Tamil Nadu's Hidden apartheid

A recent survey carried out by the TNUEF brings to light details of the discrimination Dalits in Madurai have faced for generations

(S. DORAIRAJ : in Madurai - Frontline Magazine)



The homes of sanitary workers at Gomespalayam.
In all these slums, the narrow, overcrowded lanes
between houses are used by the residents as bathrooms and storerooms.

OVER seven decades have rolled by since the freedom fighter A. Vaidhyanatha Iyer successfully led Dalits into the Meenakshi temple in Madurai, overcoming all the impediments posed by the casteist forces that were hell-bent on thwarting the historic event. But the stark reality is that “hidden apartheid” against Dalits continues in different areas of this famous temple city, not to speak of the prevalence of untouchability in several villages in Madurai district.

An extensive survey of 21 Dalit habitations by activists of the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF) has brought to light the discrimination that Dalits living in the city have faced for generations. The findings explode the myth that discrimination is experienced by Dalits only in isolated villages and that the evil practice is on the wane. But the political parties except those of the Left by and large maintain a stoic silence on the issue.

Releasing the report of the study on December 18, 2009, P. Sampath, State convener of the TNUEF, said Dalits in Madurai city were haunted by problems such as poor health and unhygienic living conditions. They also lacked proper housing, a proper environment for education, employment opportunities, financial assistance for self-employment and social mobility, and faced delays in the disbursement of welfare assistance, including old-age pension, he said. Non-issuance of pattas for those who have been residing in the city for more than three decades is another issue highlighted by the organisation. The plight of sanitary workers, those working in cremation grounds, and cobblers who belong to the Arunthathiar community has also been brought to light.

Interactions with a cross section of Dalits, trade union functionaries, activists of non-governmental organisations, and experts on various related areas confirmed the veracity of many of the findings. The most pressing problem faced by Dalits is residential segregation. It may be a rude shock to the city’s many visitors that Dalits, who form a little less than 10 per cent of its population of over 1.1 million, by and large live in segregated colonies. These habitations, which come under 19 major slum clusters, including Aruldosspuram, Sellur, Munichilai, Thideer Nagar, Sathamangalam, Anuppanadi and Villapuram, are spread over many of the city’s 72 wards, including the ones represented by the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor.

There is ample evidence to show that Dalits are not recent settlers. The location of the major Dalit habitations just outside the four gateways – Melavaasal, Keezhavaasal, Therkuvaasal and Vadakkuvaasal – clearly indicates that during the Nayak period (the 16th and 17th centuries) itself they lived on the outskirts of the town, a senior archaeologist told Frontline. These areas are now prime locations in the city, thanks to its expansion. According to him, the Arunthathiars who speak Telugu might have come as part of the entourage of Viswanatha Nayak in the 16th century A.D. and settled on the outskirts of the town as the fort, moat and gateways were developed during this period. Old revenue records also speak of “Pallar Mayanam” (burial ground of Pallars), which existed near Palanganatham, he pointed out.

A sizable number of slum-dwellers are sanitary workers who belong to the Arunthathiar community, which is at the bottom of the caste hierarchy. Others are daily-wage earners such as manual workers, ragpickers, hawkers, load men and rickshaw pullers.

Even in slums that have mixed populations, the dwelling units of Dalits are confined to clearly demarcated streets. A classic example is the slum at Thathaneri, where streets have been named after the sub-sects of the Scheduled Castes. Even in official records such as family cards issued by the Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection Department, a street where Dalits reside has been referred to as “Pallar Street” though it was officially renamed long ago. Some public distribution outlets have been named “Harijan cooperative fair price shops” as mentioned in the family cards.

“There is a point in Dalits preferring to live in habitations where their neighbours are from the same community. They still feel insecure if they move out of these habitations. This tendency only shows that urbanisation has not helped them shed the feeling of insecurity. Urbanisation is not a panacea for the problems of socially and economically deprived sections,” said B.S. Chandrababu, general secretary of the South Indian History Congress. He feels that the Left and progressive forces should spearhead the campaign to end all forms of discrimination against Dalits.

