BENGALURU: Implementing the Socio-economic & Educational Survey (SES-2015) anytime soon would be a daunting task due to the complexities involved, after the report — commonly referred to as ‘Caste Census’ — took almost a decade to see the light of day.
Although Thursday’s cabinet meeting remained inconclusive, and the issue is scheduled to be taken up again on May 2, Law & Parliamentary Affairs Minister HK Patil said certain technical details pertaining to doubts expressed by many at the meeting over parameters used in the survey were being sought by the ministers, and these were expected to be furnished by the officials.
PWD Minister Satish Jarkiholi himself has been skeptical about its implementation. Interestingly, he has also raised issues of certain communities being allegedly under-counted, and has suggested that the Karnataka State Backward Classes Commission, which conducted the survey, was accountable for it.
Speaking to reporters here on Friday, he said if the issues were not addressed properly, it could backfire like it did when Chief Minister Siddaramaiah floated the proposal for a separate religion status for the Lingayats during his previous tenure as CM.
“It is not one or two communities; hundreds of them were panicking. If they are not placated, it will certainly become a problem. The government should be compromising in nature as the implementation cannot be done all of a sudden. It took 10 years to submit the report to the government, two years to bring it to the cabinet, and it may take another year to come to a conclusion,” he said, adding that the priority should be to confront the communities’ feelings that their populations were under-counted.
Meanwhile, some experts have raised concerns about restructuring the quota, especially shifting the Kuruba community from category-2A to category-1B, as it is the most backward. The ethnographic study and the secondary source of information to gauge the backwardness of the commission was missing, they alleged.
Whether the commission has taken information about the communities, especially the Kuruba community, that enjoyed maximum benefits under category-2A quota for over decades, is the question.
Former chairman of the state backward classes commission, K Jayaprakash Hegde, while speaking to The New Indian Express, defended the SES-2015, saying that it was based on data and experts’ study report on social, economical and educational backwardness that the quota of backward classes was restructured, and added that ethnographic study was not required.
“If a CM who belonged to the Kuruba community had influenced the recommendations in favour of the community, it would defeat the very purpose of providing social justice to other Backward Classes,” a Congress leader from a backward caste alleged.