The recent decisions of the Supreme Court on various aspects of the policy on reservation in public employment and preferential access of the members of the SC and the ST to higher education have brought the long-simmering debate to the boil once again.
While it has been politically obligatory for the Parliament to extend reservation in legislatures and public services for the SC and the ST every 10 years for another 10 years and while routinely the Central Government and various State Governments have added to their OBC lists, in the latest instance by adding the Jats of Rajasthan, there has been increasing resistance, political, bureaucratic and judicial to any demand for reservation for Muslims, a religious. minority, to extension of reservation for the OBC's to higher education and legislatures and for giving the SC's and ST's their due share even in higher echelons of the Government.
Reservation as it obtains, is applied unevenly. The power structure gives way under pressure but very reluctantly and always finding a way to nullify or at least minimise the benefits at every turn.
Apart from the cult of merit, the stock arguments used to defeat the natural and legitimate aspiration of the emergent groups for equitable participation and sharing power are the arbitrary and unreasonable 50% rule, the constitutionally untenable argument against classification by religion, the alleged social divisiveness of the policy of reservation based on group identity, the social turmoil caused in the bureaucratic and academic hierarchy by reservation in promotion, the sacrosanct character of the academic cloister and the judicial chamber and the inequity in not extending reservation to backward sections of the higher social groups.
Slowly the lower social groups begin to realise that they have been fobbed off with far less than their due, sometimes with nothing, that 50 years after independence the high castes continue to dominate politics, administration, commerce and industry, professions, law, journalism, education. Indeed the Backward Classes have been outright cheated ..
In their natural reaction, they make extreme demands on the system which are sometimes laughed out of court. The ground reality is that by a convergence of economic and political factors, a section of the Shudras stand coopted in the ruling classes, and in a sense and upto a point, the higher castes are prepared to divide the share of the deprived with them. Thus over 50 years, while the high castes have been forced out of a part of what they considered to be their patrimony, the beneficiaries have neither been the SC, certainly not the Scheduled Tribes, nor the lower Shudras. Land holding Shudras – the Yadavas, the Kurmis and the Koeris and their counterparts in all other States - have prospered.
Another ground reality is that untouchability has more or less disappeared and economic mobility, horizontal and vertical, has reduced social disabilities. Indeed given political equality, economic and educational status determine the social status of any Backward Class. Social status comes out of education, property and proximity to the power structure.
A third ground reality is the continued educational backwardness of the Backward Classes, particularly the SC and the ST. This is primarily due to the non-fulfillment of the only time-bound Directive of State Policy in the Constitution - universalisation of elementary education within 10 years. Had education been universalised, it would have thrown up millions of educated youngmen and women, qualified to enter in all fields of life.
A fourth ground reality is the fact that every social group, whatever its identity in terms of religion, caste or race or language, has its backward section. So there are Brahmins, Rajputs and Vaishyas, Yadavas, Kurmis and Kayasthas living below the poverty line, who own next to nothing, who are undereducated and powerless. The difference among them lies in that the proportion of the deprived goes down as one goes up the social ladder.
Another ground reality which has cost heartburning on both sides and a loss to the nation is the rising level of the backlog - the reserved posts which remain unfilled for lack of qualified candidates. The only rational approach would be not to pile up the backlog but to maximise educational facilities, specially at the university level. In the long run, only through universal school education can the backward classes acquire a wide enough base to throw up adequate number of candidates who have the minimum prescribed qualifications to occupy the reserved quota.
Under a democratic system, a plural society with historic clean age lines and fissures, long-suppressed identities begin to surface and demand their share of the national resources, their place in the power structure, their access to the goods and services that the society offers. This self-conscious assertion is not divisive because every section realises the interdependence of the social groups to make the system move and produce results for each to share. Social justice can never be divisive, it integrates all the people for a common purpose. Only social injustice divides because those who are deprived or feel cheated or remain handicapped are alienated and cannot offer their best.
Reservation is, therefore, an essential and reliable tool of social engineering to ensure that educational, economic, social and political disparities among various classes or sections of the people diminish over a period of time and the average of any parameter for any section, more or less, approximates to the average of the whole.
50 years after independence, with the experience gained in various states, time has come to universalise Reservation, not only in public employment including Judiciary, Armed Forces and Public Sector but in representation in legislature, in higher education, in distribution of development outlay and welfare benefits and in flow of development resources, particularly bank credit.
A basic course correction is called for in many aspects of the theory and practice of Reservation.
The first is the concept of Social Group. Any self-conscious identifiable collectivity, whatever the basis of its identity - religion, caste, sub-castes, language, race, geographical origin - occupying measurable space in the area of operation of the reservation policy - the national territory, the state, the district, the block or the panchayat should qualify. For purely administrative reasons, only social groups which form at least 1% or so of the population within the operational area may be considered. Mini- and micro-groups may either aggregate with each other or associate themselves with a larger group of their choice.
