An attempt to sideline the basic principles of democracy and public opinion with the help of caste census.

In political science, a clear distinction has been made between public opinion and majority and in this, public opinion has been placed much higher than majority. Majority can sometimes play in the name of numbers and population and suppress others. Majority or greater number does not at all mean that every action taken by it is in the interest of the public i.e. the public opinion. Because the majority is always right, then on this basis we will have to justify the emergency imposed in the country in 1975 because the Indira government which brought it, had the majority given by the people. On the same logic, we will have to justify the scams that took place during the tenure of different governments in different states and at the Centre, because all those decisions were taken by the governments with majority to benefit some close ones.

Therefore, it is not necessary that majority should always be public opinion. Public opinion does not at all mean majority or unanimity, rather public opinion means the interest of the entire society without any discrimination. But unfortunately, among the evils that have come into India’s electoral politics, the most terrible evil is the arrogance of the majority and now efforts are being made to inculcate this evil in the hearts and minds of the people of the country in the name of caste.

The Nitish Kumar government of Bihar has started this and no political party in the country is able to muster the courage to openly oppose it. On one hand, the longest ruling party in the country is Congress, whose leader Rahul Gandhi is demanding to conduct caste census in the entire country, saying that whoever has the population should get the same rights. On the other hand, there are Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav, who have been ruling Bihar alternately for the last 33 years after 1990, who after doing welfare of Muslims and backward classes, are now talking about the welfare of extremely backward classes.

Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi understood the danger of ‘majoritarianism’ and, going away from the opinion of his party, openly warned the country about this danger on social media and wrote that, equality of opportunity is never equal to equality of results. Is. People who support the right to live as per population will first have to fully understand its consequences. This will result in majoritarianism.

But in a hurry, Congress not only shrugged off the statement of its senior leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi by calling it his personal opinion but the situation was made such that Singhvi even had to delete his post. In fact, he became a minority in his own party and because of the party’s decision, i.e. indirectly because of the party’s majority, he was deprived of even the freedom to express his views.

However, the questions go much deeper than this. The leaders of political parties advocating reservation for a long time deliberately do not mention the speech of Baba Saheb Ambedkar which he gave regarding the time period of reservation. Instead of listening to Baba Saheb, these parties are increasing both the duration and scope of reservation for political gains.

In fact, the data of caste survey conducted by Bihar government should have been a matter of embarrassment for both Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav that despite ruling Bihar for 33 years, why is the condition of Bihar such that they are considered backward and extremely backward. Do you have to sing a raga? After all, why have certain castes had to migrate on a large scale from Bihar? If some educated people or people belonging to a particular caste, understanding the danger of wildly increasing population, do not produce more children, then will they have to suffer the consequences of their decreasing population? Does social justice mean raising the standard of living of the deprived and bringing them to the forefront of the society or does it mean making them the deprived of the deprived and using them only as a vote bank? If the extremely backward class belonging to the same class has not yet got the benefit of reservation given to the backward class, then who is responsible for this? And the biggest question is that if everything has to be decided on the basis of population and resources are to be distributed, then what will happen to the merit? Is it possible that you are going to force your own capable people to migrate once again? First you had to leave Bihar and now you are creating a situation like leaving the country?

Wouldn’t it have been better that before releasing the caste survey data, Lalu-Nitish had told the country through statistics how many poor people of Bihar have benefited during their 33 years of rule, how many industries have been established in the state, how many new ones have been established. Are schools and colleges open, how much has the per capita income of the people increased and where does Bihar stand today on all the indices and scales of human development? But who will ask this question because in the battle between majority and public opinion, majority again seems to be dominating and no political party is ready to take the risk. But they should remember that history never forgives anyone.

-Santosh Pathak

(The author is a senior journalist and columnist)