BENGALURU: With Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy CM DK Shivakumar agreeing to a fresh socio-economic Survey in the next 90 days, the State Government has a series of challenges to overcome.
The toughest among them is finding enumerators, who were school teachers earlier. Now schools have reopened, and the government would not be able to assign teachers for the task.
The Kantharaju Commission took around 50 days to complete the Survey with 1.8 lakh enumerators, out of which 1.3 lakh were school teachers.
The government may look at Asha workers / Anganwadi workers but that may not be a feasible option.“Asha workers and Anganwadi workers are part of essential services,’’ said a senior official on condition of anonymity.
Former Law and Education Minister Suresh Kumar said that school teachers were recently roped in for internal reservation survey among SC communities headed by Justice Nagmohan Das.
“Now, the schools have reopened. Government cannot outsource the survey as it is a question of accountability,” he said.
The former minister said the government had conducted the caste survey 10 years ago. Despite opposition from various community leaders, including its own party leaders, the CM wanted to go ahead with the survey.
“Now, just because the Congress high command insisted, they are keen on a resurvey. There will be no credibility left in the exercise,” he said.
Since the new proposed exercise is not a caste census as such, but to assess socio-economic and education status of people, there will be an exhaustive list of questions. The Kanatharaju Commission had a list of 55 questions.
Experts also point out that it cannot be done in two or three months. “Deputy CM is asking people to submit details online. The government says even people staying outside of Karnataka will be allowed to participate in the survey. The very purpose of a survey is to design and implement schemes based on the data, and if outsiders take part, it makes no sense,” he said.
A senior leader from the Congress admitted to TNIE that there are many challenges before the government to take it forward.
“Vokkaligas and Lingayats have raised objections to the numbers in the existing caste census report. We don’t know what they will decide in the cabinet though the CM and DCM are mooting a re-survey. If they take up new survey, the old survey will be null and void, which means government has spent Rs 165 crore on a survey which has no relevance,’’ he said.