some backward logic

A large number of the so-called backward castes are still desperately poor and their lifestyle is no better than that of the indigent Schedule Castes (SC). They are not even thinking of getting comfortable jobs in the private sector or admission into prestigious educational institutions. If they seek employment outside agriculture, and most of them do, they would be happy to get one which pays by the month and not by the hour. They realise that for this to happen they need better schools for their children. Which is why, when Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad failed to deliver, these castes turned around and voted for Mayawati in UP and Nitish Kumar in Bihar. [emphasis mine]

dipankar gupta, may 2009.

Caste determinism works in other ways too. Advocates of OBC reservation seem to believe that once an OBC always an OBC. Many OBCs did exceedingly well before the Mandal storm broke, but our reservation advocates believe that they are culturally incapable of sustaining their ‘creamy layer’ status without the reservation prop. Such crude forms of identification should have angered members of the OBC communities but, strangely enough, they have not yet taken umbrage at being labelled culturally inadequate. [emphasis mine]

dipankar gupta, april 2007.

does 'many obcs' mean 'a large number of the so-called backward castes'? if they were 'doing exceedingly well before mandal' why are they 'still desperately poor now'?

3,000 drops in an ocean

i'd written to a friend (a year ago, while discussing a news report that said less than 3,000 inter-caste marriages were reported from across india in 2005-06- here's the link but it doesn't seem to work now):

just look at the numbers- on a single 'good muhurat' day more than 30,000 couples could get married in any of the top 10 cities in india. and inter-caste marriages don't number more than 3000 in the whole country in a whole year.

those are marriages reported to certain government agencies which provide incentives to couples who go in for inter-caste marriages- yes, the actual number could be higher, but how much higher? twice that figure? ten times that figure? would a number ten times that figure indicate a significant trend? i don't think so.

but across the media, you notice one significant trend: a growing tendency to paint the lower castes as the only people steeped in caste. for the media, the term upper caste seems to indicate a higher value system. does the above example reveal any significant change in people's attitudes, especially of those belonging to the upper castes, towards caste? does it show how the upper castes have progressed from caste to class and the lower castes have clung to caste as many sociologists, journalists etc., have argued in the recent past? have the surnames shastri, sharma, iyer, reddy, deshpande etc., disappeared significantly or fused together to form new secular identities such as sharma-reddy, deshpande-chaudhury etc., in significant numbers?

one piece of pseudo-knowledge that the media believes in strongly (as do the experts from other knowledge producing fields who write for it): the position of women becomes weaker as you go down the caste ladder. does it?

In a recently completed study in Mehsana district in Gujarat and Kurukshetra district in Haryana, undertaken with the support of HealthWatch Trust, it was observed that the last births had a stronger preponderance of boys than all other births. Although more than twice as many boys as girls were reported among the last births by most groups of women, among those women who belonged to upper castes, whose families were landed and who were literate, there were more than 240 males for every 100 girls in the last births (Visaria 2003) [...]
However, we observed some differences between women belonging to higher social groups and those who belonged to scheduled caste and other backward communities with regard to the influence of the in-laws in these matters. The high caste women had to inform and consult their in-laws but the low caste women had to obtain the consent of only their husbands for abortion. The influence of the extended joint family was not so strong on the decision of the women from lower caste groups. (italics mine).

creamy layer: thinly veiled prejudice

what feelings, knowledge could have fuelled the idea that a large, powerful, prosperous creamy layer exists among obcs and other underprivileged classes? a line from a dipankar gupta article i'd quoted a couple of days ago, in this post, provides a clue:

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.

it isn't 'demonstrably perverse' to assume that 'members of certain castes' do have access to 'the means and powers to do so so' when commissions such as the one headed by mandal clearly pointed out that a large majority of them do not have such access? and again, reading carefully, you notice he mentions only 'members of certain castes'. okay, he's not talking about all the members of the obc castes. he's only talking of members of certain castes. not about random individuals, from any caste, among the broad objectivised category called backward classes. like i said in this post, whatever his protestations, dipankar gupta has always demonstrated an acute consciousness of caste. if he wants to push ahead a pro-economic-and-other-objective-criteria-based alternative policy, why does he have to build it on the foundation of caste?

members of certain castes have the means and the powers to get ahead but they still want reservations because members of those castes are...lazy? greedy? devious? shifty? cunning? stupid dickheads?

as you go on searching for what's implied in that line, progressively less pleasant thoughts strike your mind. words that increasingly slur.

yes, that line could also be interpreted as:

policymakers wish to offer reservations to even members of certain castes who have the means and the powers to get ahead on their own, because they believe such a policy would translate into votes.

now look at what's being implied:

members of certain castes who have the means and the powers to get ahead on their own are so dumb that they'll all stop trying harder if offered reservations, because they will all believe they'll all get seats anyway.

members of certain castes who have the means and the powers to get ahead on their own are so f$@^ing devious that they'll all scheme together and try just hard enough to score just enough marks below the cutoff mark (yes, they'll also be aware of just what the cutoff is going to be, in advance) to grab all the seats, if offered reservations.

members of certain castes who have the means and the powers to get ahead on their own have such a weak grasp of responsible citizenship, of ethics, that they sell their votes.

members of certain castes who have the means and the powers to get ahead on their own are so stupid that they will believe that they'll all get seats because members of other castes who have also been offered reservations will never be able to score better than them.

one could go on because this concept of creamy layer is so stimulating- it offers such varied, and interesting insights into the ..brahminized imagination. no, that's not a slur.

