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With over four lakh persons abstaining from the Social and Educational Survey-2025 that concluded in the State on Friday, the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes will be dipping into secondary data available to understand the employment, education, and economic condition of those who who boycotted the survey. “We have secondary data of people with us on government employment, admission to higher education and professional courses, and on the people who have gone abroad. We will be using that for analysis,” commission chairman Madhusudan Naik told The Hindu. In the interest of poor He argued that it is wrong to assume that non-participation in survey will result in gaps in data. “If they were to participate in the survey, probably it would have balanced their own communities’ interest.” Mr. Naik said. “There are poor people even among the major communities. It is not that everybody is a CEO of a big company.” He sought to know how, without data, he can advise the government or how the government would come up with schemes for the poor in all communities. About 4.22 lakh households in the State were recorded as refusing to share details during the exercise that covered about 6.13 crore out of the total 6.85 crore population in the State. In about 34.49 lakh cases, the enumerators found the houses locked. Despite the door-to-door survey coming to an end, the commission has provided time till November 10 to those wishing to participate in the online survey. It is believed that a large number of people, especially from the Brahmin community, did not participate in the survey after the Karnataka High Court directed the commission to keep the data secure and survey be made voluntary. Calls to abstain Several persons, including Union Minister Pralhad Joshi and MP for Bengaluru South Tejasvi Surya, among others, made statements against the survey causing confusion. WhatsApp messages were also circulated, urging households not to participate, resulting in reports of many enumerators being shunned by households. Dharwad district lagged in the survey as the first deadline was reached, partly attributed to statements by Mr. Joshi. But it eventually reached 92% of the targeted households by the end of the survey. Lashing out at the community leaders - without naming the community or individuals - Mr. Naik said: “Many households were misled by the so-called leaders or intellectuals in the major community. They are not looking at the larger interest. They do not seem to have concern for the poorer classes in their own community.”
