whip
up emotion recently by denouncing the women's Bill as anti-OBC.
A caste census may just help them reactivate the OBC agenda.
We may finally know after 80 years which castes are the most numerous
in India, and which number the least. The British enumerated castes
from 1871 to 1931, after which the caste-based census in India was
discontinued.
It wasn't revived post-independence, for it was thought to be divisive.
At present, censuses do show the numbers of scheduled castes,
scheduled tribes and Muslims – three social groups seen to be on the
margins of India's growth story – but leave out the OBCs, the fourth
group seen by many as backward.
OBC population figures are thus just estimates, ranging from 52 per
cent as stated by the Mandal Commission to 41 per cent as given by the
National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).
"This will open another Pandora's Box and activate fresh demands,"
political scientist Jyotirmaya Sharma of Hyderabad Central University
told HT. "It has not been spelt out what a caste census would achieve
in principle."
Delhi University historian Pradip Kumar Datta disagrees. "The caste
census would provide useful data on groups that are getting state
benefits. The argument that it will increase casteism is unconvincing.
Elections too are fought on caste issues. Will you ban them too?"
Not being a favourite of the OBCs in UP and Bihar — states that
account for almost a fourth of the 543 Lok Sabha seats — the Congress
is unlikely to gain from a caste census; the reason why the party has
been reluctant. But an apparent understanding with Lalu and Mulayam,
who may support the government during number-counts in Parliament in
return for a caste census, seemed to have done the trick.
This is at a time when the SP and RJD — hostile to the government in
recent times — have made some positive gestures. The two parties have
supported the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill and walked out
of the Lok Sabha during the cut motion vote, indirectly helping the
government.
Three of the five Congress leaders who spoke during the debate on the
topic in Parliament opposed the idea.
True, the party's political interest would normally lie in leaving the
OBCs alone and enlisting Muslim support, breaking the RJD and SP's
Muslim-Yadav bastion. The Congress' support base in the Gangetic plain
till about 1990 was upper castes, Dalits and Muslims.
The Ranganath Mishra report, which recommended that a part of the OBC
quota pie be given to religious minorities, has been seen as a
Congress step at attracting Muslims and marginalising OBC parties like
the SP and RJD.
However, it is the BJP — dubbed a Bania-Brahmin paty for long — that
has sprung a surprise by backing a caste census. The reason: as
Muslims in UP and Bihar are likely to shift towards the Congress after
the Sachar and Ranganath Mishra reports (the Sachar report highlighted
the plight of Muslims in the country), the BJP wants to attract OBCs.
With the Yadav population in UP and Bihar estimated at 8.7 per cent
and 11 per cent, respectively, the SP and RJD may fare poorly without
the support of Muslims (18 per cent of the population in UP and 16 per
cent in Bihar).
BJP leader Gopinath Munde, the present OBC face of the party, had said
during the party's recent national council in Indore: "We will not
allow minorities eat up the quota share of Hindu OBCs, as recommended
by the Ranganath Mishra Commission."
The BJP enjoyed steady non-Yadav OBC support in UP in the 1990s, which
was lost by up to 20 percentage points after 2000, aiding the party's
decline. It also lost OBC leaders Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh.
However, it still has prominent OBC Chief Ministers in Narendra Modi
and Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
------------------------------------
----
INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Get all ZESTCaste mails sent out in a span of 24 hours in a single mail. Subscribe to the daily digest version by sending a blank mail to ZESTMedia-digest@yahoogroups.com, OR, if you have a Yahoo! Id, change your settings at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/join/
PARTICIPATE:-
On this list you can share caste news, discuss caste issues and network with like-minded anti-caste people from across India and the world. Just write to zestcaste@yahoogroups.com
TELL FRIENDS TO SIGN UP:-
If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a blank mail to ZESTCaste-subscribe@yahoogroups.com OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join/
Also have a look at our sister list, ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
ZESTCaste-digest@yahoogroups.com
ZESTCaste-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
ZESTCaste-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
No comments:
Post a Comment