Friday, May 14, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Caste-wise census a must over Dalit issue: HC

 

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/castewise-census-a-must-over-dalit-issue-hc/618325/

Caste-wise census a must over Dalit issue: HC

Agencies Posted online: Thu May 13 2010, 16:07 hrs
Chennai : Madras High Court on Thursday issued a fresh direction to
the Centre to conduct caste-wise census in the country.
Allowing a PIL by lawyer R Krishnamoorthy, a Division Bench yesterday
directed the Census Commissioner to take all steps to hold caste-wise
enumeration.

The bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Elipe Dharma Rao and Justice
T S Sivagnanam said the relief sought by the petitioner had already
been answered in the affirmative by the court in an earlier verdict on
a writ petition.

In its October 2009 judgement, the court had noted that after 1931
there had never been any caste-wise enumeration or tabulation.

"When there cannot be any dispute that there is an increase in the
population of Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward
Classes manifold after 1931, the percentage of reservation fixed on
the basis of population in 1931 has to be proportionately increased by
conducting caste-wise census," it had then held.

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[ZESTCaste] Court Expresses Concern Over Growing Misuse of SC/ST Act

http://www.indiajournal.com/pages/event.php?id=11045

Court Expresses Concern Over Growing Misuse of SC/ST Act

Date Submitted: Thu May 13, 2010

NEW DELHI - A Delhi court has expressed concern over rising incidents
of misuse of SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act to settle personal
scores and recommended that the final report in such cases be examined
at a higher level before it is filed.

The court's observations came while discharging nine members of a
family, including five women, from charges under the Act for allegedly
using abusive words against their tenants who belonged to the
Scheduled Caste category.

The court observed that the provisions of the Scheduled
Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, meant to
protect the lot of the exploited sections, should not be allowed to be
misused. (PTI)


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[ZESTCaste] Recasting 2011 census: Too little, too late

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/comments--analysis/Recasting-2011-census-Too-little-too-late/articleshow/5928854.cms

Recasting 2011 census: Too little, too late
14 May 2010, 0538 hrs IST,Sonalde Desai,


There must be something about being counted that produces a visceral
reaction in all societies. The US seems to routinely go through
last-minute
debates about counting immigrants and adjustment of undercount. The
storm around the inclusion of caste in the 2011 Indian census is
another example. However, it offers a unique opportunity for a public
debate around what we are counting and why.

If this were simply a debate about how many Indians consider
themselves belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC) and enumeration
of their basic characteristics, there is little reason for this storm
in the teacup. Judging by the Press reports, all the census is going
to do is collect self-reports of whether the respondents belong to
OBCs and along with education, marital status and housing
characteristics normally enumerated in the census, so one may be able
to compare characteristics of OBCs with those of the general
population.

Are any of the results likely to be surprising? Most studies based on
large surveys document two things: socio-economic conditions of OBCs
are worse than those of forward castes, although significantly better
than those of Dalits and adivasis ; and their incomes as well as human
development indicators are on par with all India averages.

This is not surprising since OBCs comprise a vast proportion of
India's population and their conditions determine all-India averages.
For example, NSS documents average monthly per-capita expenditure as
Rs 557 for OBCs in rural areas compared to Rs 558 for the general
population. A recently-published study by researchers from NCAER and
University of Maryland documents that 46% of India's 8-11 year-old
children cannot read a simple paragraph; among the OBCs, 44% cannot
read.

If OBCs are expected to look more or less like the average Indian, it
does not really matter whether their head count is large or small,
particularly given the measurement error due to self-reporting. At the
same time, the criticism of how incorporation of this one question is
going to ruin the whole census exercise also seems overblown.

It is inconvenient to have to add one more column at this late date
but I have great faith in the ingenuity of the office of the registrar
general. What we lose by this careless inclusion of caste in Census
2011 is an opportunity to debate the underlying nature of social
inequality in the country, and that is a grievous loss.

However, we do not help the most deprived by focusing on the average.
Sadly, this is precisely what successive commissions on OBCs have done
with the help of outdated data from the census of 1931 conducted by a
colonial administration.

