Reservations for Muslims

West Bengal needs to be careful in implementing its new decision on reservations.

An EPW Editorial

Deepening the Social Divide

editorial written for Economic and Political Weekly

The BJP’s discordant and opportunistic politics is only deepening the social divide in Rajasthan.

Hardly did the trauma of the tragic blasts in Jaipur abate when Rajasthan was up in flames following militant protests by the gurjars being put down with a heavy hand by resort to largely unwarranted and excessive police firing, leading to a death toll higher than during a similar agitation a year ago. There is a clear lack of will on the part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led state government, despite the party’s election promise in 2003, to recommend the provision of scheduled tribe (ST) status to the community. Police firing against agitators have killed 39 people (as we go to press) and injured many more, provoking an escalation of the agitation and its spread to the national capital region and other parts of north India. The agitators are now demanding nothing less than the immediate implementation of their demand for the state government to recommend the bestowal of ST status to the gurjars.




Last year, the Rajasthan government led by chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia had found a way to mitigate the crisis by constituting a committee to address the issue. The justice Chopra committee recommended an economic package worth Rs 280 crore to address the question of the backwardness of the gurjars, but their leaders (representing organisations such as the Gurjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti, led by Kirori Singh Bainsla) have rejected the same and have reiterated their demand for the declaration of ST status for the community in Rajasthan. Currently Gurjars are categorised as other backward classes (OBCs) in the state. They justify their demand to be provided reservations as a ST owing to associations of sections of the community (“van gurjars”) with pastoral work and as semi-nomadic cattle herders. Another reason is the fact that gurjars in Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh are already categorised under the ST category. However, the inclusion of gurjars in Rajasthan as scheduled tribes is problematic as the ST category as mentioned in the Constitution's fifth schedule is defined by certain specific and identifiable characteristics such as lifestyle, culture, inaccessibility and backwardness, and not just economic underdevelopment.

Another motivation for their demand has been the fact that the BJP led National Democratic Alliance government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee had deemed the jat community in Rajasthan as OBCs. Inclusion of jats in the OBC category crowded out representation for the gurjars from the reservation pie. As mentioned, the BJP had also promised ST status for the gurjars before the Rajasthan assembly elections in 2003, but its subsequent lack of will to implement this electoral promise has fuelled militant protests by the community. The protests last year were muddied when the party diabolically provoked the meena community (who were provided ST status in 1954) to fight the gurjars. Given this background, the Rajasthan government’s conciliatory proposition to provide 4 to 6 percent reservations by classifying the gurjars as denotified tribes has predictably been rejected by the gurjar leadership.

The high death toll in police firing has only aggravated the problem, and has induced the gurjar leadership to adopt a maximalist position. Offers of talks by the chief minister have been rebuffed, but latest indications are that the gurjar leaders will come to the table. The offer of an economic package can be a starting point but the state government must take pro-active measures in addressing the problems of people traditionally relying on occupations such as pastoral work and dairy farming (many of whom belong to the gurjar community).

Obviously, use of the policy of reservations as a tool for alleviating economic backwardness as well as enhancing representation has proven to be difficult in states like Rajasthan. The garnering of support across various castes by political parties such as the BJP in Rajasthan and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, who have promised reservations for the poor from the upper castes too, has created conditions for competitive caste politics fanning inter-caste clashes and demands for further reservation for other caste groups. It is incumbent upon political parties to reverse this dangerous trend by revisiting the basis on which reservations were formalised as a policy. Reservations cannot be on the basis of the criterion of economic backwardness alone. The policy has to be targeted towards gradually rendering the caste hierarchy redundant. At the same time, states need to formulate and work upon welfare measures for socio-economic development through policies that are for the betterment of sections across castes so that the incentives for specific groups to make claims for exceptional treatment through reservation do not exist. But where is the progressive democratic movement to bring this about? The BJP’s discordant and opportunistic politics is only deepening the social divide in Rajasthan.

