poverty has no religion

8/8/2019 Poverty Has No Religion

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Poverty has no Caste or Relig ionRecollections of the Mandal Commission: 20 years later

. . . . - - - - - - , .By: Hemant Goswami

Today we again find ourselves 011 a similar cross-road. The Government hasstarted reservations in education and many other places, based solely on religion."The Minority quota," is again based on similar type of illogical and stupidassumptions. When will our politicians realise that" Poverty has 110 caste or religion. "

Exactly 20 years back, during myinitial days in college; I got pushed into asituation which called for standing-upagainst caste-based-politics of powerhungry politicians. The year was 1990and the trigger-point was the decisiontaken by the then Government to acceptand implement the report prepared byBindheshwari Prasad Mandal toincrease the caste based reservationfrom 27percent to 49.5 percent.Mandal was a politician who wastwo times Member of Parliament in theLok Sabha and also the Chief Ministerof Bihar for 48 days. In 1979, the thenPrime Minister Morarji Desai hadassigned thejob of exploring better civilrights to a five member commissionheaded by Bindheshwari Prasad. In1980, Mandal submitted his reportadvocating further caste-basedreservation but it was only a decade laterin 1990 that the incumbent prime-minister V'P. Singh decided toimplement the report for its widelyperceived political gains.I remember the day and the exactevents. It was our physics class and I andtwo of my friends were whisperingabout the day's news about the protestagainst the Mandal report in Delhi. Theprofessor caught us whispering andasked us to leave the class which we didhappily. For next half-an-hour wediscussed what we should do and thefirst thing which occurred to us was thateveryone should stand-up and protestagainst the attempt of the govemment todivide the society on the basis of caste.Being students, I recollect, we were alsoworried about the future prospects ofhaving a decentjob.

We decided to strike-down and

distributed the tasks of getting the metalplate and the dong to bell, signaling thestrike, and to get all students out of theirclasses. Fortunately for us, the principaland the professors too were equallyworried and offered little opposition toour plans. We locked the college gate; Istood atop the gate along with my twofriends and explained to other studentswhy we have called for a strike.Thereafter for the rest of the day we wentto all other colleges of the area andforced them also to strike-down till thetime the Mandal proposals werewithdrawn by the govemment.

The strike was complete for thenext one week and the general publicwas also highly supportive. It hadbecome a public movement. Financialcontributions poured in throughbusiness men and others for organisingprotests, printing material, etc. Till nowall strategies and tactics used byprotesters were peaceful except for theoccasional road-jams and a fewincidents of disrupting the trains by

protesting on the rail tracks. Howeverthere was no violence from theprotesters though there were someoccasional reports of stone-pelting. Ilooked like that the protest was highlysuccessful and was likely to force thegovernment to recall the decision.Interestingly, those were not thetimes of 'Internet' and 'Google' and sothe original text of the report of'MandalCommission' was not available toeveryone. Fortunately, I managed a copy(which was at high premium). Afterreading it (It was the first governmentreport which I read), with whateverlittle-bit of understanding we had oflawat that point of time; we became morefurious. We thought the report wasabsolutely illogical, baseless and wasnothing but non-sense.The Commission in 1979 had usedhighly deficient 1931 census data tocalculate the number of OBC's and thattoo on arbitrary and flimsy parameters.Assumptions of Mandal were evenstranger. The criteria of deciding whichcaste would fall in the category of"Other Backward Class (OBC)" wasbased on mutually-independent social,educational and economical basis withthe presumption that people belongingto any of the identified 11 differentbroad criteria were oppressed because oftheir affiliation to some particular caste(and not poverty alone). Neither thehypothesis nor the rationale was evertested; it was just plain assumption of apolitician coming from Bihar whocontested and won elections on the basisof caste divide.The criterion was equallyillogical. On the one hand Mandalmentioned that castes/classes where

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uK:~!licJrn of females in work was at- = percent above the state averagebe considered OBC; and on the

the report had a criteriadirected that castes/classes where

~-erage value of family assets was atst 2 - per cent below the state averageould also qualify as OBC. Castes alsoalified as OBC for failure of theernment to provide facilities. One of

e selection parameter mentioned thattes/classes where the source ofinking . water was beyond half ameter for more than 50 percent of

e households would qualify as OBC.nder the education based criterion, theport also included people/villagesd on the caste where the number ofdren in the age group of 5-: -1 5 yearsver attended school was at least 25ent above the state average and also

here the rate of student drop-out in thee group of 5-15 years was at least 25rcent above the state average.

