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Confusing matters Business Standard / New Delhi April 19, 2007 The government's arguments, made in its affidavit to the Supreme Court, asking for a lifting of the stay on the reservation of Other Backward Classes (OBCs), do not really clarify matters; rather they seek to confuse issues. While staying the reservations for OBCs, the Court had asked a simple question about the relevance of data that was gathered from a Census which was more than 75 years old. The government has tried to clarify this by stating that while Mandal had identified the OBCs from his own survey, the 1931 Census was just used to figure out the proportion of these OBCs in the country's population. This is just half the truth. Since the Constitution talked of reservation for backward classes and not castes, Mandal needed data on classes. Even if you leave aside issues pertaining to the methodology used and whether it was correct, it's important to know how Mandal got to his classes. His survey put certain weightings on the responses given. So, the caste of a respondent was given a weighting of three, the educational status a weighting of two, and income a weighting of one. If the total was below a certain number, the caste in question became an OBC. Obviously, if economic status was given a higher weighting, or all criteria were equally weighted, a lot of the castes that got classified as backward classes would not be there, even going by the data from the 1931 Census, which had information on castes. The other related issue is whether there is a need to get the next Census to enumerate castes or whether the data thrown up from the National Sample Survey rounds of 1999-00 and 2004-05 are good enough. The NSS data show the proportion of OBCs at 36 per cent in 1999-00 and 41 per cent in 2004-05. Certainly both the figures are higher than the 27 per cent reservation being asked for. This too misses the wood for the trees. Even a new Census will show a high proportion of OBCs for the simple reason that, as the advantages of being an OBC increase, the proportion of those claiming to be OBCs will rise. The sharp rise in the proportion between 1999-00 and 2004-05 is a good example of this since it means OBCs have been growing by 4.3 per cent per annum, a growth rate that is unprecedented in independent India. So if birth rate does not explain the higher proportion of OBCs, what does is the fact that more and more people are classifying themselves as OBCs to enjoy the privileges that flow from this. While replying to the Supreme Court stay, the government could have argued that when a larger bench had agreed to the use of the 1931 Census data in the Indra Sawhney case, a smaller bench is in no position to challenge the number. But if this argument had been used, the government would have been required to explain why it has not identified, and excluded, the creamy layer from the reservations since this is what the Indra Sawhney bench had ordered. Imagine the political furore if this was done since the OBC parties asking for reservations are those dominated by the creamy layer.