A veritable victory

The Supreme Court yesterday came up with a judgment to implement 27% reservation for OBCs in Higher Education. Coming from a constitutional bench, the verdict was virtually unimpeachable.

http://srinivasanvr.blogspot.com/2006/05/thoughts-on-reservation-issue.html

For someone who was a conscious activist in favor of reservation (with caveats) when this issue flared up in 2006, the verdict is what I would call a resounding victory. The caveats were clear: a) The reservations must be limited with a creamy layer identification and cut off, b) It must be subject to a periodic review based on yet another caste commission, and c) Reservations must be seen only as one of a package of welfare measures and should not be affecting those who will not avail it. That means, that there should be a increase in public funding for higher education followed by increase in investment such that there is also a hike in the seats in a manner that 27 out of 100 students are not affected as 27 get reservations (meaning a 54% increase in the seat outlay).

Now, a) and b) have been expressly handled by the Supreme Court in clear terms. Both the creamy layer argument and the reconstitution of the OBC reviews have been mentioned as part of the judgement. c) has been assured by the government and has been instituted in a vision document attested by the National Knowledge Commission.

Can one get any more happier? Apparently not.

Hey...but before I keep patting my back for this vision.. I must point out this:

http://www.cpim.org/misc/19900909_obc_mandal_pk.htm . An article by Prakash Karat in the People's Democracy in 1990 on the OBC reservation issue.

Relevant extract:

SUPPORT FOR OBC QUOTAS

Therefore, where the caste status contributes to the backwardness of communities under the OBC category, and where anti-caste movements have not been able to cut across caste barriers and build powerful class-based mass organisations, there is a justification for providing reservations to such communities. This is the basis on which the CPI(M) supported the implementation of the Mandal Commission report since 1981-82 and earlier in States where due to prolonged movements the OBCs were accorded reservations.

NEED FOR ECONOMIC CRITERION

The CPI(M) has, however, qualified this support on two counts. Firstly, it has argued for an economic criterion within the reservation for OBCs. This is a demand distinct from the blanket reservation for the SCs and STs for whom no economic criterion is necessary. Four decades of socio-economic developments and growth of capitalism have led to class differentiation within the caste structure. In the case of OBCs, it is well known that there are a few castes in different States which contain influential strata who own land and other means of production. They are well represented in the political power structure also. The complexity of the OBC problem lies, thus, in the fact that within some communities of the OBCs there is a great economic (inter-caste) differentiation and also there is inter-caste differentiation, i.e., compared to a few better-off communities there are a number of more backward communities.

In order to see that the landless as compared to the richer landed, the poor as compared to the affluent, the more backward as distinct from the strata of the developed -- i.e. the majority of the poor and deprived of these communities -- benefit from reservation, the CPI(M) wants an economic criterion. This criterion need not necessarily be just an income ceiling, but can be a package in which income tax assessments, extent of landholding, professional status of parents, etc., can be taken into consideration.

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This was written in 1990, 18 years ago.

On the Media by the Media..

Siddarth Varadarajan helps me out by writing on the media from an insider's perspective and thus relieves me of having to scratch my itch to write on the biased nature of the media's coverage of the Reservation saga.

http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2006/06/caste-matters-in-indian-media.html

Clearly, the Television Media in India, as Prabhash Joshi of the Jansatta has argued, lacks education in social science. By fielding tyros as reporters and analysts, the Television media is doing gross injustice to coverage of social issues in our country. With the exception of a few, the Television Media-people lack the basic social senses that are required of them. Sample these headlines, "Reserve vs Deserve" in CNN-IBN, "Democracy vs Quotacracy"!..

The CNN-IBN in an eyewash attempt, called upon Vinod Mehta, Naresh Trehan, Purushottam Agarwal and one of the YFE doctors to answer the question whether the media was biased, anchored by Sagarika Ghose. If they had an iota of a sense of fair play they should have called upon an OBC/ Dalit face to put up their case. They didn't.