Dogged by problems such as poor water supply and sanitation facilities, high population density and poor infrastructure, Dalits have to coexist with pigs and stray dogs in most of these crowded slums. These habitations fit in with the definition of slums under Section 3 of the Tamil Nadu Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act, 1971. They are “(i) in any respect unfit for human habitation” and are “(ii) by reason of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangement and design of such buildings, narrowness or faulty arrangement of streets, lack of ventilation, light or sanitation facilities, or any combination of these factors, detrimental to safety, health or morals….” Almost all the houses in these slums are arranged in narrow lanes and each has a single room with a built area of 10 × 10 feet or less. It may sound odd but is, nevertheless, true that each accommodates around 10 people as Dalits, particularly Arunthathiars, have been forced to adopt the joint family system owing to lack of space in their habitations.

Although slum-dwellers who belong to communities other than the Scheduled Castes also suffer owing to a lack of civic amenities, they at least enjoy a social status and do not have to worry about the caste stigma if they shift to better residential areas. But in the case of Dalits, seeking alternative accommodation outside these ghettos is not simple as non-Dalits are reluctant to sell or rent their houses to them, said M. Thangaraj, convener of the district unit of the TNUEF. Even as exorbitant real estate costs deny Dalits access to decent housing, their plots do not fetch the same market price as those of non-Dalits in adjacent areas, according to K. Swaminathan, general secretary of the south zone unit of the All India Insurance Employees’ Association.

Residents of Heera nagar, close to Kiruthamal Nadhi,live with the unbearable stench of sewage and garbage.

R. Rajagopal, joint convener of the district TNUEF and general secretary of the Madurai Municipal Corporation Sanitary Workers’ Union, stressed the need for issuance of house site pattas to Dalits at Manjalmedu, Mela Ponnagaram, Mini Colony, Subramaniapuram, Keezh Madurai, Anuppanadi, Karumbalai, Virattipathu and Arasaradi.

Take, for instance, the Karumbalai slum, which has three subunits: S.M. Colony, P.T. Colony and Indira Nagar. The slum has as many as 2,000 households. A vast majority of them have not received house site pattas though they have been there for more than 30 years. “Though an underground drainage pipeline has been laid here, because of the non-provision of connections to individual houses there has not been any improvement in the sewer system,” said A. Pandi, a resident of S.M. Colony. M. Pandiammal resides in P.T. Colony with her husband and four grown-up children. Cooking ragi outside her house near an open sewer, she said: “We don’t have space for cooking or keeping our things. We ask our children to sleep outside the house. The Slum Clearance Board authorities have not issued pattas on the grounds of non-clearance of dues.” In all these slums, the narrow, overcrowded lanes between the rows of houses are used by the residents as bathrooms and storerooms. “The open drain running around the slum breeds mosquitoes. Congestion and lack of air and light also add to our woes. During the monsoon, the situation becomes worse as the whole area is inundated and sewage mixes with drinking water,” said M. Kaliammal, a resident of S.M. Colony.

The situation in Gomespalayam, which is in the ward represented by the Deputy Mayor, is in no way different from that of the other slums. M. Leela, wife of a Corporation sanitary worker, said that her family, which included four children and six grandchildren, lived in an 8 × 10 feet room. Bathrooms constructed by the Corporation in the slum have been abandoned because there is no water supply to them. Drinking water is supplied to the area only from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. As the open sewer in the slum gets clogged with silt every now and then, residents remove the silt using iron buckets.

The residents are sceptical of the Corporation authorities’ proposed plan to shift them to another place so that tenements can be constructed by the Slum Clearance Board. They do not want the confusion that prevailed during the allotment of 240 newly constructed tenements at Thideer Nagar to happen in their case also. They described the travails of the displaced people of Thideer Nagar who were provided temporary shelters at Villapuram.

