I belong to a mixed (intercaste) descent with a OBC father and a non-obc mother. Though I am happy about my chances of getting seats easily, I am equally disturbed by the fate of maternal cousins, who are poorer than me.

I recommend that our country should immediately enforce creamy layer exclusion so that the benefit of reservation is available only to really deserving students/job-seekers.

Just see how many fabrications there are in a single line of yours:
1. 4000 years
2. slavery
3. apertheid
4. whining

We are fighting for our rights. Who’s whining?

“By the way, whenever data is demanded, it is stated with the strongest possible emphasis that data exists and the data is adequate. There are many bloggers/commenteres on this site itself who believe data exists and it is precise. You are saying data is bad. You can’t have it both ways.”

You took:

“By the way, whenever data is demanded, it is stated with the strongest possible emphasis that data exists and the data is adequate.”

I don’t have any cure for selective amnesia, chronic misquote of references or plain ignorance. But I suspect it is plain mischief.

That is not the correct answer. Your basic premise was that the data was demanded earlier (more than once because you said ‘whenever’) and you indicated that it was never provided, meaning there was a conspiracy to hide it. So when(ever) was it demanded?

‘By the way, whenever data is demanded, it is stated with the strongest possible emphasis that data exists…’

This was your original assertion. Now I would like to know whatever did you mean by the term ‘whenever’? If my question wasn’t clear enough, let me rephrase it:

‘When was data demanded of the government? And by whom?’

When the constitution was written, first amendment was made, why was not a demand made for OBCs? If it was made, why was it not paid due consideration by the leaders of the time?

The NSSO, CSO etc. organizations have been in existence for along time now. I analysed the data they collected in 1999-2001. Since then they did not collect this data anymore. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

Check out some current news:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/Cities/Delhi/Caste-based_census_gets_Cong_rebuff/articleshow/1848014.cms

‘By the way, whenever data is demanded, it is stated with the strongest possible emphasis that data exists and the data is adequate.’

Some questions for you:

1) Who demanded data and when ? It was not demanded in 1993 and earlier.

2)Is the data I am questioning the same as the data I said exists and was not even questioned in 1993?

By the way, whenever data is demanded, it is stated with the strongest possible emphasis that data exists and the data is adequate. There are many bloggers/commenteres on this site itself who believe data exists and it is precise. You are saying data is bad. You can’t have it both ways.

Yes, i’d mistakenly considered the lead figures in ‘rural’ graduates and ‘literacy’ as lag figures…

But the change in composition of the state’s population (the movement towards a higher degree of urbanization than revealed in this data – i believe local politics has a role in this change,), and the biases I talked about make this data unreliable… For example, how do you explain this discrepancy: The number of OBC graduates per thousand has a lead of over 25% in rural areas, whereas the number of OBC graduates per thousand in urban areas lags by over 25% ?
And I’m not alone in questioning NSSO data, especially the 1999 figures – check this article by P.S.Krishnan :http://www.indianexpress.com/sunday/story/18107.html

Let me quote a section:

‘There is evidence to show the limitations of the NSSO’s methodology. For example, its surveys of 1999-2000 and 2004-05 show STs in Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Chandigarh (partly corrected in the latter round) where no STs are recognised by the presidential orders. Similarly, the survey showed SCs in Nagaland, where there are none. One important reason for these aberrations is that classification of social groups by NSSO was entirely based upon the household head’s declaration.

The effect is that the methodology produces great deviation for BC population, because BC listing is very recent at the Central level (1993) and in northern states. Many BC persons are unfamiliar with it. This is compounded by the slowness of listing by some states. That is why West Bengal’s BC percentage is as low as 6.2 per cent, which is unlikely considering the much higher percentages in neighbouring states.

In the identification of BC Muslims (specific castes and tribes of all religions, including Islam and Christianity, have always been included in BC and ST lists), the NSSO’s figure of 31.7 per cent in 1999-2000 and partly corrected to 40.7 per cent in 2004-05 is much lower than reality.

For example, how can it justify 56.8 per cent for Muslim OBCs in 1999-2000 going down to 52.7 per cent in 2004-05 for Karnataka when, as noted by Sachar, Karnataka, like Kerala, has included the entire Muslim population as a sub-category of BCs and the Central List has excluded only nine castes/communities of Muslims who are not socially backward.

The wide variations between the two rounds are evidence of the yet incomplete process of correction of NSSO’s errors. This is also true of the NSSO’s overall BC figure tom-tommed by Karan Thapar and others. When errors are eliminated and maximum precision is introduced, the figure will rise to that estimated by Mandal.’

Could you please expand on your explanation – ‘it works out ok’?

About rural population, the 2001 census says that Tamil Nadu is the most ‘urbanized state’ in India. Meaning, the population of the cities has gone upto 44% of the total population. My view is that no generalized analytical tools can properly decipher this crude serving of data. Add to this, the biases, on all sides involved in the collection of such data in a state like Tamil Nadu.