R

Reactions to the report have been predictable simply because the stands of the main political parties and organisations on the issue have been aired for years. The union government’s response has been wary, even non-committal. The Congress Party’s election manifesto had claimed that it pioneered reservations for minorities in Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. However, the government it now heads is equivocal over the recommendation of a 15% quota for minorities, 10% of it for Muslims and the rest to the other minorities. It has made it amply clear that it is in no hurry to act on the recommendations. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bharatiya Janata Party warned the government that implementing reservations for Muslims and Christians will only promote religious conversion. Christian and Muslim organisations demanded immediate implementation.

Last year, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati had asked for reservations in government jobs for dalit Muslims (DMs) and dalit Christians (DCs) by amending the Constitution to lift the apex court’s overall ceiling of 50% on reservations. But a number of dalit organisations in Tamil Nadu have already warned of agitations if the Misra report is implemented. The Misra report has suggested that if the 15% reservation is not possible due to an “insurmountable difficulty”, then, in the 27% Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota, an 8.4% sub-quota should be earmarked for minorities, based on the Mandal Commission’s estimate that the minorities constitute 8.4% of the total OBC population. The government’s statement that it is considering this possibility is not going to be welcomed by the OBC leaders of the majority community.

“Dalits in the Muslim and Christian Communities: A Status Report on Current Social Scientific Knowledge”, prepared for the National Commission for Minorities by Satish Deshpande (with the assistance of Geetika Bapna) and submitted in January 2008, analysed data from the National Sample Survey Organisation to map the social status and material well-being of these sections of the two communities, and compare their situation with that of non-dalits in their own communities and dalits in other communities. It concludes, among other things, that there can be no doubt whatsoever that DMs and DCs “are invariably regarded as ‘socially inferior’ communities by their co-religionists”.

The other conclusions of this status report are also significant. In terms of poverty, DMs are the worst among all dalits in both rural and urban areas; DCs are moderately better off than other dalits except dalit Sikhs who are even better off. In intracommunity comparisons DMs are only slightly worse off than non-dalit Muslims but that is because the Muslim community as a whole tends to be very badly off compared to other communities. DCs have the highest inter-caste differentials for the opposite reason that non-dalit Christians tend to be much better off. In economic terms, whatever differences there are among dalits of different religions only become visible in the top 25%. Other than rural dalit Sikhs, 75% of all other dalits are indistinguishable from each other. Urban Muslims show “worrying levels” of economic vulnerability across caste groups. Occupational differences, where significant, show DMs to be the worst off in urban India. The status report says it finds a “strong case” for according SC status to DMs and DCs.

It follows then that if the DMs and DCs are not so different from other dalit groups, there is no basis for denying them

Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

EDITORIALS

the reservations enjoyed by Buddhist, Sikh and Hindu dalits. Even on the score of existing SCs getting a smaller piece of the reservations cake if the religious minorities are included, the status report finds that both together amount to one-and-aquarter per cent of all rural and two-and-a-quarter per cent of all urban dalits.

-

-

-

-

Going by the reaction of the Hindu right and the govern ment’s obvious reluctance to commit to the Misra report’s recommendations, it is the political (electoral) fallout of the implementation that seems to be the crux of the issue. Democracy, from the perspective of the major political parties, is a game of numbers, and it is likely that the demands of the religious minorities will, as in the past, be disregarded.

--

-

-

january 9, 2010 vol xlv no 2

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly