Can obc caste people get benefit in government job

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yes, you can avail your OBC category. The Mandal Commission stated that it fixed the 27 per cent through a deductive method. It pointed out that reservations for SCs and STs had already been fixed at 22.5 per cent. As the Supreme Court in one of its earlier judgements had fixed a norm of reservations for all categories up to a maximum of 50 per cent, the remaining 27 per cent should go to the OBCs. It argued that since the OBC population constituted 52 per cent the figure seemed reasonable.


Ram Khelawan
Recent sample surveys, however, knock the assumption that OBCs constitute such a substantial chunk of the population. The National Sample Survey 2000 suggests that the OBC number may be around 37 per cent of the population. The National Family Health Statistics (NFHS) survey of 1998 pegged it at 34 per cent, closer to the NSS figure. The surveys also show that wide disparities do exist between the OBCs and the forward castes in terms of education, income levels and employment. They do justify some sort of affirmative action though fixing a quota needs a more scientific basis.

Even before the Mandal Commission gave its report, the battleground had moved to the states. Ten state governments set up their respective commissions for their OBC populations and arbitrarily fixed their own quotas. This intensified the vote bank politics based on castes as every ruling party went out of its way to woo what it believed was a substantial chunk of the voters.

In Karnataka in the late 1970s, Devraj Urs in a bid to split the stranglehold of the Vokkaligas and the Lingayats actively began pursuing the backward classes. A commission formed by him even dropped the Lingayats from the OBC list and kicked up reservations substantially for Idigas, Kurubas and Agasa communities who formed a weighty percentage of the vote bank. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the AIADMK government under former chief minister M.G. Ramachandran in 1979 came up with a government order to give reservation to only those with income lower than Rs 9,000. However, when his party was routed in the Lok Sabha polls in 1980, MGR-realising his political folly-not only withdrew the order but topped it: reservation for OBCs went up from 31 per cent to 50 per cent.

In the North, the OBC issue became the new centre of power politics. In Bihar, Ram Manohar Lohia, who formed the Samyukta Socialist Party, conceived the idea of uniting the backward castes to defeat the Congress in the 1967 state elections. It brought to the fore the Banias, Kurmi, Koeri and Yadav candidates. After the Mandal Commission report, politics was never the same again in the Hindi belt. Two powerful Yadav chieftains Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav emerged in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the "Veto Ground" that contributes 138 MPs.

Even the BJP was forced to put Kalyan Singh, a powerful leader of backward Lodh caste in the forefront. Singh led the Mandir movement to counter the impact of Mandal wave. While the impact of Mandalisation of politics in Bihar saw Lalu's rule linger on for 15 years, in Uttar Pradesh only three backwards and Dalits ruled by rotation separately or through alliances-Mulayam [Yadav], Mayawati [Dalit] and Kalyan Singh [Lodh].

Q Has there been any pruning on the basis of creamy layers?

There is a fair amount of acrimony within the OBCs as well, reflected in several states identifying several layers for separate quantum. Karnataka for instance has subdivided the OBCs in to five different categories. Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh have divided them into OBC and MBC (Most Backward Class.) Now Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar wants an EBC (Extremely Backward Class) count as well. In the political game several powerful communities like the Patels and Barots in Gujarat, Ramgariahs, Labanas and Soni Rajputs in Punjab, Jats in north India, Yadavs and Kurmis in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and Lingayats and Vokkaligas in Karnataka, to name a few, have appeared to be at the head of those who benefit the most from reservations.


The Socio-Economic Divide
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SHEETAL MHATRE Hailing from a Maratha middle-class family of social workers in Thane, she decided to join politics at 22 because the ward she lives in was reserved for OBC women.
"I am a politician today only because of the reservation, still I would say that it should be based on economic and not social criterion."

Sheetal Mhatre
KULOTHUNGACHOLAN A first generation learner from Kaliankuppam village in Cuddalore district, he is pursuing masters in medicine from Madras Medical College, Chennai.
"I want to go back to my village and practise medicine because I want to be a role model for others."

Kulthungacholan
AJAY SINGH YADAV An MP cadre IAS officer, he quit the service in 1998 at the peak of his career because he couldn't bear to be in the warped world of civil servants.
"There should be no reservation for anyone in higher education or jobs. That is the sole preserve of merit."
Equipped with the 1993 Supreme Court order endorsing reservations in both employment and educational institutions, Central and state governments moved rapidly to set up their own permanent backward class commissions and also earmark quotas for the OBC. While Mandal identified 2,052 the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) formed in 1994 list has about 3,700 caste, sub-castes and communities. While the NCBC committed that it would periodically review the list and knock out those classes that are no more socially and economically backward, there has hardly been any pruning.
This despite the Supreme Court specifying a creamy layer criteria that excluded those having an annual income of above Rs 2.5 lakh from the OBC list. Consider also what K.S. Puttaswamy, former chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Backward Classes Commission, told census officials in 2000 when he began his task. "Every community in Andhra has claimed it is backward and that the cumulative figure that each one gave would make the state's population 25 crore whereas it is less than 8 crore."

In 1993, Moily as chief minister pushed through a formula that ensured that admission for 75 per cent of the seats in both government-aided and private engineering and medical colleges would be decided by a criteria laid down by the state government. Of these 50 per cent was promptly reserved for OBCs and SCS and STs and the 25 per cent was put in the general quota with a fixed annual fee.
Management in private unaided colleges could collect capitation fee for the remaining 25 per cent of the seats. Other states like Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh followed suit with their own formulae. These were challenged in the Supreme Court. In August 2005 the court abolished all reservations on the basis of quota in private unaided colleges and minority institutions. That was the trigger for the Parliament to pass the 93rd Constitutional Amendment this year.

The Oversight Committee has already run headlong into trouble. While Moily talked of having a wider consultation by holding a national colloquium and also implementing the order in a gradual manner, HRD Minister Arjun Singh reportedly put his foot down. Singh insisted that not only the policy be implemented from the next academic year but also steps taken to ensure that all private unaided colleges be brought under the purview of the quota system. Five sub groups headed by noted academicians on management, technical education, Central universities, agriculture and medical institutes have been formed to help the Oversight Committee operationalise the OBC quota. And Moily hopes to present an interim report by the end of the month.

Advocate Siddhant Sharma LawRato