How many people in the country today even know how any jati comes to
be termed OBC? The first OBC Commission of 1953, led by Kaka Kalelkar,
set the trend of using regionally-specific caste groupings to define
'depressed classes' This was further refined by the Mandal Commission
to come up with a set of criteria of social, educational and economic
backwardness that were used to classify various castes as being
backward or not.

If we truly want to identify the deprived groups, two aspects of this
exercise deserve re-examination: are the criteria consistent with the
Indian reality in the 21st century? And should these criteria be
applied consistently across the country or be different for different
states, as was the case with the Mandal Commission report?

The criteria used by the Mandal Commission overwhelmingly rely on
social characteristics since social backwardness receives three
points, compared to two points for educational backwardness and one
point for economic backwardness in its classification. Definition of
social backwardness includes high work participation by women and low
age at marriage, among others. This may well have been reasonable in
1980, but in a modern economy, women with college degrees are more
likely to be employed than women with primary education.

So, paradoxically, this criterion would place castes with higher
college education for women below those where women only complete
primary school. Similarly, the age at marriage criterion probably
accounts at least partially for the fact that about 32% of Haryana's
population is classified as OBC compared to 19% of Punjab's. The
second aspect of the Mandal Commission decision is even more
problematic. The commission quickly realised that given the geographic
diversity of the country and its overwhelming reliance on social
indicators, some states are likely to have many more OBCs than others.

In order to avoid this political quagmire, instead of using the same
cutoff for each state, they used different cutoffs so that the stigma
(and benefits) of backwardness were evenly distributed across the
country. However, although OBC counts may appear to be similar for
Bihar and Kerala, it is hard to argue today that these two states are
similar on other aspects of deprivation.

These examples suggest a need for serious and thoughtful evaluation of
backwardness with data that are consistent with 21st century
realities. If census is to carry out a serious caste enumeration to
update the 1931 data, it would take years of thought and planning to
figure out how to condense a list of thousands of jatis into some
manageable number and then to use it to elicit responses from the
population instead of merely checking the OBC box. This is simply not
feasible in 2010 when the population enumeration in February 2011 is
barely seven months away.

If the goal of public policy is to ensure that the vulnerable and
marginalised citizens of India receive special consideration, reliance
on OBC classification is like using an ax to remove a brain tumour .
However, if the current storm has generated a real political will to
fashion a scalpel for the tumour, then we should be looking at setting
up expert groups for a complete enumeration of jatis in 2021 and their
reclassification to identify the truly marginalised backward classes.
Is our polity brave enough to attempt this?

(The author is a senior fellow at NCAER and a professor of sociology
at University of Maryland. Views are personal.)


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[ZESTCaste] Medha Patkar opposes Mumbai slum demolition

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Mumbai/Medha-Patkar-opposes-Mumbai-slum-demolition/articleshow/5930964.cms

Medha Patkar opposes Mumbai slum demolition

IANS, May 14, 2010, 04.59pm IST

MUMBAI: Social activist Medha Patkar on Friday tried to stop the
razing of hutments at Anna Bhau Sathe Nagar here, demanding that the
slum dwellers be first provided alternative accommodation.

Patkar and her supporters dubbed the demolition as anti-Dalit and
vowed to stop it.

"They (Dalits) are the backbone of this city. Their rights should not
be taken away just because they are poor," she said.

She said about 10,000 residents of the area in Mumbai's northeast
suburb had nowhere to go.

More than 1,000 of the nearly 3,000 hutments were razed in the drive
that began on Thursday by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)
and the collector's office.

Patkar said around 40 women were detained by police when they
protested against the demolition.

But the BMC is determined to raze the slum. "This land belongs to the
collectorate and has been encroached upon," said Dhananjay Sawarkar,
the additional suburban collector.

Social activist Simpreet Singh alleged that the authorities did not
issue the mandatory 24-hour eviction notice to residents before
demolishing the hutments. Sawarkar denied this.

The slum houses workers mainly from the unorganised sector.

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