The second is the concept of Backwardness. Measurement of backwardness should be based on nationally accepted parameters - rate of literacy, number of graduates per unit of population, per capita income, land holding, housing, representation in public employment, membership of rural cooperative societies, representation in panchayats, Zila Parishad, state and union legislatures, life expectancy at birth, infant mortality, telephone and car, radio and TV sets. The list can be endless but a representative set of parameters can be formulated by experts, keeping in view that the relevant information should be easily available for the people in the area of operation as a whole and easily collectable for each social group in the area. A group's average may be higher or lower than the area average in each parameter. A group which returns more higher averages than lower is Forward; the opposite is Backward.
Depending on the weightage given to various parameters, it should be possible to work out the backwardness of each social group relative to the most backward. The relative backwardness of each group may then be expressed in terms of an Index of Backwardness with, that of the SC/ST as 100. It will be found that even the most Forward Group has a Backward Section; its index may be as low as 10. It should then be possible to work out the legitimate 'quota' of that group by multiplying its population percentage with its index of backwardness. Thus if a group forms 20% of the population and its Index of Backwardness is 50, the quota would 20 X 50/100= 10%.
The fourth question is: who should benefit from the quota. Here comes in the Creamy Layer. Even in the most Backward group, there is a Forward Section which has influence, access and affluence. The social impact of reservation is nullified, if this forward section usurps or absorbs all the benefits. Hence it is essential to lay down that the quota available to a social group is meant only for those individuals who come from the families which are themselves backward. Some simple tests can be visualised - land ownership, actual occupation, per capita income. The quota must help those who deserve the preferential treatment. There is no reason why the children of a gazetted government servant or prosperous businessman or influential legislator should be permitted to benefit from the reservation quota. This is what the Supreme Court called the Creamy Layer. What is needed is a uniform, nationally acceptable criteria.
The argument in any case is that the benefit should travel as widely and as deeply through the backward mass as possible. In this connection, it has also been suggested that no individual or family should benefit from reservation more than once.
Should there be a maximum limit to reservation? Once we adopt a scientific approach for determining the quota for various social groups, there has to be a flexible limit; it cannot be arbitrarily prescribed. The limit has to be the sum total of all the quotas at that level, in the given panchayat, block, district or state or the country. If the judiciary insists, the Constitution should be amended, so that all social groups enjoy a fair and equal opportunity. There is no earthly reason why the OBCs should have a quota equivalent to half their population. There is also no point in playing an endless political game of adding on more and more groups to the lists without increasing the quota.
Now we come to the question of minimum qualification for admission to professional courses or higher education or for public employment. It is my considered view that universalisation of education is the key to the problem and that the prescribed qualification should apply uniformly. Until then the State should provide for special facilities to prepare the youth from the backward sections of all groups and thus ensure equality of opportunity.
Theoretically a Government servant or a student who has been admitted to the service or course under a quota should not be entitled to successive upward pushes; he has to compete his way through the ladder. The problem, however, arises that those who control the promotion in service or selection for higher courses either not have any objective standards or nurse bias. My suggestion is that if there is no reservation in promotion, the promotion must be based on the principle of fitness-cum-seniority, so that the relative seniority is maintained by and large.
As for admission to higher courses, no easy answer is possible. One approach can be to reduce the scarcity value by increasing the number of seats. In any case, once a person has the basic qualification such as MBBS, he should compete on equal terms for higher courses.
For any rational application of the Reservation policy, it is imperative to have a Caste Census - not only to determine the population and the relevant socio-economic paramters and therefore, the quota at a given point in time, but to evaluate the impact of Reservation every 10 years. It is obvious that as development goes up, the quotas will go down and hopefully the General Pool shall increase.
Another hot issue arises out of the proposal to have 33% reservation for women in the legislature. This is seen by the OBCs and the Muslims as a political manoeuvre by the higher castes to regain the over-representation they have steadily lost to the B.C.'s. Women's quota must be shared equitably with the OBCs and the minorities in proportion to their population. It should not be imposed suddenly but incrementally, raised by 5% every 5 years from about 15% to 50%. In the meantime, the political parties must be obliged by law to include women in their organisational structure and election lists and thu actively promote their participation in politics.
50 years after the initiative for reservation, we are forced to the conclusion that the policy of positive affirmation through written into the Constitution, was only fitfully and half-heartedly applied and every opportunity was seized to erode it, to dilute it and to give it a bad name.
Today, the deprived groups are apprehensive that under the garb of review, the Constitutional provisions themselves may be repealed. This would be a national tragedy because not only will social harmony receive a fatal blow but social conflict may stalk the land.
Times has come for those who believe in social justice and consider reservation a valuable tool for social engineering, to formulate appropriate amendments to the Constitution and a view to introduce Universal Proportional Reservation and to eliminate the lacunae as well as the excesses and the deception that have been committed in its name.
Let us begin with an open heart, an open mind and above all, open arms, to embrace everyone and revive the spirit of EQUALITY, JUSTICE and FRATERNITY which permeates our Constitution.
New Delhi,
1" December, 1999
