New Delhi:
The ill-fated Mandal Commission report on the backward classes is likely to meet the very same fate of its predecessor, the Kaka Kalelkar Commission report. This is the impression that we gathered after Jaipal Singh Kashyap, a fishermen leader from Allahabad, made a bold move in the Lok Sabha on Aug. 27 to raise the issue and extracted a promise from a nervous minister that the report would be placed on the table of the House in this session itself.
As the ruling class of India has already frowned on the Mandal report, it is sure to be thrown to the waste paper basket. The report by B. P. Mandal, a Yadava leader from Bihar, was submitted to the government over 8 months back, and on this depends the fate of over 50 per cent of the Indian population. Even Kashyap, though an Opposition MP, could have the courage to raise the issue in the lower House because of the indirect support that he got from Speaker Balram Jakhar, also an OBC. In the whole Union Cabinet, there is only one OBC representative – Law Minister Shiv Shankar. A minister told Kashyap that an expert committee was examining the Mandal report and that means all the painstaking work done by a veteran like Mandal is to be judged afresh by a team of officials.
The ruling class of India, which is just about 10 per cent of the Indian population, is successfully sabotaging every report on the OBCs, SCs and STs, minorities who together constitute over 75 per cent of the population The OBCs are as poor as the SCs and STs if not poorer sometimes. The latter have the reservations though on paper. The OBCs have none the vast number of OBC are sandwiched between the untouchables on one side and the landed gentry and the Brahmins on the other. The OBCs thought that they had a real champion in Charan Singh but he proved to be a paper tiger Devaraj Urs in the South was promising but before he could become an all-India leader, the upper castes finished him. Ram Awadhesh Singh, another Yadava leader from Bihar. who took up militant posture on the lines of Lohia, lost all interest after getting defeated in the elections So the political horizon is devoid of any silver lining. Therefore, the OBCs are today looking to non-political leadership. And the only person of promise is Veeramani, general secretary of the militant Dravida Khazagham of Tamil Nadu. It is possible that if he decides, he can take up the issue of the Mandal Commission report implementation and launch a virulent agitation as a dedicated follower and now wearing the mantle of Parivar EV. Ramaswamy, India’s greatest rationalist leader, he is ideally cut out for the job. The SCs, STs have already offered their full support to the struggle of the OBCs in spite of the fact that they have suffered only at the hands of the OBCs Since both these sections have jointly suffered under the high caste tyranny. they have decided to join hands to fight their common enemy. The help of the minorities will have to be taken and the country is looking up to Veeramani to launch the agitation that shall not stop until the Govt. of India accepts the Mandal report and implements reservations to the OBCs on the lines of the SC and STs.