The conditions at Heera Nagar close to Kiruthamal Nadhi, a huge drainage canal in the Melavaasal area, are appalling. The residents have no option but to tolerate the stench of sewage and the garbage dumped on either side of the canal. The authorities have not yet taken up work on the project to build a wall along the canal to prevent flooding, Thangaraj pointed out. The slum at Subramaniapuram, which is part of the ward that elected the Mayor, is also in bad shape. Around 450 households in the slum wait for house site pattas. Over 1,500 people reside in Madurai Municipal Corporation Colony, which has only 90 houses constructed in a small area for sanitary workers of the civic body.

Open drains and heaps of rotting waste make life miserable for the residents of the Thandalkaranpatti slum. “In our area, mosquito repellents don’t work,” said M. Sumathi, who belongs to the Arunthathiar community.

Referring to reports that Tamil Nadu ranks first in urbanisation among the 15 major States in the country, experts point out that unchecked and rapid urbanisation has presented the civic administration with the formidable challenge of having to tackle issues such as pollution and the growing demand for resources and space. Slum-dwellers in general and Dalits in particular bear the brunt of the onslaught of urbanisation in Madurai. In a city where 450 tonnes of garbage is generated every day, the absence of an effective primary collection mechanism, the inadequacy of dumping yards and the lack of scientific disposal methods have added to the woes of these people.

Another major problem encountered by Dalits is the inadequate number of community toilets in the slums as none of their houses has individual toilets. There are around 480 toilets including 220 “pay and use” toilets. Almost half of them are defunct owing to poor maintenance. Many of the free toilets have been made deliberately non-functional by the contractors who were collecting fees for use of the pay and use toilets, activists of the TNUEF said.

The number of toilets built by the Corporation is far lower than the number required. Open-air defecation, particularly by children, is a common feature in the slums as daily-wage earners and sanitary workers have to spend around 25 per cent of their earnings just to use the toilet complexes. A fee of Rs.3 has been fixed for using latrines, and bathing at least once a day entails payment of another Rs.3, said G. Jeyaraj, founder of the Annai Teresa Rural Development Trust (ATRDT). For a family of five with a single breadwinner, this will work out to Rs.30 a day, whereas the real monthly income is Rs.3,000-4,000.

The Corporation should have appointed a minimum of 4,400 sanitary workers to satisfy the accepted norm of one sanitary worker for every 400 people in a city, said Rajagopal. Reluctance on the part of the authorities to increase the workforce has resulted in Arunthathiars performing the job of scavengers at hotels, hospitals and other private establishments for meagre wages. In certain areas, they have been asked to skin carcasses. In some areas, they have to do manual scavenging too, said N.P. Ramesh Kannan, an activist of the TNUEF. Though non-Dalits are recruited for the post of sanitary workers, they are given other jobs such as office assistants, Rajagopal alleged. At some tea stalls, sanitary workers are served tea in disposable plastic cups, he said.

According to Rajagopal, several of the preconditions laid down by the Tamil Nadu Adi Dravidar Housing & Development Corporation for the provision of loans and financial assistance to Dalits have facilitated the entry of middlemen. They have also paved the way for these deprived sections to walk into the debt trap set by private moneylenders, who charge exorbitant interest, he said. In the event of non-repayment of loans, women suffer insults and humiliation at the hands of these moneylenders. He also called for proper monitoring of the schemes being implemented to improve the welfare of Dalits and to improve the infrastructure in their habitations.

The unhygienic environment in the slums often results in health problems. Official sources admitted that against the sanctioned strength of 2,700 sanitary workers, only 1,847 were working and that the Corporation attempted to manage the situation by appointing 115 contract labourers and 681 workers on daily wages. Even for its regular sanitary workers, the Corporation has constructed only 200 one-room houses. The Corporation caters to the health needs of slum-dwellers through its 17 urban health posts and 17 maternity dispensaries, besides conducting health camps periodically, the sources claimed.

