creamy layer: individuals, not castes

what's the creamy layer? is it a) a set of powerful castes at the top of the broad category of castes listed as backward or is it b) composed of well-to-do individuals from any of the castes in the obc list?

for more clarity, let's check what the national commission for backward classes has to say:

What is Creamy Layer?

The Government of India has evolved the criteria for exclusion of certain socially advanced persons/sections from the benefits of reservation available to OBCs in civil posts and services under the Government of India and this is called the "Creamy Layer criteria"

persons/sections: which i guess should be understood as individuals, primarily, who come from certain sections- the persons and the sections are listed in this page. is there a mention of castes in the sections listed? no. what does that mean? it means that option (a) that i had mentioned in the beginning of this post is ruled out: there is no such creature as a 'creamy layer' of castes. in other words, every caste in this list has passed the test of these criteria. so only individuals would be skimmed off, not castes.

For all the brave face the government is putting up, its perfidy has been exposed. The issue was not whether affirmative action is permissible. What was grossly objectionable was that the government indiscriminately included groups that manifestly ought not to be beneficiaries. They had converted a social policy into a pure power play.

so, what are the groups that pratap bhanu mehta is talking about? is he talking about the same 'groups' (or 'members of certain castes') as dipankar gupta was talking about a few months ago?

It is ‘demonstrably perverse’ to consider members of certain castes incapable of doing well and getting ahead even if they have the means and the powers to do so. This is as much a cultorological loaded argument as are the caste slurs against the Scheduled Castes. By reminding the government to take a second look at not just the number of OBCs but also the principal of identification, the Supreme Court was doing democracy a great favour.

what groups are these two tv stars talking about? dipankar gupta has never minced words on what he thought of obcs, like in this article for instance:

Mayawati thought differently. She knew from experience that it was OBCs, and not Brahmins or Baniyas, who routinely brutalised rural Dalits. She abandoned her early catchwords and reached out to the 'forwards'. She could sense they were politically rudderless and racked by post-Mandal job anxieties. Therefore, by bringing the two together and taking advantage of rampant lawlessness in UP, which again is largely an OBC phenomenon, she rode to power in style. It was this deadly scissors movement, which combined 'forwards' and SCs that cut OBC supporters down to size. This lot had been fattened post-Mandal, pampered as they were by the Left and Right. But Mayawati contributed little to this OBC-led bonhomie. She was preoccupied elsewhere with the thought of bringing Dalit politics back to basics.

pretty sweeping? neither mr.mehta nor mr.gupta ever talked about only individuals, their target was always whole groups or castes or the broad category of backward classes itself. now, when they call the supreme court's judgment 'a landmark' or 'it was not supposed to be caste' (check both articles- see how similar both their arguments sound given the fact they're both trying to reinterpret some of their earlier assertions in the face of obvious rejection of their original arguments by the sc) don't delude yourself into thinking that they were talking about excluding privileged, well-to-do individuals from obc families from reservations- this is not the creamy layer they were talking about. in mr.gupta's view, at least, the whole of the obcs were a creamy layer.

in mr.mehta's defense, one could say that he wasn't as strongly opposed to 'affirmative action' for the obcs, as he calls it, as mr. gupta. he advocates better targeting. but the company of other committed intellectuals opposing obc reservations did show through in some of his articles in which he pointed out at some length that the obcs didn't deserve reservations.

mr.mehta, mr.gupta and also yogendra yadav have all talked about other, more rational/objective methods of measuring backwardness. 'deprivation indices' that focussed on the school an aspirant went to, location (village/town/city etc.,), gender, income and caste etc., all, except for caste, very objective criteria, right? if someone like yogendra yadav thinks that such requirements as income certificates can't be custom-designed, especially by individuals from those sections of indian society who occupy nearly 70% of india's sarkari/quasi sarkari positions, what can one say? and what is more real than the fact that caste determines economic realities in india? these folks live in a different reality.

the problem is not that they live in a different reality, it is that they create a different reality for a large majority of upper caste indians, ever willing to subscribe to any explanation that turns accusing fingers away from them: a reality in which rich obcs travel in chauffeur-driven mercedes cars, own most of the land in rural india, go around in rampaging mobs killing dalits in the countryside, vote in single-minded hordes for parties that promise them undeserved goodies, and send large numbers of disgustingly unruly, illiterate lumpen elements to houses of legislature. don't stop to think of an army of bloodthirsty nayees or kumhars or bunkars and ponder on how absurd a picture that makes, don't stop to think of all the obc famers killing themselves in the countryside, don't stop to think, for instance, of how in madhya pradesh, as ndtv pointed out yesterday (albeit, to press home an altogether different point), obc legislators make up only 15% of the members of the legislative assembly (while the obc population in the state is 51% of the total) and how their representation in most states is much more pathetic. don't stop.

don't stop to think of how round after round of the nsso surveys reveal an ever increasing share of the obcs in the total population and in the population of the poor in the country. don't stop to think of figures that indicate widespread illiteracy, unemployment. of lives wasting away in occupations that define india's heritage...

don't stop, because the creamy layer will melt away. you know you it exists, because you're convinced it exists. it's powerful ('a few prosperous castes eat away all the benefits'), and it's prosperous ('they own most of the land') and it's large ('they're the votebanks'), among a whole lot of evil, immoral things.

that's what the manufactured reality, built on mostly anecdotal evidence and garnished with sparse factual support, has achieved until now: convinced a large number of upper caste indians into believing that the creamy layer is the whole reality of the obcs.

i'd like to ask, picking a line from this blogger: where's the data? where's the data to prove that the creamy layer exists and it is all the things it is garishly portrayed to be? and even if it exists, why should it be excluded? show me the data to prove that it should be excluded.