Reviving Reservations: Achieving Social Justice or Garnering Votes?
It was 1990; I was only 14 when I joined the anti-Mandal agitations.
May be it was just our curiosity rather any objective that drove some of kids like us to march along the streets in our home town joining hands with our elderly fraternity against the Mandal commission.
Road blockades, protest rallies, and heated speeches of local student leaders were the features of those days.
We never bothered raising slogans against Mandal commission and even then Prime Minister V P Singh, without proper knowledge of what that whole controversy was all about.
The agitations ran for quite some time and a number of violent incidents used to be in the headlines during that period.
Perhaps, in those days, we had just been a score of kids desperate to have something to get angry about.
Those days of childhood have gone, the youth ness brought many a chances to face the reality and understand the perplexity of reservations and politics played over this very element, which divides the nation.
Now I realize that, in those days, we weren't so wrong in joining the anti-Mandal protests.
Our reasons to get involved in those protests then, may have been uneducated and less informed, but we had fought for the right side.
The recent proposal made by Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh to increase reservations from the present 22.
5 per cent to 49.
5 per cent for OBCs in prestigious educational institutions like IITs and IIMs and other institutes of higher education is just brewing up a storm now.
It seems as if the Mandal politics of 1980s has revisited once again.
Students from all spectrums have reacted with shock and labelled it as the murder of merit.
And the controversy has been dubbed as Mandal-II.
The Election Commission has also come on its toe to find out whether the announcement has anything to do with the assembly elections in 5 states.
Promptly taking note of it, the Commission sent notices to the Minister, treating his statement prima facie as violation of the model code of conduct.
The UPA government has made it clear that the final decision on this issue will be taken after the elections.
But the opposition mainly BJP has attacked the government over this issue accusing UPA for dividing the nation on caste basis, while Samajwadi Party Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has spoken in favour of this reservation.
Though the government is denying the opposition charges, it seems as if the UPA government is trying its best to sell this idea.
This can be realised from the recent call of Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh to the private sector to adopt reservation policies in their jobs too.
But the India Inc.
has declined this proposal very candidly saying a big No, at least for now.
As was the case in 1990, the debate is multi-dimensional and its qualitative aspects range from the constructive to the frivolous to the sinister.
The fire, as expected, has just started to blaze and Medicos took it on streets against the reservation in Delhi, Mumbai and other places in the country.
It's just the beginning; there are lots more in the store to come.
Mandal Commission-Flash Back The Mandal Commission led by B P Mandal had submitted its report to then Home Minister Giani Zail Singh on December 30, 1980 but it was lying in the dust vaults of Home ministry for exactly a decade.
All of a sudden V P Sigh, then Prime Minister opened the lid in 1990 and the Mandal Commission Report became the single-most heated topic of controversy and discussion.
There was total confusion in the political spectrum and V P Singh was accused for playing the worst part of opportunism.
No major party supported the move and BJP leader L K Advani launched a Rath Yatra opposing this move perhaps, sensing a serious threat to its 'upper' caste constituencies.
Those were the days of high tension and emotions.
New power equations emerged and older ones were dissolving, the entire polity was in turmoil.
The Indian politics saw the rising of some OBC leaders and never before in the history of Indian politics, such a sea change had occurred.
This was all because of the implementation of Mandal report.
Scholars who have analyzed this controversy very keenly, are of the opinion that the Mandal Commission report was, in fact, 'demandalised during the very process of its implementation.
It is questioned again and again that why out of dozen or so recommendations, only one pertaining to reservation was picked up by the V P Singh government.
There were so many far-reaching recommendations regarding structural changes in the land tenure system, and institutional reforms for the educational and economic uplift of the OBCs, which were not even noticed.
Reservation was chosen because it had the highest visibility and attracted immediate attention.
Who are the real beneficiaries? The very objective of the Mandal Commission report was for the creation of a more egalitarian society.
But the selective and populist approach introduced a sense of inequality among the OBCs themselves.
If equal attention had been paid to strengthening the roots and branches of the tree of social justice and efforts were made to strengthen to base of the deprived sections of the society; the results would have been different.
The backward could have been pushed to stand themselves on their feet instead of perennially making them dependent on the crutch of reservation.
