T.Chiranjeevulu IAS (Ret), President and Founder BCIF(BC Intellectuals Forum) On the occasion of Doddi Komaraiah's birth anniversary, the Telangana armed peasant struggle began on this very day. On April 3rd, 1946, he was martyred, and from that moment forward, the Telangana armed peasant struggle commenced and continued until 1951. This struggle was waged against feudalism and the tyranny of the Nizam in Telangana, during which 4,000 people lost their lives. Thousands of villages were liberated from feudal lords — primarily zamindars, deshmuks, deshpandes, and patwardis. Approximately ten lakh acres of land were redistributed through this movement. When we compare the social and economic conditions of Telangana then with those of today, we find that the exploitation which existed then continues in much the same form today. While the nature of exploitation has evolved and people now speak with somewhat greater freedom, the Backward Classes (BCs) remain completely marginali...
Nagesh Bhushan The 30% Invisible: The Surprising Policy Gap Facing India’s Largest Entrepreneurial Bloc India’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise (MSME) sector is the engine room of the national economy, and within that engine, Other Backward Class (OBC) entrepreneurs provide the highest torque. Owning approximately 30% of all registered units, they are the silent middle—the backbone of industrial clusters in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Rajasthan. Yet, when the hood is lifted on India’s affirmative action framework, this massive bloc remains strangely invisible. Imagine a high-performance vehicle where the most critical gears receive the least maintenance. While the state has constructed robust safety nets and "fast lanes" for other marginalized groups, the OBC entrepreneurial class operates in a policy blind spot. They are politically significant enough to sway national elections, yet they find themselves working without the institutional scaffolding that supports the...