Poverty has no Caste or Religion
....------, .
Recollections of the Mandal Commission: 20 years later
By: Hemant Goswami
Today we again find ourselves 011 a similar cross-road. The Government has
started reservations in education and many other places, based solely on religion.
"The Minority quota," is again based on similar type of illogical and stupid
assumptions. When will our politicians realise that" Poverty has 110 caste or religion. "
Exactly 20 years back, during my
initial days in college; I got pushed into a
situation which called for standing-up
against caste-based-politics of power
hungry politicians. The year was 1990
and the trigger-point was the decision
taken by the then Government to accept
and implement the report prepared by
Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal to
increase the caste based reservation
from 27 percent to 49.5 percent.
Mandal was a politician who was
two times Member of Parliament in the
Lok Sabha and also the Chief Minister
of Bihar for 48 days. In 1979, the then
Prime Minister Morarji Desai had
assigned the job of exploring better civil
rights to a five member commission
headed by Bindheshwari Prasad. In
1980, Mandal submitted his report
advocating further caste-based
reservation but it was only a decade later
in 1990 that the incumbent prime-
minister V'P. Singh decided to
implement the report for its widely
perceived political gains.
I remember the day and the exact
events. It was our physics class and I and
two of my friends were whispering
about the day's news about the protest
against the Mandal report in Delhi. The
professor caught us whispering and
asked us to leave the class which we did
happily. For next half-an-hour we
discussed what we should do and the
first thing which occurred to us was that
everyone should stand-up and protest
against the attempt of the govemment to
divide the society on the basis of caste.
Being students, I recollect, we were also
worried about the future prospects of
having a decent job.
We decided to strike-down and
distributed the tasks of getting the metal
plate and the dong to bell, signaling the
strike, and to get all students out of their
classes. Fortunately for us, the principal
and the professors too were equally
worried and offered little opposition to
our plans. We locked the college gate; I
stood atop the gate along with my two
friends and explained to other students
why we have called for a strike.
Thereafter for the rest of the day we went
to all other colleges of the area and
forced them also to strike-down till the
time the Mandal proposals were
withdrawn by the govemment.
The strike was complete for the
next one week and the general public
was also highly supportive. It had
become a public movement. Financial
contributions poured in through
business men and others for organising
protests, printing material, etc. Till now
all strategies and tactics used by
protesters were peaceful except for the
occasional road-jams and a few
incidents of disrupting the trains by
protesting on the rail tracks. However
there was no violence from the
protesters though there were some
occasional reports of stone-pelting. It
looked like that the protest was highly
successful and was likely to force the
government to recall the decision.
Interestingly, those were not the
times of 'Internet' and 'Google' and so
the original text of the report of'Mandal
Commission' was not available to
everyone. Fortunately, I managed a copy
(which was at high premium). After
reading it (It was the first government
report which I read), with whatever
little-bit of understanding we had oflaw
at that point of time; we became more
furious. We thought the report was
absolutely illogical, baseless and was
nothing but non-sense.
The Commission in 1979 had used
highly deficient 1931 census data to
calculate the number of OBC's and that
too on arbitrary and flimsy parameters.
Assumptions of Mandal were even
stranger. The criteria of deciding which
caste would fall in the category of
"Other Backward Class (OBC)" was
based on mutually-independent social,
educational and economical basis with
the presumption that people belonging
to any of the identified 11 different
broad criteria were oppressed because of
their affiliation to some particular caste
(and not poverty alone). Neither the
hypothesis nor the rationale was ever
tested; it was just plain assumption of a
politician coming from Bihar who
contested and won elections on the basis
of caste divide.
The criterion was equally
illogical. On the one hand Mandal
mentioned that castes/classes where
OCTObER 201 O-ldENTiTY
paluK:~!licJrn of females in work was at
-= percent above the state average
be considered OBC; and on the
the report had a criteria
directed that castes/classes where
~-erage value of family assets was at
least 2 - per cent below the state average
would also qualify as OBC. Castes also
qualified as OBC for failure of the
government to provide facilities. One of
the selection parameter mentioned that
'Castes/classes where the source of
drinking . water was beyond half a
kilometer for more than 50 percent of
the households would qualify as OBC.
Under the education based criterion, the
report also included people/villages
based on the caste where the number of
children in the age group of 5-:-15 years
never attended school was at least 25
percent above the state average and also
where the rate of student drop-out in the
age group of 5-15 years was at least 25
percent above the state average.