Chandra Bhanu Prasad, the ideologue of Dalits, in an article (The Hindustan Times, dt-12/04/2006), has cited a reason why the Mandal Commission Report was not a product of total consensus among the members of the Mandal Commission.
He says that, the only Dalit member of the Mandal Commission, L R Naik had raised an apprehension about the very nature of the report.
Naik in his note pointed out that OBCs are of two large social blocks- land owned OBCs who he describes as intermediate backward classes and artisan OBCs or the depressed backward classes.
The intermediate or upper OBCs are relatively powerful while the depressed backward classes or the most backward classes (MBCs) remain economically marginalized.
The MBCs, who have gradually become agricultural labourers with the disappearance of their trade, spread across the nation in very small groups, and form 50 per cent of the total OBC population.
They never became the political decisive because of their fragmented nature of habitations, while the upper OBCs control most of the politics at the grass root level.
In comparison to the MBCs, the upper OBCs are economically healthy population and enjoy all the access to live a standard life.
Naik had feared that if the reservation were implemented, the MBCs wouldn't be able to get the benefits, as they are voiceless and they do not enjoy any political backing.
In the other hand, the upper OBCs (the creamy layer) who are no way less privileged than to general category will only get the benefits.
But his warnings were underestimated by the men in power thinking them as minuscule observations and taken up the juicy element for immediate taste.
As a result, the creamy layer who had already access to good educational facilities did outperform their lesser-privileged peers at competitive examinations within the reserved quota.
In the name of social justice, MBCs left as social orphans and others swallowed all the fruits of the reservation politics.
Thus, in this sense, Mandal hurts even Dalits.
In fact, the Mandal Report was quite a thoughtful product and aimed at empowering the deprived by giving them access to political power, educational and professional equality.
This was happened in a limited way, as evidenced by the manner in which every political party is wooing the OBCs by promising them all sorts of concessions.
But the process of empowerment is seriously flawed.
A chunk of backward leaders occupied most of the positions and the really deprived communities have been left high and dry.
There is hardly a political leader who is highly backward else in the country.
The likes of Lalu Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav or Nitish Kumar are all belonging to upper layer of OBC.
It would be, hence, very right to say that the upper backward castes have been benefiting from this whole system of reservation.
And the downtrodden remains the same.
What we have gained? Since the implementation of Mandal recommendations, statistics of last 15 years show that more than 80% of Dalit students never make it to pass class -X, and more than 80% of reserved seats in vocational institutions remain unused.
According to India Today, 50 per cent of the seats reserved for SCs and STs remain vacant while 25% students admitted through quotas in vocational institutions quit midway.
At present about 1 lakh-estimated number of government jobs under quota are lying vacant across the nation.
If this is the outcome, why people cry for reservations? It would be wise to start pushing backwards from the ground level that is from school level rather creating quotas at the higher level.
About 60 students compete for a single IIT seat right now.
There should be the demand for more premier engineering institutions rather than this mad scramble for a handful of seats? If we had created an efficient and equal government school model, like the neighbourhood schools in west, the entire debate may have been irrelevant.
The present economic boom is the result of visionary reforms made in 1990s.
Like that there is also a need of reform in the entire education system in India now.
If we increase the number of seats and number of premier institutes, there won't be any agitation or demand for the reservation to get a seat.
Government has to think on it and increase its spending on creating quality educational institutions.
If there is reasonable space to sit, nobody will hit the other for getting him a place.
Now, The entire India seems to have been divided on this issue of reservation.
If half of the population (backward) demands and supports reservation another half opposes it at the same degree.
The Indian politics is deeply mobilized by the caste bias.
Every Indian wants to know his caste even before he learns what his blood group is.
How much social justice it will achieve if reservation in private sector is adopted? If the professional skills will be evaluated on caste basis, it's well anticipated what would be the quality of this sector then.
It is a great concern for the India Inc.
right now.
Now time has come that government should not prefer a quick-fix solution to uplift the under-privileged, rather it ought to address the grass root level problems.
The economic rise of India is driving it towards becoming one of the super powers in the world.
But on the foundations of a divided society, can it become so powerful.
The UPA government's sudden desire to correct the social balance and bring the so-called social justice can only be seen as vote bank politics.
It has to rise beyond the politics and think as prudent as one layman thinks.