Education is another grey area. The dropout rate among Dalit schoolchildren is high. This is more so in the case of Arunthathiar children owing to the daily routine of their parents. A study conducted recently by the ATRDT found that 96 per cent of Arunthathiar children were admitted to Standard I in Corporation schools. However, the number dwindled to 60 per cent in Standard V and 45 per cent in Standard VIII. Around 20 per cent did not go beyond Standard X. Only a small percentage of children from this community proceeded further, finished Standard XII and joined colleges. The sudden death of the breadwinners of families also contributed to students abruptly discontinuing their studies as in the case of Ramar of Subramaniapuram, who chose to help his mother, a conservancy worker, after his father’s demise.

Highlighting the problems faced by the wards of Dalits, S.K. Ponnuthai, joint convener of the district unit of the TNUEF and secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association’s Madurai district unit, said that sanitary workers had little time to spare to take care of their children’s education as their daily routine involved leaving the home before 5 a.m. “That is why we demand the introduction of a shift system for sanitary workers. This will ensure that at least one parent is at home to help the children leave for school on time,” she said.

Even those children who score good marks in Plus Two find it difficult to enter the portals of higher education institutions, particularly those in the private sector, because of the huge fees levied by them. M. Murugan of Thandalkaranpatti holds diplomas in catering technology and electronics. Though he registered his name at the employment exchange 10 years ago, he is still waiting for a call letter. He ekes out a living by running a roadside eatery.

D. Alagammal, daughter of sanitary worker Valli of Karumbalai, recalled with gratitude the exemplary role played by her mother in enabling her to become a graduate against all odds. Having completed her BEd course a couple of years ago, she is waiting for the call letter to fulfil her dream of becoming a schoolteacher. P. Karthik of Subramaniapuram Colony, who has just completed his BA, aspires to become a lawyer. Candidates like them have to grope in the dark in the absence of proper counselling.

The TNUEF has decided to launch a sustained campaign to highlight the problems of the Dalits of Madurai in general, and it is striving to set up a coaching centre to help students of this deprived community in their educational pursuits, according to a spokesman of the organisation.

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The Bolivarian Revolution and the Caribbean : Fidel Castro

Reflections of Fidel

I liked history, as most boys do. Wars as well, a culture that society sowed in male children. All the toys offered us were weapons.

In my childhood they sent me to a city where I was never taken to a movie theater. Television did not exist then, and there was no radio in the house in which I lived. I had to use my imagination.

In the first boarding school, I read with amazement about the Universal Flood and Noah’s Ark. Later on I came to the conclusion that maybe it was a vestige that humanity retained of the last climate change in the history of our species. It was possibly the end of the Ice Age, which is thought to have taken place thousands of years ago.

As one might imagine, later I avidly read the histories of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Hannibal, Bonaparte and, of course, any book that came into my hands on Maceo, Gómez, Agramonte and other great soldiers who fought for our independence. I did not possess sufficient culture to understand what lay behind history.

Later on, I centered my interest in Martí. In reality I owe my patriotic sentiments to him and the profound concept that "Homeland is humanity." The audacity, the beauty, the value and the ethics of his thinking helped to convert me into what I believe I am: a revolutionary. Without being a follower of Martí one cannot be a follower of Bolívar; without being a follower of Martí and Bolívar, one cannot be a Marxist and, without being a follower of Martí, Bolívar and a Marxist, one cannot be anti-imperialist; without being those three things a Revolution in Cuba in our epoch could not have been conceived.

Almost two centuries ago, Bolívar wanted to send an expedition under the command of Sucre to liberate Cuba, which really needed it, in the 1820s, as a Spanish sugar and coffee colony, with 300,000 slaves working for their white owners.

With its independence frustrated and converted into a neo-colony, the full dignity of human beings could never be attained without a revolution that would end the exploitation of people by other people.

