How are members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes faring i n 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. 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 Shri. Narayanasamy, there were 25,037 ‘backlog’ posts for SC lyi