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Caste and social structure - I
By Satish Deshpande
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The National Sample Survey Organisation has collected data that allow rational debate on a question that has generally been prejudged by both sides: whether and to what extent, the OBCs are really `backward'
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AS A social group, the Indian intelligentsia has always been embarrassed by caste. This embarrassment runs much deeper than any uneasiness about unearned privilege that an overwhelmingly upper-caste group might be expected to feel. For, though it is similarly privileged in class terms - hardly can any of its members claim to be poor - the intelligentsia is not in the least embarrassed by poverty. Thus, rational discussion and debate on poverty has not only been legitimate, it has been almost an obsession. In sharp contrast, the thinking classes preferred not to discuss caste inequality, and were curiously defensive when forced to deal with it. With rare exceptions, intellectuals in Nehruvian India firmly believed that Gandhi, Ambedkar, and the Constitution had effected a permanent settlement of the caste question.
This powerful consensus was built on the liberal upper-caste belief that, as a shameful relic of our past, caste needed to be erased from our present. The need to atone for past inequities was reluctantly accepted, but the dominant classes were determined to confine this distressing deviation from the (Western) ideal of equal individual citizenship within the lakshman rekha of the two Schedules created by the British in 1935 and included verbatim in our Constitution. Beyond this boundary, caste was taboo. As a result, the secular state refused to collect data on caste (except for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes), although it continued to do so for religion and language. Indeed, this refusal was not seen as a refusal but as the self-evident sequel to the legal abolition of caste. The innocent optimism of the post-Independence years obscured the fact that only the upper castes could afford the desire to forget about caste: for the overwhelming majority, memories and experiences of caste subordination became a potent source of social identity and political mobilisation.
When this Nehruvian naivete was finally shattered by the Mandal conflict of 1990-91, acrimonious debates on the status of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) broke out, but they were conducted in a data vacuum.Most social scientists (including sociologists, who ought to have known better) were not only deriding the methodology of existing data sources (such as the Mandal Commission report) without offering alternatives, but were also opposing other proposals for the collection of caste data (as mooted before the 2001 Census).
Given this rather eventful background, the National Sample Survey Organisation is to be congratulated for having made a landmark contribution to the cause of social analysis by producing, for the first time in independent India, detailed nationwide data on the OBCs. Until now, data on this scale have only been available for the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes, or by religion. This has meant that the vast majority of the population has remained opaque to analysis, being lumped together as ``Others'' (i.e., neither Scheduled Tribes nor Scheduled Castes) when caste data is presented, or as ``Hindus'' when religion is the criterion. The recently published data - in NSSO Report no. 469, employment and unemployment situation among social groups in India 1999-2000, based on the 55th Round survey - provide a more disaggregated picture of the social structure in contemporary India.
This report suggests that the OBCs form about 37 per cent of the rural, and about 31 per cent of the urban population. Like other caste and community data in the NSSO, the OBC data are also self-reported, i.e., it is based solely on the response of the head of the household surveyed without reference to any official criteria. These are very plausible numbers, but since the NSSO estimates of the Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes have generally been 2-3 per cent higher than those made in the Census, it is probable there is a small upward bias here as well. They should also prompt some rethinking from those who assured us (before the 2001 Census) that collecting caste data on a large scale was impossible, and if attempted would lead to widespread unrest and yield unusable data.
However, the main significance of the 55th Round data is that they allow rational debate on a question that has generally been prejudged by both the sides: whether, and to what extent, are the OBCs really ``backward''. Neither proponents nor opponents have bothered with evidence.
The monthly percapita consumption expenditure (MPCE) data from the 55th Round allow us to do this. They provide an overview of the internal class structure of all the major caste groups: Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, OBCs and the problematic residual category of ``Others'', which clubs Hindu ``forward'' castes with non-Hindus. This data shows that: (a) the OBCs are generally positioned between the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and the ``Others''; but (b) they seem to resemble the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes more than the ``Others''; although (c) this resemblance is much closer in urban than in rural India, and at the upper end of the class spectrum than at the lower end.
In rural India, 34 per cent of the OBCs fall below the poverty line compared to 51 per cent of Scheduled Tribes and 43 per cent of Scheduled Castes but only 24 per cent of ``Others''. This places them in the middle of the gap separating the Scheduled Castes from the ``Others''. However, only 6 per cent of the OBCs are in the top two MPCE classes in rural India, a figure much closer to the 3 per cent for both the Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes than to the 12 per cent for the ``Others''. In urban India, the resemblance of the OBCs to the STs and SCs is more pronounced, and it holds at both ends of the class spectrum. Roughly 43 per cent of both Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are below the urban poverty line compared to 36 per cent of the OBCs and only 21 per cent of the ``Others''. At the other end, 6 per cent of the Scheduled Tribes, 2 per cent of the Scheduled Castes, and less than 4 per cent of the OBCs are to be found in the top two urban MPCE classes compared to 12 per cent of the ``Others''.
The land ownership data in the 55th Round survey paint a broadly similar picture. The OBCs are ahead of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes but lag behind the ``Others'', and this lag increases with holding size. Seven per cent of the ``Others'' are found in the largest size-class (above 4 hectares) compared to 4 per cent of OBCs, 3 per cent of Scheduled Tribes and 1 per cent of Scheduled Castes. The same is true of education: 37 per cent of rural male OBCs are illiterate compared to 48 per cent of Scheduled Castes, 52 per cent of Scheduled Tribes but only 24 per cent of the ``Others''; and among urban males, 23 per cent of the ``Others'' have graduate or higher degrees compared to 9 per cent of OBCs, 6 per cent of Scheduled Castes, and interestingly, 11 per cent of Scheduled Tribes.
Such broad-brush comparisons are, of course, subject to many caveats. The most crucial of these concern the hold-all category, ``Others'', which understates inter-group inequality by mixing up the most privileged groups - the upper castes among Christians, Sikhs and especially Hindus - with underprivileged groups such as the Muslims.
(The writer is Reader, Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi.)
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