"…I want the first law of our republic to be the veneration of Cubans for the full dignity of human beings."

With his thinking, Martí inspired the valor and conviction that led our [26th of July] Movement to the assault on the Moncada Garrison, which would have never entered our heads without the ideas of other great thinkers like Marx and Lenin, who made us see and understand the very distinct realities of the new era that we were experiencing.

Throughout centuries, the odious latifundia ownership and its slave workforce, preceded by the extermination of the former inhabitants of these islands, was justified in the name of progress and development.
Martí said something marvelous and worthy of Bolívar and his glorious life:
"…what he did not leave done, remains undone to this day: because Bolívar has still much to do in America."

"Let Venezuela show me how to serve her: she has a son in me."

In Venezuela, as others did in the Caribbean, the colonial power planted sugar cane, coffee, and cacao, and likewise took men and women from Africa as slaves. The heroic resistance of its indigenous peoples, using nature and the vast Venezuelan soil, prevented the annihilation of the original inhabitants.

With the exception of one part of the northern hemisphere, the vast territory of Our America remained in the hands of two kings of the Iberian Peninsula.

Without fear it can be affirmed that, for centuries, our countries and the fruits of the labor of our peoples have been plundered and continue being plundered by the large transnational corporations and the oligarchies that are in their service.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; in other words, for almost 200 years after the formal independence of Ibero-America, nothing changed in essence. The United States, starting with the Thirteen English colonies that rebelled, expanded west and south. It purchased Louisiana and Florida, snatched more than half of its territory from Mexico, intervened in Central America and took possession of the area of the future Panama Canal, which would link the great oceans east and west of the continent via the point where Bolívar wished to create the capital of the largest of the republics that would be born from the independence of the nations of America.

In that epoch, oil and ethanol were not traded in the world, nor did the WTO exist. Sugar cane, cotton and corn were cultivated by slaves. Machines were still to be invented. Industrialization based on coal was strongly advancing.

Wars gave impulse to civilization, and civilization gave impulse to wars. These changed in nature, and became more terrible. They finally became world conflicts.

Finally, we were a civilized world. We even believed in it as a question of principles.

But we do not know what to do with the civilization attained. Human beings have equipped themselves with nuclear weapons of unbelievable accuracy and annihilation potency while, from the moral and political point of view, they have ignominiously retrogressed. Politically and socially, we are more underdeveloped than ever. Automatons are replacing soldiers; the mass media, educators, and governments are beginning to be overtaken by events without knowing what to do. In the desperation of many international political leaders one can appreciate an impotency in the face of the problems that are accumulating in their offices and steadily more frequent international meetings.

In those circumstances, an unprecedented disaster is taking place in Haiti, while on the other side of the planet, three wars and an arms race are continuing their development, in the midst of the economic crisis and growing conflicts, which is consuming more than 2.5% of the global GDP, a figure with which all the Third World countries could be developed in a short period of time and possibly evade climate change by devoting the economic and scientific resources that are essential to that objective.

The credibility of the world community has just received a harsh blow in Copenhagen, and our species is not demonstrating its capacity for surviving.

The tragedy of Haiti allows me to expound on this point of view based on what Venezuela has done with the countries of the Caribbean. While the large financial institutions vacillate over what to do in Haiti, Venezuela did not hesitate for one second to cancel that country’s economic debt of $167 million.

Throughout close to one century the major transnationals extracted and exported Venezuelan oil at infinitesimal prices. Over the decades, Venezuela became the largest world exporter of oil.

It is known that when the United States spent hundreds of billions on its genocidal war on Vietnam, killing and mutilating millions of the sons and daughters of that heroic people, it also unilaterally broke the Bretton Woods Agreement by suspending the conversion of gold into dollars, as the agreement stipulated, and launching the cost of that dirty war on the world. The U.S. currency was devalued and the hard currency income of the Caribbean countries was not sufficient to pay for oil. Their economies are based on tourism and exports of sugar, coffee, cacao and other agricultural products. A stunning blow threatened the economies of the Caribbean states, with the exception of two of them that are exporters of energy.

