Justice Needed for Most Deprived among the OBCs

The report of the Backward Classes Commission (popularly known as the Mandal Commission Report) was submitted in the year 1980. This report has been widely debated but an important aspect of this report has not received the due attention that it deserved. This is a minute of dissent by a member of the Commission, L.R. Naik. Despite his differences with Naik, B.P. Mandal, the Chairman of the Commission, had a special word of praise for him in the letter he wrote to the President while submitting the report .”Shri L.R. Naik,” he wrote, “was the most hard working member in our lot. When other members were getting tired to continue the extensive tour of the country he was ever unfatigued.”

Naik’s close involvement in his work and sincerity are also apparent in the short note of dissent submitted by him. He has classified OBCs further into Intermediate OBCs and Depressed OBCs. Giving due reasons for his minute of dissent “not without feeling of regret and reluctance”, Naik states: “I hold very sincerely that castes/classes mentioned in the common list, each having homogeneous and cohesive characteristics, are not at the same degree or level of social and educational backwardness and I fear that the safeguards recommended for their advancement will not percolate to the less unfortunate sections among them.”

Further, he states: “During the course of my extensive tours throughout the length and breath of India, I observed that a tendency is fast developing among Intermediate Backward Classes, (IBC) to repeat the treatments or rather ill-treatments they themselves have received from times immemorial at the hands of the upper castes against their brethren, I mean the Depressed Backward Classes (DBC).”

Briefly, Naik identified the IBCs as those whose traditional occupation had been agriculture, market gardening, pastoral activities, village industries, petty business-cum-agricultural activities etc. These people “had co-existed since times immemorial with upper castes”. On the other hand, DBCs were those whose intermingling with the Indian society was either denied, prohibited and even segregated obviously on account of stigma of their traditional occupation, nomadism etc. resulting in their abysmally low social status.

According to Naik, these DBCs included ex-criminal tribes, nomadic and wandering tribes, primitive tribes (not specified as scheduled tribes) earth diggers, fishermen, boatmen, salt makers, washermen, shepherds, basket makers, tanners etc.

According to Naik’s calculations, the population of OBCs is more or less evenly divided between the DBCs and the IBCs. He has recommended 15 per cent reservations for DBCs (out of 27 per cent for all OBCs recommended by the Mandal Commission) both in public services and the educational institutions. Further, Naik states that for all other concessions DBCs should be treated on par with Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes. Naik has also drawn up state-wise lists of all the DBCs which number more than 100 in several States.

While voicing his objections on this minute of dissent, Commission Chairman B.P. Mandal, apart from raising some legal objections, stated that the population figures of the so-called DBCs worked out by Naik were very arbitrary and based on pure conjectures. It is quite possible that due to working single handedly on this highly complex issue and also having been forced to complete this work in a very short time Naik was not able to devote adequate care and caution in drawing up the State-wise list and in estimating the number of people belonging to these various castes. This, however, is a shortcoming which can be remedied by further scholarly work in this direction.

The basic point made by Naik, however, is well taken. Even if all the details of his proposal are not accepted, few impartial observers will disagree with his objections to grouping 52 per cent of India’s population comprising castes/classes of highly varying degrees of backwardness under one head and then treating them as a common entity for the purpose of giving certain benefits. As such the minute of dissent which occupies a very small space in the otherwise bulky report, deserves wider attention.

At the beginning of the Mandal Commission Report it has been written in bold letters: “There is equality only among equals. To equate unequals is to perpetuate inequality.” Naik’s dissent note appears to be quite in keeping with this statement.

The author is a free-lance journalist who has been involved with several social initiatives and movements.