May 15, 2006

By Gyan Pathak

Reservation is one of the most useful instruments for our society as scalpel is for patients needing surgery. Its opposition at concept level is wrong unless we find any better tool, but its misuse for narrow political ends is like killing the patient with scalpel even in the operation theater where doctors are supposed to save lives.

We have been thinking in terms of caste, creed and religion throughout ages. One of the reasons is their strikingly synonymous identity with backwardness and miseries. Such deprived classes were identified and scheduled at the time of our independence under two categories namely Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. They were so much deprived that one could not think of equal merits among them as compared to the people of privileged classes at the time of getting a political berth in legislatures, jobs or in educational institutions. Theory of the fairness demands equal opportunity for all, without consideration of caste, creed and religion, but the theory of fair competition also demands that competition should be among equals. Therefore, competitions should not be arranged between the people of privileged classes and the people of deprived classes or under privileged classes. It was in this theoretical background the makers of our constitution made a separate provision which is called “reservation” in common parlance. It was initially for ten years because they thought our country would succeed in alleviating this anomaly of backwardness of certain classes that were scheduled, both socially and educationally. However, we miserably failed in our mission, and have been extending this reservation policy since then, with addition of socially and educationally backward classes (SEBC) which is commonly known as OBC (Other Backward Classes). This OBC has got a further division MBC (Most Backward Classes).

The reasons are many including the enormity of the task, unavailability of resources, incapability of our governments and programme implementing agencies and leaderships. Greed of the privileged people and their self interest frustrated the move to enable the backward and miserable classes to their level both educationally and socially. Very few among the privileged honestly wanted to implement the provisions of reservation policy resulting in overall failure. Of course, exceptions are there, and we can find some of the members of socially and educationally backward communities strong enough, who are recently termed by Supreme Court of India as “creamy layer.”

Before understanding the emergence of creamy layer among the backward classes with most of their members are yet backward, one should note what the mistakes our constitution makers did. In the Constitution of India, they acknowledged only three grounds for reservation - social backwardness, educational backwardness and inadequate political representation. They did not recognize the sufferings of economically backward peoples of other social groups resulting into resentment over reservation policy. It may be mentioned, that Bihar and some other states implemented certain per cent of reservation also for economically backward social groups. It was implemented first by the Chief Minister of Bihar Mr Karpuri Thakur, and later in the early nineties the Congress government at the Centre issued notification to this effect. However, reservation on the basis of economic backwardness was held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India. Subsequently, the reservation on the basis of economic backwardness has been done away with.

After the judicial intervention, we have constituted a Backward Commission with the brief that it would identify socially, educationally and politically backward classes as well as the classes that are no more socially, educationally and politically backward. It was supposed to recommend addition or deletion of the classes or castes accordingly. However, it was not doing well.

The whole system has been politicized and is being misused. We have a certain level of achievement only in giving adequate representation to SCs and STs in Legislatures of our country. We are lagging far behind in social and educational reservations in general with only few among the backward classes getting most of the benefits of reservation because they are in advantageous positions as compared to their own brethren with great sufferings. An effort was also initiated to wean out this creamy layer, but it was opposed by the beneficiaries for their selfish ends.

The problem now has become political in nature, and no one has guts to implement the original concept of reservation. Economic backwardness is not any criteria for reservation for any community whatsoever. Therefore, it has become a paramount importance to find out what communities are yet under represented in Legislatures, or educationally and socially backward. Nobody seems to be interested in this exercise, because certain influential communities may lose the benefit of reservation both in North and South India.

For example, we can take Yadav community of the north and Malayali communities from Kerala. Yadavas has adequate political representation. There are two chief ministers and many ministers both at state and central level. All Malayali communities for Kerala are no longer educationally backward. We need only to make comparisons among all the communities to find out who are yet educationally, socially and politically backward. Make reservations accordingly. However, it is a foolish thing to continue the old practice of considering the communities backward on the basis of decades old classification. All the societies are mobile, not static. They may go up, and go down.

The next best thing worth attention is that we should prevent benefits of reservation only to certain classes or castes at the cost of other more deprived brethrens, classes or castes.

The need of hour is also to introduce reservation to economically backward classes, for which we would need a constitutional amendment. Such a legislation, if brought, should not cater to only poverty stricken people of upper classes, but also to the members of other socially backward classes who have been victims of development itself. Take an example of pitcher makers (Kumhars) who lost their livelihood only because of modern developments.

Unfortunately, our political leaderships have always been thinking in terms of political expediency. They try to implement the provisions of reservations only when they need expansion of their political base. Recently there was a suggestion for reservation for Muslims on the basis of religious minority. Such efforts are distorting the very concept of reservation. Let us implement the concept of reservation in its purity. (EOM)