Other developed countries eliminated preferential tariffs for Caribbean agricultural exports, like bananas; Venezuela made an unprecedented gesture: it guaranteed the majority of those countries secure supplies of oil and special payment facilities.

On the other hand, nobody was concerned about the destiny of those peoples. If it were not for the Bolivarian Republic a terrible crisis would have hit the independent states of the Caribbean, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. In the case of Cuba, after the USSR collapsed, the Bolivarian government promoted an extraordinary growth in trade between the two nations, which included the exchange of goods and services, which permitted us to confront one of the harshest periods of our glorious revolutionary history.

The finest ally of the United States and, at the same time the basest and vilest enemy of the people, was the fraudster and simulator Rómulo Betancourt, president-elect of Venezuela when the Revolution triumphed in Cuba in 1959.

He was the principal accomplice of the pirate attacks, acts of terrorism, aggressions against and the blockade of our homeland.

When Our America most needed it, the Bolivarian Revolution finally broke out.

Invited to Caracas by Hugo Chávez, the members of the ALBA committed themselves to lend maximum support to the Haitian people at the saddest moment in the history of that legendary people, who carried out the first victorious social Revolution in world history, when hundreds of thousands of Africans, in rising up and creating in Haiti a republic thousands of miles away from their native lands, undertook one of the most glorious revolutionary actions of this hemisphere. In Haiti, there is African, Indian and white blood; the Republic was born from the concepts of equality, justice and liberty for all human beings.

Ten years ago, at a point when the Caribbean and Central America lost tens of thousands of lives during the tragedy of Hurricane Mitch, the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) was created in Cuba to train Latin American and Caribbean doctors who, one day, would save millions of lives, but especially and above all, would serve as an example in the noble exercise of the medical profession. Together with the Cubans, dozens of young Venezuelans and other Latin American graduates of ELAM will be in Haiti. News has arrived from all corners of the continent of many compañeros who studied at ELAM and now want to collaborate with them in the noble task of saving the lives of children, women and men, young and old.

There will be dozens of field hospitals, rehabilitation centers and hospitals, in which more than 1,000 doctors and students in the final years of medical school from Haiti, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile and other sister countries will be providing services. We have the honor of already being able to count on a number of American doctors who also studied in ELAM. We are prepared to cooperate with those countries and institutions which wish to participate in these efforts to provide medical services in Haiti.

Venezuela has already contributed tents, medical equipment, medicine and foodstuffs. The Haitian government has given full cooperation and support to this effort to bring health services free of charge to the largest possible number of Haitians. It will be a consolation for everybody in the midst of the greatest tragedy that has taken place in our hemisphere.

Affirmative Action Must Be Welcomed

West Bengal LF Govt’s 10 % Reservation for Muslims

 THE decision of the Left Front government in West Bengal to give a reservation of 10 per cent in government jobs for socially and educationally backward Muslims announced by the Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, is predictably being dismissed cynically as an election gimmick by the Congress party which cannot afford to openly oppose this move.  It is, as expected, outrightly denounced by the communal outfits particularly their political arm, the BJP. 

The decision of the West Bengal government is based on the recommendations of Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission established on October 23, 2004 to recommend measures for the welfare of  religious and linguistic minorities in the country.  The CPI(M) had broadly welcomed the Commission and its recommendations. 

Though the Commission submitted its report to the prime minister in May 2007, it was tabled in the parliament only in December, 2009.  The Congress party's prevarication on this issue is clearly established by this delay.  The UPA-2 government is yet to come with an action taken report  on these recommendations.  It is the normal practice that any report of a Commission constituted by the government of India must be brought to the parliament alongwith an action taken report. This lapse, hopefully, should be corrected in the forthcoming budget session.  Only then will the country and the people know how the government intends to implement the recommendations of the Commission. 

