Beyond Mandal and After Backward Classes in Perspective

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Preface I had to write this book. For me it has been an act of catharsis. In August 1990, when V. P. Singh, the then Prime Minister suddenly announced the acceptance in part the report of the Second Backward Classes Commission (Mandal Commission) as an act of political brichole in his confrontation with his Deputy Prime MiniSster, I was sad. But when several youths inflicted on themselves the supreme ordeal of self-immolation, I had my personal reason to suffer intensely. It was a tempest within.

I was connected with the First Backward Classes Commission (Kalelkar Commission) as an officer and also I was associated with the Second Backward Commission (Mandal Commission) as an expert in a honorary capacity.

I was connected with Kalelkar Commission in a different way also. When the report of the Commission was being examined by the Government of India and the State Government, I was in charge of the newly established Cultural Research Institute of the Tribal Welfare Department, Govt. of West Bengal. In that capacity I was actively involved to work out an alternative to the purely caste basis for the identification of the socially and educationally backward classes. I have included the details in this book.

When the result of our effort was not accepted at the All India level, I felt frustrated. But at that time I was an inexperienced youngman. The formula, in evolving which, I, as an anthropologist, had played some role and on the basis of which we reservation in favour of authentic backward classes, whose numerical strength again was grossly over-estimated by Mandal Commission. Here I should mention that during 1951 census, apart from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, an enumeration of the com- munities listed by the State Governments as educationally back- ward was done. Though the enumerated data were not made public, these were made available to Kalelkar Commission. For those communities listed by Kalelkar Commission but not by the State Governments estimates of their numerical strength were made by the Census Commissioner based on information available in earlier censuses. The figure thus arrived at through enumeration and estimation stood at 20.5 percent of the total population of the country. There were however a number of communities whose names did not occur at any of the earlier censuses. Kalelkar Com- mission added another about 10 percent for such communities. This, of course, is of questionable validity. Many of the latter were synonyms and sub-caste names of the already listed communities. In any case the estimate made by Kalelkar Commission, 32 percent, has more sound statistical base than the figure, 52 percent estimated by Mandal Commission in a questionable manner.

I am thankful to Sri Nikhil Chakravarty, Editor, Mainstream for ar ranging an informal discussion with some eminent journalists so that I could make the position clear. This was followed by a series of articles, I wrote for different dailies and journals including the Mainstream. I am also grateful to late Sri Rajendra Mathur, the then Editor of Nav Bharat Times for arranging a press conference where I could explain my view.

But even then, only a fraction of what I wanted to communicate as a social scientist could be covered. I have tried to make up the gap to a certain extent in this book. But I am not fully satisfied. What I have mainly tried to do here is an analysis of the imperatives and constraints that have guided the actions of the ruling elites of different hues, in their approach to the disadvantaged sections of the population. Thus I have tried to put in perspective the reports of Kalelkar Commission and Mandal Commission and the responses particularly of the political elites to the same. But the task of a social scientist in this era of reconstruction of polities, not only at the country level but also at the global level, does not end here. On each issue, we are to provide substantive alternatives for consideration of different sections of people.