"Thank god for Rajiv Gandhi"
Karan Thapar has written a hard hitting piece in the HT exposing the amateurish Mandal Commission report and how former PM Rajiv Gandhi ripped it apart.
Here are some excerpts
"This means no specialist, no sociologist was involved with this report apart from these eight days."
"the Commission carried out a survey in 810 villages out of India's then total of 5 lakh. That's 0.00162 per cent! And how were these villages chosen? As Rajiv Gandhi put it: 'They went on to arbitrarily select two villages and one urban block from each district.' "
" Many castes that are listed in (this) list are forward castes and are scheduled castes ... I know for a fact that Brahmins are included, Reddys are included, Vokkaligas are included, Kammas are included, Lingayats are included, Gounders are included, Chettiyars are included. Are these backward castes? Do they need the help? "
and Finally:
"The real blow that Rajiv struck was, ironically, when he quoted the Commission itself. This is the Commission's conclusion (para 11.27) about its own work: 'In the end, it may be emphasised that the survey has no pretensions to being a piece of academic research.'"
Phew! Ironical that his widow is presiding over what he fought against.
posted by ankan @ 5:29 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Thanks for the link Ankan,
BP Mandal asked for all the states to submit the list of backward communities, and just accepted that list. There is nothing to suggest that he questioned or otherwise evaluated the list submitted by the states, atleast not the southern ones.
Dude, his speech didnt make much difference then, so its not goin to make any difference now. See, its not a question of the correctness of the report/logic behind reservation - everyone (even the politicians) know its flawed, its a question of vote banks. Its like talking logic to a mud wall...it wont break, bang your head against it instead, that might help.
On a side note, our speculations on the quality of the Mandal report (the 25% over cup-o-coffee thing) was right after all :-) , literally!
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