Barkha Dutt, was no better. I attended one of her "We-the people" shows on the issue and glaringly, Dutt took the debate forward assuming that those who were for reservation were only those who had been benefitted out of the same!. Callousness in a so called star reporter. Dutt perhaps has never heard of John Rawls or the concept of social merit. When a person was placing his views using the conceptual perspective of John Rawls, Dutt interrupted him asking, tell me..you are pro-reservation or not, without giving him space to argue out his position on a theoretical basis. Yet another proof that the mainsteam television media in this country today merely likes to scratch surfaces rather than plumb depths.

In 25 days of hectic reporting, analysing, regurgitating and news-byting, there was no serious effort to show tabulations of OBCs in the country, no serious effort to elucidate on the NSS' findings, no effort taken at all to highlight the positive effects of positive discrimination, as for eg in JNU, clearly tilting the debate in the favour of anti-reservationists. Sagarika Ghose was perhaps right...in a situation where the political class was united in this issue, it was the media that tried to play the role of Opposition, good indeed, only perhaps it would have been substantial and real, if they had provided the voices of the other an equal amount of play.

Thoughts on the Reservation Issue..

Some preliminary thoughts on the Reservation Issue...(I need to restructure and solidify this article..something to be done later).

Ever since HRD Minister Arjun Singh announced the implementation of consitutionally mandated reservations for OBCs to the tune of 27% in Central Universities and Institutions, a virtual class war has been unleashed, partly fuelled by incessant media coverage, partly by agitated students increasingly getting jittery about their future prospects, partly by corporate and intellectual support (by members of the Knowledge Commission) and partly because India's neoliberal path suddenly hit yet another bumper. Eventually the sum of all the parts have taken a great toll and the Hulk, as you would call it, has raged two weeks now, seemingly not realizing that reservations are here to stay, no matter how long or how loud are these protests, and not realizing that reservations in Central Institutions are part of a process that had its antecedents not in Arjun Singh's train of thought but which has come after a century of social churning, resulting in what many like Yogendra Yadav calls, "The Second Democratic Upsurge" or what Ashutosh Varshney modifies as the "Fourth Democratic Upsurge".

The Media aren't persipient enough (and I am blaming the yellow press and the tele-media, not the sections of the media which care to analyse decisions in depth, like for e.g., The Hindu, but again I am termed prejudiced toward The Hindu, so I will let it pass), but thats another story for another blog. Lets first get to answer, as to whether the Reservations in Central Institutions as a means toward social justice is justified at all, and what else/more/at all should be done indeed for social justice, and whither social justice, social justice vs merit?, all these questions in this short blog piece.

First, Reservations on the basis of Caste. The favorite argument of those against reservations, is that if the end is to eradicate Caste, why do you need Caste based reservations at all? This is a rather innocent question, and the answer would have to start from the definition of Caste in India itself.
Caste is a phenomenon unique to India, which divides people on the basis of birth and cuts across religions..therefore there are caste Muslims and Dalit Christians as well in our country!. Caste as a phenomenon, as I said, exists in two different fashions in the country, accentuating the urban-rural divide. In urban, liberal India, where modern institutions are more active, more relevant to public life, where rationality of the market has permeated to a certain extent, Caste has in the words of Gopal Guru, "transmogrified" itself. You wouldnt' see different sets of people travelling in a train together complaining about "pollution", "distance" etc..thats the dialectical effect of modernity in the form of train travel. You wouldn't see people complaining about using common tumblers for drinking water/ milk at a public hotel, nor would you see people complaining about same sets of chairs and seats for all castes in theaters, in parks etc. You would of course notice a class divide, the sparkling multiplexes and malls vs the filthy chawls and stalls, the expensive shawls and stolles vs the ragged crawls and brawls. But again I am digressing.

In urban India, casteism has to be drawn from the proverbial well using Dronacharya's eye of the needle, caste exists hidden but loosely yet not fully subjugated..Peer into the Classified sections of the newspapers, and lo and behold, you find Caste there.. Marriage columns: caste is a factor, the inner home: Caste hangs over there in the "gotras", "the horoscopes" and in the yearning to create the ideal match for this or that son or daughter. Yes, Caste does exist and cannot be wished away. It exists in a transmogrified form, but it does exist. In some companies, caste acts a factor in recruitment; even in the formally rational Television shows, where fair wins over dark, you notice that those from the lower echelons of the caste system and of the darker, frailer skin, noticed and ignored..Casteism acts therefore in the subterfuge, but exists.