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.

caste determinism is irrational, mr.gupta?

Research Question: What is the prevalence and incidence of morbidity in children residing in social welfare hostels? Objective: To find out morbidity pattern among hostel children by sex. Study Design: Cross sectional and longitudinal study. Setting: Social Welfare hostels in Tirupati town of Andhra Pradesh. Participants: 598 children (341 boys and 257 girls).Statistical Analysis: Proportions and Chi-square tests.Results: The common prevalent morbid conditions found were skin disorders (25.7%), dental caries (21.5%), history of passing worms in stool (21.6%), Vit.B deficiency (3.2%), ARI (1.7%) and diarrhoea (1.2%). The prevalence of anaemia and helminthiasis in a 20% sub-sample based on laboratory findings were found to be 79.6% and 39.3% respectively. Significantly higher prevalence of anaemia and helminthiasis was found among boys. In the follow up study, the major health problems reported were ARI, skin diseases, injuries, Vit.B complex deficiency, diarrhoea and eye diseases.

most of the students staying in those hostels were dalits. and this is from the archives of the national human rights commission website:

New Delhi October 19, 2007
The National Human Rights has sent notice to the Chief Secretary, Andhra Pradesh, on a report, which said that “Yellow Rice and Rasam” is being provided to the hostelers in the State. The report, which appeared in the “Andhra Jyoti” on September 8, 2007, said that during inspections by the Social Welfare Department Officials, it was found that 120 hostels inspected were providing rice and rasam instead of nutritious food to the inmates. These hostels were located in the Telengana region of the State covering the districts of Warangal, Nizamabad and Karim Nagar. [...] The news report also stated that 645 hostels including 120 girls’ hostels were suffering from sanitation problems, with bathroom and toilets unfit for use. The news report said sometimes the students were forced to attend the call of the nature in the open. Even the girls hostels lacked bathrooms and they had to make temporary bathrooms. Under these circumstances a girl in Anantpur district was sexually assaulted when she had gone to attend the call of the nature.

if the commission had bothered to check on its own the conditions in some of those hostels it'd have uncovered more horrifying truths perhaps: a tdp mla had lamented in the state assembly that more than 1700 of the 5000 odd 'social welfare' hostels in the state had no access to clean drinking water and over 300 students had committed suicide in the last 2-3 years.

every state in india has these social welfare hostels for dalit and adivasi students. since the last twenty years hostels for obc students have also been started. students from class 3 to 8 are admitted into these hostels and are provided free accomodation and food. andhra pradesh has more than half a million students in these hostels and karnataka has more than 3,50,000 - it's safe to assume that around 3-5 million students from the weakest sections of our society stay in these hostels across the country? i am not sure- north indian states like bihar and uttar pradesh don't seem seem convinced of the concept, despite all the noise on social justice that we've been hearing from those states in the last two decades. their idea of social justice just doesn't seem to translate into anything concrete, apart from statues, like, say, hostels for students from the lower castes who really need all the protection and care that the state can offer (it's a different issue that those states which seem to believe in the idea are not really being able to offer all that). bihar has only around 146 hostels. and uttar pradesh has started building a few in the last few years. even a state like west bengal has only 1/7th the number of dalit and adivasi students in hostels as karnataka. one feels happy that some states in india are actually trying to pay more than lip service to social welfare. but, as the study and the report i quoted earlier show, their efforts haven't been satisfactory. here's some more evidence:

A recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General ( CAG) says that the gap between general category students and Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) students in schools is increasing despite various government schemes and projects. [...] The report also criticises the hostel facilities provided to SC/ST students. In many states, hostels have been captured by policemen, state officials, and even beggars. For example in Dumka, Dhanbad, and Ranchi, three hostels for STs and one for SCs built during 2001-04 for 400 students were occupied by police officials and to run a school, while six hostels constructed during 1992-2003 were being used as staff quarters, classrooms and a staff common room, the report alleges.

and more:

BANGALORE: The state government has initiated disciplinary action against 132 taluk officers and 4 district officers of the social welfare department for dereliction of duty. "These officers have been held responsible for not implementing welfare schemes effectively and overlooking hostel maintenance. We have also sent back 24 officers on deputation to their parent department," Social Welfare Minister A Krishnappa told reporters here on Tuesday. [...] Claiming that maintenance and management of hostels run by the department was better compared to Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Krishnappa pointed out that hostel inmates would be provided with computers, television sets and uninterrupted power supply.

one is reminded of all those pearls of wisdom thrown at us swine whenever reservations were discussed in the mainstream media in the last twenty five years or so: give them good schools, scholarships, hostels...why do they need reservations? well, some state governments seem to be doing just that: giving, no, throwing schools, scholarships and hostels at them but not bothering to check whether they're good enough. one is also reminded of an article by dipankar gupta in which he attacks caste determinism:

Caste determinism works against democracy, no matter who the beneficiaries of this mindset might be. It has worked against the Scheduled Castes for centuries, necessitating the provision of reservations for them in the Constitution. These were designed to protect them and help them generate socially valuable skills and assets that were traditionally denied to them. The rationale was that with time, members of the Scheduled Castes would have sufficient confidence in themselves to take the fight against casteism forward and eventually extirpate this curse. No caste determinism here, but a clear respect for the downtrodden and in their capabilities.

could someone please tell me, how does one spot the clear respect for the downtrodden and in their capabilities in the study and the news reports i quoted in this post?

could someone also tell me, why is mr.gupta convinced that all obcs exhibit only one kind of behavior?