Statistics Don't Lie: The truth behind OBC numbers

Around 36 per cent of the country's population is defined as belonging to the Other Backward Classes according to the National Sample Survey's 1999-2000 rounds, and not 52 per cent as defined by the Mandal Commission, a number that most politicians still use while asking for reservation.

If you exclude Muslim OBCs, the proportion falls to 32 per cent according to the NSS, 1999-2000. Indeed, Yogendra Yadav, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Studies, agrees that there is no empirical basis to the Mandal figure: "It is a mythical construct based on reducing the number of SC/ST, Muslims and others and then arriving at a number."

The NSS data is also corroborated by the National Family Health Statistics, a survey conducted in 1998 by the DHS, which has conducted 200 such surveys in 75 countries.

The NFHS data show that the proportion of non-Muslim OBCs is 29.8 per cent, a figure quite close to the NSS' 32.1 per cent. For SC/ST, while the NSS shows this is 28.3 per cent of the population, the NFHS estimates this at 27.9 per cent. The 2001 Census estimated the SC/ST population at 24.4 per cent, though the Census did not canvass any information on OBCs.

Number of OBCs:
In 1953, the Kaka Kalelkar commission found 2399 castes and communities to be backward
In 1989, the Mandal Commission found that the number had increased to 3743
In 2005, the number was found to be 4418

Till now, NOT A SINGLE CASTE HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE OBC LIST
(Source: National Commission of Backward Classes – NCBC site, and Hindustan Times article on Sunday 28 ^th May, 2006)

A study done by the IITs themselves shows that 50 per cent of the IIT seats for the SCs and STs remain vacant. And for those who get admitted, 25 per cent were forced to quit, as they could not complete a four-year course even in six years.

Report of the Parliamentary Committee on the welfare for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (a Parliamentary body)
It says, that looking at the Delhi University, between 1995 and 2000, just half the seats for under-graduates at the Scheduled Castes level and just one-third of the seats for under-graduates at the Scheduled Tribes level were filled. All the others went empty, unfilled.

The Hindustan Times
Overall in India, only 16 per cent of the places in higher education are occupied by SCs and STs. The quota is 22.5 per cent, which means that only two-thirds of the quota is occupied. One-third is going waste; it is being denied to other people

National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO)
23.5 per cent of all university seats are already with the OBCs. The government is thinking of introducing a 27% quota. In other words, it will be spending Rs. 8000 crores to increase OBC representation by 3.5%!

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's views on reservations:
Jawaharlal Nehru, on the 27th of June 1961, wrote to the Chief Ministers of the day as follows: I dislike any kind of reservations. If we go in for any kind of reservations on communal and caste basis, we will swamp the bright and able people and remain second-rate or third-rate. The moment we encourage the second-rate, we are lost. And then he adds pointedly: This way lies not only folly, but also disaster.

SS Gill (secretary, Mandal Commission) writes:
During its discussions the Commission was fully aware that reservations were only a palliative, and 27 per cent reservation in educational institutions and government jobs was only one of several recommendations. Briefly, the other important recommendations were: the radical alteration in production relations through progressive land reforms; special educational facilities to upgrade the cultural environment of the students, with special emphasis on vocational training; separate coaching facilities for students aspiring to enter technical and professional institutions; creation of adequate facilities for improving the skills of village artisans; subsidised loans for setting up small-scale industries; the setting up of a separate chain of financial and technical bodies to assist OBC entrepreneurs.

None of these measures were even casually examined by the government, and then Prime Minister V.P. Singh adopted the facile and populist route of issuing a one-para order conferring the boon of 27 per cent reservation on OBCs. To this day no serious effort has been made to lay the foundations of structures to enable the deprived classes which will compete with the non-reserved categories on an equal footing.