The Ranganath Mishra Commission, amongst others, recommended that the criteria for identifying backward classes should be uniform without any discrimination between the majority community and the religious  and linguistic minorities.  It, therefore, suggested that the criteria now applied to determine the OBC status  amongst the majority community must be unreservedly applied also to all the minorities.  It is in this light that the Commission has recommended reservations to the religious minorities on the lines of the OBC reservation.  It has recommended 15 per cent reservation in employment under the central and state governments on this basis.  Within this 15 per cent, 10 per cent is earmarked for the Muslim minorities commensurate with their 73 per cent share in the total minority population at the national level.  The rest, ie, 5 per cent, must be earmarked for other minorities. 

It is on the basis of this recommendation that the West Bengal government has announced its decision.  These recommendations are in tune with Article 16 (4) of the Indian constitution which states: “Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any provision for the reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens which, in the opinion of the State, is not adequately represented in the services under the State.”

The acceptance of the Ranganath Mishra Commission recommendations will necessarily take the percentage of reservations beyond the 50 per cent ceiling set by the Supreme Court. Since the reservations for the SC/STs and the OBCs at the state level are based on their proportion of population, in some states, the full quota of 27 per cent for the OBCs has not been utilised.  West Bengal is one  such state where currently there is only a 7 per cent reservation of seats for the OBCS based on those identified as backward classes and their proportion in the state's population. With the current decision, the percentage of reservations under the OBC category will increase to 17 per cent with 10 per cent of this being earmarked for the backward Muslims. 

Amongst all other recommendations of the Commission, reservation for backward Muslims was first chosen as they comprise 25 per cent of Bengal's population.  Further, in keeping with the longstanding understanding of the CPI(M), the creamy layer will not benefit from this reservation.  The West Bengal government has announced that the families with an annual  income of Rs 4. 5 lakh or more cannot avail of this.

Inclusion of backward Muslim sub-groups in the state's OBC list is nothing new in West Bengal.  At present, there are 12 Muslim sub-groups in the OBC list representing 16.83 lakh people.  The state government has now identified another 37 Muslim sub-groups. All these categories come under the category of backward Muslims as identified by the Sachar Committee report.  These are the Ajlaf and Arzal categories.  The West Bengal proposal excludes the advanced Ashrafs who are considered as the creamy layer amongst the Muslims.  The state government has announced the setting up of a committee to identify and firm up the inclusion of sub-groups under the OBC category in order to ensure that the benefits reach those who most deserve. 

Ignoring this reality of backward Muslim sub-groups already being part of the state's OBC list, the BJP has, once again, mounted its communal offensive by charging the CPI(M) and the Left Front of appeasing the Muslims.  Their anti-minority stance and the vituperative communal poison that they spread is too well known to need any repetition here.  Such rabid communal politics is, in fact, the worst expression of vote bank politics in our country which seeks to consolidate the Hindu vote bank based on spreading hatred against the religious minorities.  While thundering that reservations cannot be based on religion, they conveniently forget that they continuously promote and defend reservations for the Scheduled Castes and the OBCs strictly within the Hindu religious fold only.  It is precisely this logic that the Ranganath Mishra Commission has busted by saying that the criteria for identification of backwardness must be uniform across religions. 

The Congress party first needs to explain to the people its procrastination on this report for so long before mounting attacks against the CPI(M) for implementing what is widely recognised today as necessary for the integration of the minorities into the process of building of modern India.

The yardstick of any modern democracy in measuring its success is the status and welfare of the smallest of minorities.  The efficacy of any government in a modern democracy is to be measured by its success in ensuring equality of opportunity to all accompanied by proactive measures of affirmative action to bridge the gaps of social and economic inequality. The West Bengal government's decision is correct from this perspective and thus deserves to be welcomed by all Indian secular democrats and patriots. 

 (Peoples Democracy : February 10, 2010)