But till then, this current debate will continue and media will get its most wanted topic of coverage.
May be it was just our curiosity rather any objective that drove some of kids like us to march along the streets in our home town joining hands with our elderly fraternity against the Mandal commission.
Road blockades, protest rallies, and heated speeches of local student leaders were the features of those days.
We never bothered raising slogans against Mandal commission and even then Prime Minister V P Singh, without proper knowledge of what that whole controversy was all about.
The agitations ran for quite some time and a number of violent incidents used to be in the headlines during that period.
Perhaps, in those days, we had just been a score of kids desperate to have something to get angry about.
Those days of childhood have gone, the youth ness brought many a chances to face the reality and understand the perplexity of reservations and politics played over this very element, which divides the nation.
Now I realize that, in those days, we weren't so wrong in joining the anti-Mandal protests.
Our reasons to get involved in those protests then, may have been uneducated and less informed, but we had fought for the right side.
The recent proposal made by Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh to increase reservations from the present 22.
5 per cent to 49.
5 per cent for OBCs in prestigious educational institutions like IITs and IIMs and other institutes of higher education is just brewing up a storm now.
It seems as if the Mandal politics of 1980s has revisited once again.
Students from all spectrums have reacted with shock and labelled it as the murder of merit.
And the controversy has been dubbed as Mandal-II.
The Election Commission has also come on its toe to find out whether the announcement has anything to do with the assembly elections in 5 states.
Promptly taking note of it, the Commission sent notices to the Minister, treating his statement prima facie as violation of the model code of conduct.
The UPA government has made it clear that the final decision on this issue will be taken after the elections.
But the opposition mainly BJP has attacked the government over this issue accusing UPA for dividing the nation on caste basis, while Samajwadi Party Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav has spoken in favour of this reservation.
Though the government is denying the opposition charges, it seems as if the UPA government is trying its best to sell this idea.
This can be realised from the recent call of Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh to the private sector to adopt reservation policies in their jobs too.
But the India Inc.
has declined this proposal very candidly saying a big No, at least for now.
As was the case in 1990, the debate is multi-dimensional and its qualitative aspects range from the constructive to the frivolous to the sinister.
The fire, as expected, has just started to blaze and Medicos took it on streets against the reservation in Delhi, Mumbai and other places in the country.
It's just the beginning; there are lots more in the store to come.
Mandal Commission-Flash Back The Mandal Commission led by B P Mandal had submitted its report to then Home Minister Giani Zail Singh on December 30, 1980 but it was lying in the dust vaults of Home ministry for exactly a decade.
All of a sudden V P Sigh, then Prime Minister opened the lid in 1990 and the Mandal Commission Report became the single-most heated topic of controversy and discussion.
There was total confusion in the political spectrum and V P Singh was accused for playing the worst part of opportunism.
No major party supported the move and BJP leader L K Advani launched a Rath Yatra opposing this move perhaps, sensing a serious threat to its 'upper' caste constituencies.
Those were the days of high tension and emotions.
New power equations emerged and older ones were dissolving, the entire polity was in turmoil.
The Indian politics saw the rising of some OBC leaders and never before in the history of Indian politics, such a sea change had occurred.
This was all because of the implementation of Mandal report.
Scholars who have analyzed this controversy very keenly, are of the opinion that the Mandal Commission report was, in fact, 'demandalised during the very process of its implementation.
It is questioned again and again that why out of dozen or so recommendations, only one pertaining to reservation was picked up by the V P Singh government.
There were so many far-reaching recommendations regarding structural changes in the land tenure system, and institutional reforms for the educational and economic uplift of the OBCs, which were not even noticed.
Reservation was chosen because it had the highest visibility and attracted immediate attention.
Who are the real beneficiaries? The very objective of the Mandal Commission report was for the creation of a more egalitarian society.
But the selective and populist approach introduced a sense of inequality among the OBCs themselves.
If equal attention had been paid to strengthening the roots and branches of the tree of social justice and efforts were made to strengthen to base of the deprived sections of the society; the results would have been different.
The backward could have been pushed to stand themselves on their feet instead of perennially making them dependent on the crutch of reservation.
Chandra Bhanu Prasad, the ideologue of Dalits, in an article (The Hindustan Times, dt-12/04/2006), has cited a reason why the Mandal Commission Report was not a product of total consensus among the members of the Mandal Commission.
