Articles by P Radhakrishnan

P Radhakrishnan The evolution of backward classes lists in Tamil Nadu clearly shows that, far from being a creation of the Indian Constitution, these were created by the British administration, supported and sustained by missionary educationists. Understanding the emergence and growth of these lists is crucial for rationalising the present backward classes categories. For it is these lists, and not any other arrived at after proper enumeration, which have been used to fill the three backward classes categories envisaged by the Constitution. More importantly, their adoption for dispensation of the far-reaching special treatment provisions of the Constitution has in effect reduced the perception and practice of these provisions to a mere concessionist policy.

Study of a Kerala Village P Radhakrishnan The implementation of the Kerala Land Reforms (Amendment) Act of 1969 has led to loss of land by the group in which land was traditionally concentrated, namely the Nambootiris. Consequently, the Nambootiris have also lost the status, power and authority which they Enjoyed in the villages during the pre-reform period.

P Radhakrishnan The Road to Gdansk: Poland and the USSR by Daniel Singer, Monthly Review Press, New York and London, 1981; pp 256; $ 15/ THE book under review is on the dissident movement in Poland and the USSR, but its focus is on the latter, and developments in the former are portrayed only to portend what the author thinks is the most likely scenario in it. Considering its focus on the Soviet system, it is only to be expected that the book will have both its ideological adherents and adversaries. The purpose of this review, however, is to bring out the main issues discussed in an important, albeit controversial, treatise on the Soviet system, which has been largely ignored both by the Indian and the Western media for nearly two years after its publication.

BACKWARD CLASSES In Defence of Mandal Commission THE Backward Classes Commission appointed by the Janata government, with Bindeswari Prasad Mandal as its Chairman; submitted its report in [December 1980, just before the Lok Sabha election that returned the Congress (I) to power a the Centre. The report was shelved by the new government until the last session of the Parliament, thereby amply demonstrating its ambiguous attitude to both the Commission and its report. Unable to scuttle the report or to shelve it any longer, the government finally placed it on the table in both houses of the Parliament in the last session without however, indicating its own reactions to the report.

P Radhakrishnan William Logan: A Study in the Agrarian Relations of Malabar by K K N Kurup; Sandhya Publications, Calicut, 1981; pp x + 128;
THIS slender vllume, an excellent study of the nineteenth century agrarian history of Malabar in the colonial context, presents a perceptive analysis of the pathetic wreck of the happy harmony of customary agrarian relations in Malabar wrought by the 'revenue- hungry' British administration, and of the reports of the numerous commissions appointed by the same British government to suggest palliatives to the consequent agrarian discontent. According to the author, prior to the second half of the eighteenth century, each taravad (matrilineal family organisation of the Nayars) was a unit of land-control, by virtue of which it was also a political unit and administrative office having hereditary jurisdiction and administrative functions over a territorial unit. However, the right over the land under its control was not the proprietary right as in the Roman concept of dominium or proprietas. For, "when an office of taravad and other dignities attached to a desavazhi {ruler of a desam or a territorial unit) were sold .. the purchaser had to recognise the inferior rights of the persons involved in the land transactions". In other words, the customary rights in land of persons holding the inferior rights, such as kanakkar (intermediary or supervisory tenants), verumpatta- kkar (simple or cultivating tenants) cherujanmakkar (small birth-right or Janmam-holders .such as artisan and service castes), hutment-dwellers, slaves and so on, remained unchanged no matter which 'aravad formed the unit of land-control, and no matter whether the land was sold or purchased. The purchaser was entitled only to a fixed shire of the produce of the soil plus of course the customary dignities and privileges attached to the unit of land-control, in his capacity as a " taravad i or tamvattu- karan or desawazhi'.