Friday, November 03, 2006

The "FC" votebank ?!

Disclaimers
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1) I believe that "caste" is a British imposed system on India and has hardly anything to with a "guna-karma" based (B.G 4:13) varna system

2) I so very wish that the politicians of India had not made hinduism mincemeat based on castes

3) As much as possible, I would like to see myself.. as a caste-less Hindu.. by varna, a Kshatriya
(Frawleys "Baudhika-Kshatriya")

4) Technically I belong to an OBC comunity and am an "OBC against OBC reservation" , notwithstanding a possible criticism of "Oh why would he need it ?" , and difference of view from folks like nizhal-yodha, whom I otherwise tend to agree with on many issues

5) I do not fully agree with the methodology adopted by the latest NSSO survey .. but would also assume that the Mandal commissions 52% OBC figure is exaggerated

But still
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1) lets play the number game.... assuming the NSSO survey is right


And so whats the point ?
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Apparently for every 100 Indian

SC - 20
ST - 8
Hindu OBC - 30
Hindu "FC" - 25
Muslim etc OBC - 11
Muslim non OBC - 3
Christian/Others - 3

Do I see the so called "FC" at a 25% , second highest in the list ?! Am I missing something ?!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would like to bring to your attention that many in the 20% SCs are now practcing Christians (eventhough on paper they remain SC to get benefits). Also, as per Indian constituition, STs can be Christian, Muslim etc . So the total figure of 3% Christians is much underrepresented

Anonymous said...

As per this, does it mean that OBC reservation essentially implies reservation for almost all Muslims ?

lost in thoughts said...

Just curious. Where are the figures from (20% SC etc) ?

Arun,

I dont really agree with the first point @ British. have written more on my blog.

drisyadrisya said...

To Raju and Anon

Both of you have raised interesting points... but my emphasis was on the FC votebank part

LS:

The 20% figure is from the recent NSSO survey... I looked up some media reports of the survey .. for example

http://www.dailypioneer.com/displayit1.asp?pathit=/archives2/nov306/front_page/story2.txt

There is very little variation between the NSSO estimation of ST population of 8.4 per cent and the Census 2001 projection. There is a variation of around three per cent in the population of SC from 16.23 per cent in the Census 2001 to 19.7 per cent in the NSSO survey for the year 2004-05.

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As for caste funda, I think I will answer them on your blog :-)