He says that, the only Dalit member of the Mandal Commission, L R Naik had raised an apprehension about the very nature of the report.
Naik in his note pointed out that OBCs are of two large social blocks- land owned OBCs who he describes as intermediate backward classes and artisan OBCs or the depressed backward classes.
The intermediate or upper OBCs are relatively powerful while the depressed backward classes or the most backward classes (MBCs) remain economically marginalized.
The MBCs, who have gradually become agricultural labourers with the disappearance of their trade, spread across the nation in very small groups, and form 50 per cent of the total OBC population.
They never became the political decisive because of their fragmented nature of habitations, while the upper OBCs control most of the politics at the grass root level.
In comparison to the MBCs, the upper OBCs are economically healthy population and enjoy all the access to live a standard life.
Naik had feared that if the reservation were implemented, the MBCs wouldn't be able to get the benefits, as they are voiceless and they do not enjoy any political backing.
In the other hand, the upper OBCs (the creamy layer) who are no way less privileged than to general category will only get the benefits.
But his warnings were underestimated by the men in power thinking them as minuscule observations and taken up the juicy element for immediate taste.
As a result, the creamy layer who had already access to good educational facilities did outperform their lesser-privileged peers at competitive examinations within the reserved quota.
In the name of social justice, MBCs left as social orphans and others swallowed all the fruits of the reservation politics.
Thus, in this sense, Mandal hurts even Dalits.
In fact, the Mandal Report was quite a thoughtful product and aimed at empowering the deprived by giving them access to political power, educational and professional equality.
This was happened in a limited way, as evidenced by the manner in which every political party is wooing the OBCs by promising them all sorts of concessions.
But the process of empowerment is seriously flawed.
A chunk of backward leaders occupied most of the positions and the really deprived communities have been left high and dry.
There is hardly a political leader who is highly backward else in the country.
The likes of Lalu Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav or Nitish Kumar are all belonging to upper layer of OBC.
It would be, hence, very right to say that the upper backward castes have been benefiting from this whole system of reservation.
And the downtrodden remains the same.
What we have gained? Since the implementation of Mandal recommendations, statistics of last 15 years show that more than 80% of Dalit students never make it to pass class -X, and more than 80% of reserved seats in vocational institutions remain unused.
According to India Today, 50 per cent of the seats reserved for SCs and STs remain vacant while 25% students admitted through quotas in vocational institutions quit midway.
At present about 1 lakh-estimated number of government jobs under quota are lying vacant across the nation.
If this is the outcome, why people cry for reservations? It would be wise to start pushing backwards from the ground level that is from school level rather creating quotas at the higher level.
About 60 students compete for a single IIT seat right now.
There should be the demand for more premier engineering institutions rather than this mad scramble for a handful of seats? If we had created an efficient and equal government school model, like the neighbourhood schools in west, the entire debate may have been irrelevant.
The present economic boom is the result of visionary reforms made in 1990s.
Like that there is also a need of reform in the entire education system in India now.
If we increase the number of seats and number of premier institutes, there won't be any agitation or demand for the reservation to get a seat.
Government has to think on it and increase its spending on creating quality educational institutions.
If there is reasonable space to sit, nobody will hit the other for getting him a place.
Now, The entire India seems to have been divided on this issue of reservation.
If half of the population (backward) demands and supports reservation another half opposes it at the same degree.
The Indian politics is deeply mobilized by the caste bias.
Every Indian wants to know his caste even before he learns what his blood group is.
How much social justice it will achieve if reservation in private sector is adopted? If the professional skills will be evaluated on caste basis, it's well anticipated what would be the quality of this sector then.
It is a great concern for the India Inc.
right now.
Now time has come that government should not prefer a quick-fix solution to uplift the under-privileged, rather it ought to address the grass root level problems.
The economic rise of India is driving it towards becoming one of the super powers in the world.
But on the foundations of a divided society, can it become so powerful.
The UPA government's sudden desire to correct the social balance and bring the so-called social justice can only be seen as vote bank politics.
It has to rise beyond the politics and think as prudent as one layman thinks.
But till then, this current debate will continue and media will get its most wanted topic of coverage.
