The Supreme Court verdict on 27% OBC Reservations saw predictable responses with the Congress and JD-S in Karnataka attempting to claim credit.
First you had Veerappa Moily, Chairman of the Oversight Committee for implementation of 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in Central educational institutions and a bunch of OBC activists from Karnataka hailing it is a victory for Social Justice.
Then you had Deve Gowda claiming credit for a letter he wrote and past quota measures that he introduced as Chief Minister.
 So what is the reality of backwardness in Karnataka. The 2002 Census of all Rural Households has data that is very revealing.
If you consider Literacy rates by Social Group there are more illiterate households (forward castes or other religions) than either OBC, SC or ST. Now to better appreciate this statistic consider this. Of a total of 67 Lakh households surveyed 28.8 lakh were in the General category while 21.1 Lakh in the OBC category. Of the 21.1 lakh OBC families nearly 90% were either illiterate or educationally backward (dropped out after Class X). In the case of general category the number is 86%.
So here you have the so-called “Other Backward Category” and the so-called “Forward” Category with a nearly identical degree of educational backwardness in terms of illiteracy or drop-out rates across Rural Karnataka.
Consider this as well. If 1.63% of the OBC families were college educated or higher only 1.93% of the forward families were college educated or higher. So again in terms of the extent of “forwardness” there is no real difference across Rural Karnataka.
This statistic alone should be sufficient to blow away any attempt in Karnataka by either the Congress or the JD-S to tom-tom the present 27% reservation for OBCs or the 1995 quota measures passed by Deve Gowda.
 It can thus be said safely on the basis of the above that Educational Backwardness in rural Karnataka is endemic and is pretty much caste neutral.
It can also be said on the basis of the preference of assistance expressed by different social groups based on their literacy status that “Reservations” are not the answer to their problems. This preference for “Self Employment” is caste neutral with every social group consistently preferring opportunities over entitlements.
Offstumped bottomline: The Census data is screaming aloud across social groups and irrespective of literacy status that a majority of the rural households want “Self Employment”. They want opportunities not entitlements. The Congress in its manifesto is clearly not listening. Is the BJP at least paying attention ?
—–Offstumped is written by Yossarin from the Indian National Interest
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1 user commented in " Karnataka Polls – Fallacy of OBC Reservations "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThe verdict has clearly mentioned the exclusion of creamy layer from the ambit of the reservation. This is remarkable because, the government was never ever ready to exclude them, I guess the reservations were mainly intended for them else, they could have given up to this demand them self. It is so because the well off among the backwards become like the upper class and avail of the benefits of reservation to the disadvantage of the most back ward segment of the OBC, which actually deserved the fruits of reservation policy.
But, now there is problem as who will decide the creamy layer. If the government is given the power then it won’t be good because government then can do some silly things again. In Maharashtra, the limit for Creamy layer is an annual salary of four lakh rupees per annum (which is quite much because before the pay commission report that was not the annual salary of high rank IAS and government officials). The other good thing is that the children of former and current MPs and MLAs have been excluded as well. This decision makes a sense as well because if you have all facilities, which are entitled to a MLA or MP, then there is no need for the reservations. The petitioners also say that the revision of OBC quota should not be done by the government, but an independent body if we really want to get rid of this reservation.
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