New Delhi: The Backward Classes Welfare Commission in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh is to soon submit its report on the social, educational and economic condition of backward classes in the state to the government, ThePrint has learnt.
Madhya Pradesh, which currently has a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government, is scheduled to vote for a new assembly later this year and a senior government official told ThePrint that the Backward Classes Welfare Commission is likely to submit its report by August.
The commission, which was constituted in 2021, is surveying 10,000 families from 93 backward classes in the state list to find out their social, educational and economic status. As part of the exercise, the commission will assess indicators such as living standards, access to infrastructure, property ownership, family education, employment opportunities (both in government and private sector) and so on.
In May last year, the commission roped in Dr B.R. Ambedkar University of Social Sciences, Mhow, to carry out the survey.
“Ambedkar University has carried out a detailed survey of the communities to assess the situation. The university will submit the report to us by June-end and we will send it to the government along with our recommendations,” Gaurishankar Bisen, chairman of the commission and a BJP MLA, told ThePrint.
The ongoing survey is aimed at evaluating the impact of various government schemes for the backward classes and will be pivotal in better policy planning for their welfare, the government official quoted above told ThePrint.
“We are also assessing how people have benefited from various governments (central and state) schemes in the past few decades. All this data will help us in making recommendations to the government about necessary policy interventions. This will help in better targeting of welfare schemes,” a second senior MP government official said.
With political parties, including the Congress, raising demands for a caste-based census at the national level, the study and the process have been questioned by opposition parties in the state. Member of opposition parties and OBC groups alleged that the survey was an attempt by the BJP-led government to show that it has worked for the welfare of OBCs in the state and to woo them before the elections.
The Madhya Pradesh Backward Classes Welfare Commission was constituted in September 2021 by the BJP-led government in the state.
In May last year, the commission released its first report in which it stated that there were 48 per cent OBC voters in MP and recommended up to 35 per cent reservation in panchayat and urban local body elections.
The report was submitted by the Madhya Pradesh government in Supreme Court, seeking reservation in urban local bodies, which the top court allowed in over 20,000 panchayats and urban local bodies.
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‘Govt not done anything for OBCs’
Talking about the ongoing exercise, Madhya Pradesh Congress’s working president Jitendra Patwari dismissed the whole exercise as “meaningless”, while talking to ThePrint. “The report will show that the OBCs have benefited from the schemes of the Shivraj Singh [Chouhan, Madhya Pradesh chief minister]-led BJP government,” he said.
According to Patwari, 80 per cent of OBCs in MP are farmers or involved in agricultural activities. “This government [the Chouhan government] has done nothing for the OBCs. It is our government which increased the reservation [for OBCs] to 27 per cent from 14 per cent (which has been challenged in high court, so the matter is sub-judice).
The Congress was in power in MP before the BJP.
Raising questions on the parameters of the study done by the commission, Dharmendra Kushwaha, national core committee member of the Bharatiya OBC Mahasabha, said, “How were these 10,000 families selected? The outcome of the study will be to just show this government has worked for the welfare of people and also to reach out to the community ahead of the elections.”
“If the government is serious, then it should get a caste-based census done,” he added.
Political commentators ThePrint spoke to also said that while it is important to do a survey to assess the socio-economic condition of the OBCs, it has to be done properly.
Explaining the significance of the caste-based survey, political theorist and social activist Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd said that a caste-based socio-economic survey should be done, instead of just OBCs or one community.
“Unless they take up caste census, there is no point in doing studies around the idea of socio-economic conditions of one particular community,” he told ThePrint.
Another expert, who didn’t wish to be named, said that a sample size of 10,000 families in a state like Madhya Pradesh is not enough to accurately assess the socio-economic condition of OBCs.
ThePrint reached V.D. Sharma, Madhya Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party president over phone for response to the allegations, but did not receive a response till the time of publication of this report. The report will be updated when a response is received.
In 2011, the central government carried out the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC). While the caste-related data collected as part of the exercise has not been released by the Union government, the data related to socio-economic indicators, which form the basis of the welfare schemes of the central and state governments, are reportedly being used by the governments for planning policy.
In Odisha, the Naveen Patnaik government also carried out OBC survey in a month-long exercise in May to gather information about the socio-economic and educational condition of people belonging to 208 backward classes.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)