Another strange qualification tocome an OBC was, if one belonged tocaste where at least 25 per cent femalesd 10 per cent males above the stateerage got married at an age below 17s in rural areas and at least 10 pert females and 5 per cent males do sourban areas. Besides this one of thelection parameter remained,tes/classes considered as socially

ckward by others." Who are othersd how this would be identified wasr mentioned. No scientificdology, nothing.We felt that the whole rationale,(or say irrational and illogical), the

ocedure adopted by the Commissiond the resulting report was only fit fore dustbin and no sane person couldink of implementing such a report. Iw realise, we had little understandingthe political games of the time underhich it was planned to appease a

t set of castes in different states,y based on the vote-bank, so that

ey could qualify as OBC and thereforeeligible for jobs. A perceived gain byt, who would be eligible.The Mandal report was

derstood by only a few. While those of(thought to be) belonging to the

inking kind' were deliberating on allis and using peaceful means to protest;e movement was in the mean-time

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being sabotaged by the politicians. Onthe hindsight, now I realise, how it wasdone. Within a week from the protests,the involvement of politicians increasedin a covert manner. None ofthe politicalparty could come in the open for the fearof loosing votes (and the elections) if itopposed the Mandal report. However allthe other political parties were keen tocapitalise on the anger and protests by alarge section of public. They wanted allpossible gains.

We protesters too were looking formore support, when a friend of mine(Who, I think was affiliated through hisparents to a political party) said that alocal political worker of a national party,who was also a lawyer, feels for thecause and wants to support us. We wereinvited to his office and we had secretmeetings at his place on threeconsecutive evenings. During the thirdmeeting, he suggested that this was notgoing to work and we should adoptviolent means, use petrol bombs,

Povert in slums

remove railway tracks and beat-up a fewpolicemen. I immediately protested andwe had a long argument that evening.Most of us walked-out never to meethim again. No surprise, he now has asuccessful career as a Member of theLegislative Assembly from Haryana.

Desperate, depressed anddisheartened students were immolatingthemselves, a trend started by a studentfrom Delhi. During that week, I lost oneof my senior (and an associate) toimmolation. We were all disillusioned.Suddenly violence started and the wholemovement went out of our hands. Therewas violence everywhere and vehiclesand places were put on fire by mobs,none of whom we could identify. Therewere new faces and newspaper reportedstatements of student leaders who wereno where in the whole movement. Themovement was sabotaged by strategic

political manipulation. The policeresorted to firing on the slightest excuseeven on peaceful demonstrations. Twomore of our fellow comrades were killedin the indiscriminate police firing.Seven of my friends were also arrestedfor no reason on flimsy grounds and oncharges of arsoning and looting. (It tookthem seven years to prove theirinnocence) I know, they were absolutelyinnocent and were randomly pickedfrom road side (while having a stroll) theday next to when the violence hadactually taken place. All leaders andprotesters were either arrested or wentunderground. The movement wassuccessfully suppressed and protestersneutralised by force.

We had lost. Politics of divide-and-rule was victorious. Mandal reportgot implemented. The logic of thepeople that if a person is not educatedand lacks opportunity, no amount ofreservation would benefit him, found notakers in the political world. The cry thatsuch caste-based reservation wouldnever reach the bottom 25 percent butwould be usurped bythe already well-established creamy lawyer within wasalso brushed aside.

20 years later we find that we werecorrect. The OBC reservation helped no-one. The number of poor have increased,the divide between he rich and the poorhas further widened. Mandal schemebenefitted no one; not even thepoliticians who supported the caste-divide in expectation ofthe votes. On thecontrary the efficiency ofthe Nation hasgone down drastically.

Today we again find ourselves on asimilar cross-road. The government hasstarted reservations in education andmany other places, based solely onreligion. "The Minority quota," is againbased on similar type of illogical andstupid assumptions.

When will our politicians realisethat "Poverty has no caste or religion."Presumably by doing all this, they aretrying to convey that "Greed too has nocaste or religion."

Writer is a social activist workingon citizen rights, good governance andpublic health. He also heads civilsociety organisations by the name ofBurning Brain Society and Citizens'Voice.


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