From: gkgst1@pitt.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: UPI News !
Date: 18 Nov 92 05:18:20 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Originator: gkgst1@unixd1.cis.pitt.edu

The following news is taken from UPI news feed and posted without
permission of UPI with the intention of letting fellow Indian students
know about the Supreme court ruling regarding the quota (MANDAL) issue !

=====================================================================

	NEW DELHI, India (UPI) -- Violent student protests broke out Tuesday
over a Supreme Court ruling upholding the legality of a government
scheme to introduce caste-based job quotas, officials and news reports
said.
	The government plan called for reserving more than 60 percent of all
government jobs for members of lower Hindu castes and other
disadvantaged classes.
	On Monday, the full bench of India's Supreme Court split 5-4 to
support caste-based job reservations but directed the government to
limit such quotas to no more than 50 percent of available jobs. The
justices, however, quashed part of the scheme that called for
establishing caste quotas for promotions too.
	Students protesting the high court's endorsement of caste-based
quotas blockaded trains, set ablaze city buses and hurled rocks at
government offices, local authorities said.
	The Press Trust of India news agency reported that police used batons
and opened fire in the air to disperse rioting students in the cities of
Gorakhpur and Allahabad in India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.
	Most of the protests were reported from Uttar Pradesh and adjacent
Bihar state, which have 200 of India's 850 million citizens.
	India, with one of the world's highest rates of unemployment, was hit
by widespread violence in the fall of 1990 when the caste-based quota
plan was unveiled by a coalition government headed by Prime Minister
Vishwanath P. Singh.
	Student protests, including self-immolations by more than two dozen
demonstrators, led to the collapse of Singh's government in late 1990.
	The job scheme, however, was quickly embraced by the present
government led by Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao when it came to
power in national elections in mid-1991.
	The plan has spurred growing discontent among the youth unable to
find meaningful work in a stagnant economy.
	In the last fiscal year, the Indian economy grew by less than 2
percent, but this was more than wiped out by the 2 percent increase in
the country's population.
	The government is the biggest employer in India and currently has
nearly 20 million workers -- more than the population of Australia. Total
government jobs in the past one decade grew by about 25 percent.
	The government already reserves about a quarter of all its jobs for
the ``untouchables,'' or outcastes, and tribespeople. The new plan will
extend those privileges to other socially backward castes.
	Proponents of the scheme contend it will give disadvantaged classes
an opportunity to enter a bloated government bureaucracy still dominated
by the higher castes. The upper castes, however, see the plan as 
``reverse discrimination'' against them, arguing it would benefit many
of the lower castes that have become economically prosperous in
independent India because of the ``green revolution'' in the
countryside.
	Echoing that concern, the Supreme Court, in its ruling, ordered the
government to weed out economically prosperous communities from its
proposed job-quota plan.
	Several major peasant caste groups, ranked low in the Hindu social
hierarchy, have emerged as wealthy farming communities and frequently
are accused of oppressing the ``untouchables.''