The SKC Scandal 3: Is the majority privileged to violate the Constitution!?

The SKC report ended up suggesting that a few "constitutional guarantees" would help surmount the Telangana demand. However, this raised a fundamental question about majoritarianism and the tyranny of the majority with regard to the highest law of the land - the Constitution. In light of SKC's recommendation, it is reasonable to expect what the committee found to suggest this option. In short, what did the committee find regarding the implementation of previous constitutional guarantees in, say jobs?

What the SKC did?
Here is what the SKC reads out about the constitutional guarantees Telangana has in government jobs. It rephrases the question carefully to omit words like 'constitutional guarantees', 'presidentional orders', 'Government orders', '610 GO' as if none of them exist!

B. Whether the demand for reservation in public employment is an issue that can be considered relevant to a large section of the population?


The second question can be rephrased- Is public employment a big issue statistically? As per the figures of Census 2001, the population of Andhra Pradesh was 762 lacs, out of which the working population was 348.65 lacs. The Employees‟ Census, held in 2006, put the figure of total employees under the state government (or in public employment) at around 12.9 lacs. Now, for the sake of convenience, let us make two assumptions – 
(a) that the Census 2001 figures of total population can be compared with the Employees‟ Census figures of 2006, and 
(b) that the issue of residential qualification in public employment is relevant to the entire work force in public employment. 


The entire population of public employees in Andhra Pradesh in 2006 was about 1.7% of the total
population in 2001 and about 3.6% of the working population in 2001. If we had increased the total population and working population figures (which would anyway have increased by 2006 as compared to 2001) and reduced the number of public employees to include only those to whom the benefit of reservation could be extended, these percentages would have been even lower. The point is that, public employment constitutes a very small percentage of the working population of the state and an even smaller percentage of the total population. During the last two decades (1990-2010), as the Indian economy has undergone structural changes, a great many areas of employment opportunities in the private sector have opened up, pushing public employment, both in numbers as well as in importance into the background.

Someone like Justice SriKrishna is supposed to judge the legal and illegal, not the "highest satisfaction of the largest number". In fact, the latter concept does not belong to the courthouse, but maybe to a brothel house! When the question here clearly is about the failure of constitutional safeguards which means violating the Constitution, Justice Srikrishna refuses to even examine it and instead justifies why those violations does not matter! And then goes on suggest the very same failed guarantees as the route to solve Telangana's ills! Which right-thinking individual would heed this? The SKC seems to think constitutional violations are not illegal . Justice SriKrishna should tell us whether this is a privilege of the Majority.

What the SKC should have done?
Instead the Justice should have done at least 2 things:

1) They Should have taken the erstwhile Bhargava's committees' route to calculate how many government jobs Telanganites missed out because of these violations in last few decades. How many families could have got their welfare hit because of missing these opportunities.

2) Because of the siphoned jobs, key decision-making positions in Government were lost by Telangana. That resulted in the biased bureaucracy which did its part in further discrimination of Telangana. The SKC should have examined this.

It is clear SKC deliberately ignored the aspect of job loss and the consequences of the same for Telangana. It just read verbatim the argument of Samaikyandra plutocrats shamelessly. Worse, it tried to misle the issue and digress with statistical gimmickry.

The SKC Scandal: Mr Duggal, Who actually wrote the SKC report?

When I was going through the SKC report on Telangana, sheer disbelief took over me. It, in an odd way, reminded me of the senate hearings scene in Martin Scorcese's "The Aviator". In the electrifying scene where Howard Hughes was being investigated by the US senator Owen Brewster. The dialogue goes this way..

Hughes: Is it true you accept free Pan Am tickets

to circle the globe....in support of your C.A.B. bill?

Senator: No, it is not true.   

                  

Hughes: Well, who wrote that bill, senator?

Who actually wrote the C.A.B. bill?                   

.. The actual words. Did you write them?

Senator: This is not how these hearings....are gonna be conducted.

Hughes: I have it. Maybe it'll refresh your memory.                  

"Bill S-    to amend the Civil Aeronautics Act."                   

Now, you introduced this bill to the Senate.

                  

A lot of words.                  

You write all of them?                 

- Did you write any of them, senator?

- Now, look...

Now, this entire bill was written

by Pan Am executives...

                  

...and designed to give that airline

a monopoly on international travel.

                  

You've been flogging this bill all around

the world on their behalf, have you not?

                  

Senator: I have duties that take me

all over the world, Mr. Hughes.

                

Hughes: Well, what the hell does a senator

from Maine need to visit Peru for?

                  

Senator: I was seeking outlets for our trade goods.

                

Hughes: Buy a lot of lobsters down there, do they?

                  

Senator, how many times have you visited

Trippe's office in New York...     

...in the last three months?

                   

Would you like me to tell you, senator?

                  

Senator: All right, this has gone on long enough.

Juan is a great American. 

His airline has advanced the cause

of commercial aviation for decades.                      

Juan Trippe is a patriot. Juan Trippe is not

a man who is interested in making money......

For those who does not know the background of the scene, let me briefly put it this way. Howard Hughes and Juan Trippe are competitors for the airlines market of US in 1940s and the senator tries to pass bills that gives monopoly over the market for Trippe's PanAm airlines. It is precisely that bill Hughes is referring to in the above scene. The senator tries to pass PanAm executives wish list as a bill, as it is!

While lobbying is always there in every sphere and government, very rarely is it seen, in an issue as prominent as Telangana's, that a committee succumbs so badly to men with power and pelf that they will simply pass their propaganda as the committee's 'objective study' verbatim. I mean no airbrushing, no attempt to at least pretend!! I mean, did the guys at least browse through the report before they signed it!?

Here is a committee that came in under the cover of the reputation of a certain Justice Sri Krishna. But it was clear from the very outset, that with a retired babu - a former chief secretary in the team, who will the shots. In fact even some of the team member's credentials are under question. It turns out that what they claimed they are, they actually are not, like that guy who called himself an economist. More about this later. So the committee with its phony qualifications made a farce show for an year and then submits a report referring those who have been campaigning for statehood for half-a-century (and who actually succeeded) as 'separatists'. It is the exact lingo of the 'Samaikyandra' group led by Lagadapati Rajagopal and K S. Rao. In fact, the report just reads out their arguments as its conclusions!

Every claim of Telanganites' is doubted, but not investigated before being concluded as baseless or insignificant. The report casually uses words like 'so-called discrimination' and 'percieved injustice' when addressing the Telangana's arguments of discrimination. All government statistics are taken at face-value without any third-party (like central government statistics) cross-checking. This, when the state government itself is the defendant! When there is a need to infer from the statistics and understand the deliberate discrimination done, like in case of the irrigated land, no effort was made. So what was the point? 


The report starts and ends with an agenda of trashing all arguments in favour of Telangana, with the same tone and reason of 'Samaikyandra' plutocrats. There is no doubt that what the committee has released as its report is an edited copy of what they were given by these plutocrats. This is unbelievable scandal which shows the corruption and insensitivity of the Indian state. Would someone stand and own up this report? Would Mr.Duggal tell us who actually wrote the report!?