Shortly after reports emerged last week of Infosys founder and billionaire N R Narayana Murthy and his wife Sudha Murty, a Rajya Sabha MP, opting out of the ongoing Karnataka caste survey, the state’s Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah, put out a social media post on his participation in the exercise.
“This survey is not limited to any one caste; it is a scientific effort to shed light on the lives of every individual in the state. Providing information in the survey will definitely not lead to the misuse of your personal information. Set aside your concerns and confidently share your information with the staff,” Siddaramaiah wrote in the post on October 16.
Taking a dig at the Murthys, he later said, “Are the Infosys people Brihaspatis (Gods)? Do upper caste people not avail government schemes like the Shakti (free bus travel for women) and Gruhalakshmi (income of Rs 2,000 per woman head of a family). They have wrong notions about the caste survey. Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty assuming that it is a backward classes survey is wrong.”
The Murthys’ decision to refrain from participating in the Karnataka Socio Economic and Educational Survey of Castes — legally valid on account of the High Court making participation in the survey a voluntary exercise in its September 25 order — and the poor survey coverage in Bengaluru have been a source of frustration for the Congress government. ”Other than Bengaluru, no other region in the state has lagged in participation in the survey,” Siddaramiah recently lamented.
As of October 18, just before the survey was extended till October 31, only 41% of urban Bengaluru had been covered, according to government figures, compared to 75-96% in the other 30 state districts.
While caste identity is a reality of existence in rural Karnataka, it is not a self-evident factor in the everyday life of people in a metropolitan city such as Bengaluru, where caste realities remain hidden from plain sight during the pursuit of meritocracy.
With the Supreme Court on multiple occasions questioning the validity of reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the absence of empirical data to establish the socio-economic and educational backwardness of communities, surveys are considered a vital tool for empirical data.
Story continues below this ad
In 2010, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court emphasised in Dr K Krishnamurthy vs Union of India the need for OBC quota in elections to be backed by empirical data. The court ruled that “identification of ‘backward classes’ under Article 243-D(6) and Article 243-T(6) should be distinct from the identification of SEBCs (Socially and Economically Backward Castes) for the purpose of Article 15(4) and that of backward classes for the purpose of Article 16(4)”.
“In the absence of updated empirical data, it is well nigh impossible for the courts to decide whether the reservations in favor of OBC groups are proportionate or not,” the order said.
Placing a 50% cap on reservation, the apex court suggested in the Indra Sawhney case in 1992 that permanent backward class commissions be set up in states and indicated that data on communities could be collected for decision-making.
“Neither the Constitution nor the law prescribes the procedure or method of identification of backward classes. Nor is it possible or advisable for the Court to lay down any such procedure or method. It must be left to the authority appointed to identify. It can adopt such a method or procedure as it thinks convenient, and so long as its survey covers the entire populace, no objection can be taken to it,” read the order in the Indra Sawhney case.
Story continues below this ad
The current survey in Karnataka, which began on September 22, was challenged in the High Court by the Akhila Karnataka Brahmana Mahasabha on the ground that it was a form of Census and that the power to conduct a Census vests only with the Union government. A Division Bench on September 25 upheld the state government’s power to conduct the survey, but ruled that participation was voluntary.
Soon afterwards, the Opposition BJP, including Union Minister Pralhad Joshi and Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya, called on upper-caste communities to boycott the survey.
“Through this survey, our government will understand not only the conditions of Dalits, backward classes, and minority communities, but also those of the poor and deprived sections within the forward castes too,” Siddaramaiah, who is considered the foremost OBC leader in the state, clarified following the BJP leaders’ boycott call.
“In Bihar, their own alliance government has carried out a caste-based social, economic, and educational survey. A similar exercise was conducted in Telangana as well, and the BJP leaders there did not utter a word of opposition. More significantly, the BJP-led government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has itself initiated a caste census,” the CM said before appealing to people to ignore “politically motivated and misleading statements” and participate in the survey.
Story continues below this ad
On September 29, Congress MLC and spokesperson Ramesh Babu wrote a letter to BJP national president J P Nadda, asking him to clarify the BJP’s stand on the caste survey in the wake of his party colleagues’ boycott calls. Joshi and Surya’s remarks, he added, “give rise to serious doubts about the BJP’s commitment towards OBC communities” and “weaken the cause of reservation”.
Opposition not new
Over the years, Karnataka caste survey data have been opposed by the dominant castes such as Lingayats, Vokkaligas, Brahmins, and even sections of the backward castes. The current survey is being undertaken after a 2015 exercise, carried out when Siddaramaiah was CM in his first tenure, was rejected at the instance of the Congress high command.
The 2015 survey, like each of the previous caste surveys conducted in the state since 1918, was opposed by the dominant castes on the grounds of faulty enumeration or over recommendations that they are not socially, economically, and educationally backward. Senior Congress leaders such as Deputy CM D K Shivakumar, who is a Vokkaliga, and Lingayat faces such as M B Patil opposed the 2015 exercise.
“The opposition to caste surveys is not new. It has been done since the 1960s with the Naganagouda Commission, the Havanur Commission, the Venkataswamy Commission, and the O Chinnappa Reddy Commission. Every survey has been opposed by the dominant communities,” senior Congress leader B K Hariprasad, who is from the OBC Billava community, said after the 2015 survey was scrapped in June.
Story continues below this ad
The successful completion of the ongoing exercise is considered crucial for Siddaramaiah as he is looking to secure his legacy as a leader of the backward communities. “Even decades after independence, inequality persists. To make our democracy stronger, we must eliminate these disparities. This survey will provide the data needed to design effective welfare programs for everyone,” Siddaramaiah said last month before the survey began.