In Villages, the picture is clearer, Casteism is not transmogrified, free to function without the gaze of rationality heaped by modernity, and supported by the bulwark of traditionalism, caste is what that structures village life. The higher your caste, the greater your proximity to resources, the Brahmins hardly work on fields or toil on the lands, they are free to "teach", to "preach" and invariably "usure", and they are the most educated of the lot, they hardly have to move a muscle, the traders, charge and discharge, enjoy the privileges of being the determiners of the village economy and are the first to tide over any village crisis, the peasants are also organized on the basis of caste...the middle and lower peasantry, typically the OBCs, the landless, typically the Untouchables or the SC/STs all hanging on to one another in a pyramidical hierarchial structure, with the topmost having the greatest access to resources, and the bottommost the greatest necessity to toil and physical labour.

You can therefore imagine two pyramids...One pyramid showing the caste hierarchy and the other a reverse pyramid showing the resources..these two pyramids are directly linked..these village structures are almost uniform in North India, while in South India, due to a prolonged churning of society due to the rationality and the anti-Brahman movement in Tamil Nadu, the Communist movement in Kerala and Andhra to some extent, things are slightly changed..there has been a “restructuration” of caste…simultaneously a restructuration of the village structures and the access to resources…which leads to the question of how did this happen? Again..though this is relevant, I think, this question is to be answered in a separate and detailed blog or article, but if one has the patience to read Varshney’s article “Is India becoming more democratic” or Jaffrelot’s “India’s silent revolution” , he can get a picture.

In South India, the non-Brahmin movement and its articulation for social change, was harped on restructuring the iniquitous caste system. Reservations were mandated early in the 20th century, and modern institutions were forced to undergo affirmative action, including the bureaucracy. Eventually, there emerged political power for the lower castes and its political units, and social churning became an inevitable phenomenon, resulting ultimately in the radical transformation of the echelons of power and prestige as well as access to amenities such as education, health and to some extent ownership of land. It was not a direct straight line process, but a rather curved skewed one, but there can be no denying in the changes seen in South Indian society over the years.

If one from, say, the 17th or 18th century visited South India, he could have seen this change, not merely effects of modern institutions but the restructuration of the notions and hierarchies of caste. Deficiencies still remain, what has occurred is not a complete eradication of caste as a system, but a change in the structure and the hierarchy, yet hierarchy and structures still remain. That’s the story of South India.

In North India, however, the political and social movements from the vestiges of the lower castes were late to take off. Firstly, peasant proprietors , after independence acting as a class, tried to resolve their class interests, led by Charan Singh and his Lok Dal in what was a class movement, whilst Ram Manohar Lohia and his “socialists” worked upon to launch a caste based movement, articulating caste based benefits and political power..which has resulted in the strengthening of the OBC parties such as the Janata Dal and later its successors such as the RJD, SP, JD(U) in UP, Bihar and even in Gujarat. Even the pan-Hindu BJP has had to articulate the concerns of the OBCs and that has resulted in the rise of such leaders such as Uma Bharati and Kalyan Singh..the demands and rise of the OBCs therefore has a historical basis and an inevitability to it, owing to the universal adult franchise system that has been put in place and the rise in political power and concomitant social statuses.

There however has not occurred any substantial economic status change and the mixed capitalist system has endured a system of privileges that has stuck with a certain section of the populace, invariably upper caste and historically privileged. Here is where the articulation of reservations have come in. The lower castes and the SC/STs vote overwhelmingly in elections. They are what that determine the fortune of politicians and create leaders and political parties actually in real. If political power cannot help these people gain in their economic statuses, then it would be in jeopardy…no wonder there is a overwhelming consensus for reservations.

