Caste In Census – Govt. decision catches Cong off-guard
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A section in the Congress is upset at the government's move to include caste in the ongoing census enumeration.
“The founding fathers of the Constitution had decided against caste-based census.
There must have been a ration- ale for rejecting it... Caste census will open a Pandora's Box. It will open the floodgates for divisive forces, lead to demands for caste reservations in legislative bodies and give a handle to religious insurgencies,'' warned a Congressman.
He clung to the hope that the government would some- how wriggle out of this and even it proceeded on it and issued an order, the judiciary would junk it.
Congressmen are caught off-guard by the suddenness with which the government agreed to include caste as a column in the information sheet in the ongoing census operation. “There was no debate either in the party or outside it on such an important issue,'' said another leader. But then, meetings of the Congress Working Committee, which should be dis- cussing such issues, have been few and far between.
Indeed, party president Sonia Gandhi has not even called a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party during the Budget session. In her speech at the CPP, Gandhi normally flags important issues and spells out the party's line on them to her MPs who then have to prop- agate it among the people. In this case, there was no directive.
“But the government would not have proceeded without getting Gandhi's endorsement on a caste-based census,“ said another Congress leader.
Yet there is bound to be opposition to it when the issue comes up for Cabinet clearance.
While Home Minister P.Chidambaran had highlighted the problems in a caste-based census, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has stiffly opposed the idea during last week's Cabinet meeting.
But a day later, the tone and tenor of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement in the Lok Sabha indicated that the government was favourably disposed to the idea. And Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, on behalf of the government, publicly stated that caste would be part of the cen- sus operation, Served with a fait accompli, Congressmen are now trying to derive the mileage they can draw from it.
“We will hard sell the fact that the Congress-led government decided on a caste-based census for the first time after Independence,'' said a Congress leader.
“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 revitalized with the government con- ceding 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 sup- ported the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill and walked out of the Lok Sabha during the cut motion vote, indi- rectly 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 party 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 Sachhar and Ranganath Mishra reports (the Sachhar 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). While the three Yadav leaders Lau, Mulayam and Sharad are trying to lobby round the issue for gaining popularity amongst their own cate following least they have any other interest.
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.
What would happen if the data on economic backwardness is also computed and made use of giving benefits arising of any State policy rather on the basis of castes.
It is quite intriguing to notice that how the politics plays its dirty role and plague a good cause. It would be wise to work and eliminate caste divisions across the society.
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http://laloo.instablogs.com/entry/burning-issues/
