NEW DELHI: How are members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes faring in the government hierarchy? At the very top level of the government bureaucracy , out of a total of 149 secretary-level officers, there were no SC officers while there were only 4 ST officers, as of March 2011, according to a reply given by the MoS in the Prime Minister’s Office V Narayanasamy.At the next rung of additional secretary, out of 108 officers , there are just two each from SC and ST. Further down, out of 477 joint secretaries , 31 belong to SC, that is, 6.5% and 15 belong to ST that is 3.1%. And out of 590 directors, 17 belong to SC (2.9%) while seven belong to ST (1.2%). There is no reservation for these posts but one would expect that out of the pool of officers from SC and ST entering the civil services through quota — 15% for SC, 7.5% for ST and 27% for OBC — a better proportion would have made it to these top rungs by now.Actually, even in the most sought after civil services, IAS, IPS and IFS , the proportion of SC, ST and OBC officers was below the mandated quotas. Out of 3,251 directly recruited IAS officers, SC officers made up 13.9%, ST officers 7.3% and OBCs just 12.9%. This information , too, was stated in the Lok Sabha by Narayanasamy in 2011. Clearly, the underprivileged sections are not yet getting the full advantage of affirmative action envisaged by the Constitution makers. This is further confirmed by the huge number of vacancies in government positions reserved for SCs and STs.According to a statement given in the LS in November last year by Narayanasamy, there were 25,037 ‘backlog’ posts for SC lying vacant in 73 government departments and bodies. These are positions reserved for SC members that have not been filled over the years and thus have accumulated. They include both direct recruitment and promotion-based positions. Out of these, 4,518 positions were vacant because no candidate was available for promotion. Similarly for ST, 28,173 ‘backlog’ posts were vacant, of which 7,416 were meant for filling up by promotion.If you look at all central government employees, 17% of them were SC while 7.4% were ST. This appears to be fulfilling the mandated norms of 15% SC and 7.5% ST. But there is a catch. There is a deep skew of SC/ST members in the hierarchy of central government jobs — as you move up the ladder, there are less and less employees /officers from SC/ST. Among Group A officers, only 11.1% were SC and 4.6% ST. In Group B, the shares were 14.3% and 5.5%, respectively. In group C, there were 16% SC and 7.8% ST, slightly more than the quota . And in Group D, there were 19.3% SC and 7% ST.This high proportion of SC in Group D is because nearly 40% of “safai karamcharies” are SC. This pushes up the proportions all round. Actually it only denotes the harsh reality that despite all the talk of ending discrimination and socio-economic upliftment, dalits are still forced to do most menial jobs.