Now that one has constructed a historical, social, political and economic profile of the OBCs, even in a rather “blog” like manner and understood the raison d’etre for reservations and its relevance as a weapon for social change and its inevitability, one has to justify the same on certain universal principles of justice, otherwise it would become untenable.

Here is where one has to understand the kind of economic bases that constitute Indian society. India is predominantly a capitalist economy (even if not fully developed) in its urban centers, a semi-feudal set up in rural India predominantly. Social change in such a system, based on tuning of the system from within, is well possible using the tenets of welfare liberalism. Ideal Contractualists such as John Rawls have argued for principles of justice being realized in such societies. Rawls argues for equality of opportunity only to qualify it with the difference principle, wherein he argues for re-ordering of the offices of distribution to that extent that those who have historically been disadvantaged benefit from policies of re-ordering. To this to be possible, he argues for people to think from the original position, by throwing away their identities and arguing for principles of justice by thinking rationally, something that has not been witnessed in the Media, where a war of castes has been unleashed.

Offices, amenities are still invariably lopsided in terms of access and presence, despite changes made by Mandal reservations in the bureaucracy, public institutions etc. Any statistical look at occupation of seats in institutions across India shows a certain lopsidedness, reservations therefore from the Rawlsian axes are tenable. When there is a direct link between access to amenities and economic wealth and the caste system as in Rural India therefore, caste based reservations seem tenable again. Yet this is not the case about urban India. Here is where the creamy layer criterion has to be adopted and implemented.

Again the category of OBCs is a rather loose one. Several dominant castes exist within this OBC category such as the Jats of Punjab, Haryana ( who had been included in the NDA govt.’s tenure) and even the Yadavs etc. A reformulation hence has to be made to strictly match the economic and marginalization profile of OBCs, which is also a true fact, Lodhis, Telis, Vanniyars invariably are marginalized, economically and socially and are deserving of affirmative action.

Next, the notion of “merit”. In a lopsided system, merit is a construct that doesn’t include the social merit that which has been historically and sociologically privileged, creating a certain system, where there are a few who are always de’merited’ and hence incapable of competition. The logic of merit therefore is not sufficient enough.

Thus one can argue for reservations of this form: one which excludes the dominant castes of even the OBCs and creamy layers (deterimined by the simple criteria of yearly income of Rs 1,00,000 which entails someone as a income tax payer). Now the question that arises is whether reservations alone can change society and rid its ills? That’s the most pertinent question.

Despite access to higher education being provided and a share of the amenities pie, that is entailed therefore, no radical restructuring can be made without transformation of ownership of the means of production. Why? Because even if reservations to higher education is provided, people in rural India cannot be in a position to avail it, because they are not even in a position to reach such levels. What therefore is required is land reforms, which provides peasants and others lower in the hierarchy the ability and means to purchase economic power, and also dignity, because the question of land is related to dignity.

State action is invariably therefore required for such things to happen, to enact true forms of social justice, reservations merely qualify as palliatives and helping in the creation of new elites instead of changing the class and caste structure radically. True, a change of elites provides a basis of subjugation of caste as an identifier of prestige and honour, and hence a change in ideas, but mere change in ideas is not enough to answer questions of social justice and the building up of a harmonious society of equitable exchange.

Thus, to conclude, I would suggest that all those who are anti-reservation must realize that the historical processes that have resulted in a situation like today entail that one cannot wish away reservation, as much as one argues against it, there are sociological reasons that are relatively sound enough that buttress the argument for reservations. Then, again, one needs to articulate that even if reservation as a policy is implemented, careful analysis of how exactly it benefits those it intends to benefit, has to be done. At the same time, for those who argue for social justice, it must be understood that mere social change and transfer of elites would not change the societal structure and annihilate caste..a full and thorough blown change in rural India vis-à-vis land ownership and concerted state action are a must. One must therefore strengthen the nation state, at the same time decentralizing power to effect a change in structures in rural areas, and argue for substantial rationality in the functioning of urban modern institutions and not merely push for neo-liberal reforms that perpetuate inequality and exacerbate class and caste tendencies.