Another strange qualification to
become an OBC was, if one belonged to
a caste where at least 25 per cent females
and 10 per cent males above the state
average got married at an age below 17
years in rural areas and at least 10 per
cent females and 5 per cent males do so
in urban areas. Besides this one of the
selection parameter remained,
"Castes/classes considered as socially
backward by others." Who are others
and how this would be identified was
never mentioned. No scientific
methodology, nothing.
We felt that the whole rationale,
logic (or say irrational and illogical), the
procedure adopted by the Commission
and the resulting report was only fit for
the dustbin and no sane person could
think of implementing such a report. I
now realise, we had little understanding
of the political games of the time under
which it was planned to appease a
different set of castes in different states,
mainly based on the vote-bank, so that
they could qualify as OBC and therefore
be eligible for jobs. A perceived gain by
most, who would be eligible.
The Mandal report was
understood by only a few. While those of
us (thought to be) belonging to the
'thinking kind' were deliberating on all
this and using peaceful means to protest;
the movement was in the mean-time
• OCTObER 201 O-ldENTiTY
being sabotaged by the politicians. On
the hindsight, now I realise, how it was
done. Within a week from the protests,
the involvement of politicians increased
in a covert manner. None ofthe political
party could come in the open for the fear
of loosing votes (and the elections) if it
opposed the Mandal report. However all
the other political parties were keen to
capitalise on the anger and protests by a
large section of public. They wanted all
possible gains.
We protesters too were looking for
more support, when a friend of mine
(Who, I think was affiliated through his
parents to a political party) said that a
local political worker of a national party,
who was also a lawyer, feels for the
cause and wants to support us. We were
invited to his office and we had secret
meetings at his place on three
consecutive evenings. During the third
meeting, he suggested that this was not
going to work and we should adopt
violent means, use petrol bombs,
Povert in slums
remove railway tracks and beat-up a few
policemen. I immediately protested and
we had a long argument that evening.
Most of us walked-out never to meet
him again. No surprise, he now has a
successful career as a Member of the
Legislative Assembly from Haryana.
Desperate, depressed and
disheartened students were immolating
themselves, a trend started by a student
from Delhi. During that week, I lost one
of my senior (and an associate) to
immolation. We were all disillusioned.
Suddenly violence started and the whole
movement went out of our hands. There
was violence everywhere and vehicles
and places were put on fire by mobs,
none of whom we could identify. There
were new faces and newspaper reported
statements of student leaders who were
no where in the whole movement. The
movement was sabotaged by strategic
political manipulation. The police
resorted to firing on the slightest excuse
even on peaceful demonstrations. Two
more of our fellow comrades were killed
in the indiscriminate police firing.
Seven of my friends were also arrested
for no reason on flimsy grounds and on
charges of arsoning and looting. (It took
them seven years to prove their
innocence) I know, they were absolutely
innocent and were randomly picked
from road side (while having a stroll) the
day next to when the violence had
actually taken place. All leaders and
protesters were either arrested or went
underground. The movement was
successfully suppressed and protesters
neutralised by force.
We had lost. Politics of divide-
and-rule was victorious. Mandal report
got implemented. The logic of the
people that if a person is not educated
and lacks opportunity, no amount of
reservation would benefit him, found no
takers in the political world. The cry that
such caste-based reservation would
never reach the bottom 25 percent but
would be usurped bythe already well-
established creamy lawyer within was
also brushed aside.
20 years later we find that we were
correct. The OBC reservation helped no-
one. The number of poor have increased,
the divide between he rich and the poor
has further widened. Mandal scheme
benefitted no one; not even the
politicians who supported the caste-
divide in expectation ofthe votes. On the
contrary the efficiency ofthe Nation has
gone down drastically.
Today we again find ourselves on a
similar cross-road. The government has
started reservations in education and
many other places, based solely on
religion. "The Minority quota," is again
based on similar type of illogical and
stupid assumptions.
When will our politicians realise
that "Poverty has no caste or religion."
Presumably by doing all this, they are
trying to convey that "Greed too has no
caste or religion." ••
Writer is a social activist working
on citizen rights, good governance and
public health. He also heads civil
society organisations by the name of
Burning Brain Society and Citizens'
Voice.
·tions

r-India
BENAZIR
BHUTTO
DAUGHTER
OFTHEEAST