Any opposition to reservations is deemed a typi-cally smug middle-class reaction and conspiracy. In the same vein, all pro-reservation voices are dubbed populist and politically motivated. While the truth in these extreme categorisations cannot be denied altogether, yet such polarisations have vitiated the issue; Arjun Singh’s foolhardiness is matched only by the striking doctors’ callousness. The issue itself remains under intensive care with just temporary cures on offer.
Despite the feverish and threadbare debate in media and academic circles and meticulous research by scholars and social scientists, it is most likely all that enlightenment and empirical data will pass over the heads of policy-makers. Instead only emotional, knee-jerk, symbolic and short-sighted decision-making will prevail. Particuarly painful and pathetic is the summary dismissal of the case for reservations on economic criteria instead of on caste basis. After all, poverty knows no caste, colour or creed.
It is an undeniable fact that large sections of the populace have not just been historically left out of the social mainstream but have also been severely discriminated against. That the plight of those teeming millions needs to be addressed is not a concession but a kind of conscience cleaning for ones who are better off. But the problem started in the identification of those who were in dire need of positive emancipation measures (affirmative action, in modern parlance). What is the test of backwardness? While it is true that some castes and tribes were perennially wallowing in backwardness en masse, oppressed people were/are found in all castes. But caste nomenclatures, rather than empty stomachs, became the criteria for entitlement of such special measures.With that first fatal folly, what was ordained as a temporary emancipation measure in the Constitution has progressively become entrenched as not just an irrevocable public policy and political ploy but with unchangeable parameters too, oblivious to changed socio-economic realities.
In an increasingly material world, it is economic condition and not caste that determines one’s social status. Today, no five star hotel will deny entry to a Dalit, if he can pay for the buffet; and no free lunches for a Brahmin or Thakur if his pocket is empty. Period. That is from society’s point of view. Even at the individual level, if economic aspirations are realised, inhibitions of hailing from a so-called low caste, vanish in a jiffy. Really, in this country, caste determines an individual’s identity: his roots, his way of life and his sense of belonging to a community. Backward or Forward, people intrinsically are proud of their caste. There are also instances where caste identity has acted as propellants of economic growth, bringing in its wake social status too to them. The social walls were broken without aid of reservations.
This is not to deny the prevalence of caste discriminations even today. It is just that economic discrimination is more painful and money is often the balm that soothes and heals even such insults. Again, is there not discrimination within a caste itself? Nothing hurts an individual more than being spurned by his own castemen. But human nature being what it is, every caste has its own class hierarchy with the haves in them often looking down upon the have-nots. The yearning for financial upward mobility of the poor is driven, besides material needs, by an yearning for recognition by their own caste peers. After all, from birth to marriage to death, it is one’s clan, kinsmen and castemen who count most and it is to them that an individual is impelled to prove his worth.
Even at the macro level, economic growth determines a nation’s success and status in the global arena. But, while creation of wealth is a prime test, still a country would have failed if the disparities in wealth distribution are stark and unequal. One can boast of 8 per cent growth in Davos and Washington, but if that growth has bypassed huge swathes of the population, it is no growth at all. Sixty years of economic policies, first socialist and now reformist, have failed to address the financial aspirations of the poorest of poor, who are spread out over all castes. Any system of redressal or affirmative action that ignores the plight of the ‘economically’ backward and fails to bridge the economic divide cannot truly claim to be equitable, in the modern milieu where monetary security counts foremost. On the contrary, a quota system, given that it is a must, that seeks to unite the poor of all castes under one umbrella, delivers to them their due and empowers them, would indeed be a great counter balance against the ‘bane of casteism’ and a giant stride towards an egalitarian society the much touted dream of poets, politicos, pundits and people alike!
By these standards, the current quota disposition is a mighty anomaly. And the proposed ‘coups’ like reservations in private sector and quotas for minorities, would make the system truly monstrous. Instead of subsidising primary education, offering financial incentives or scholarships and spurring the growth of quality human resource by dangling the carrot of economic emancipation, the continuing trend of sops, doles and lifetime guarantees, from education to jobs to promotion to retirement, just based on caste, would only create a sub-standard nation, lazy to boot and parasitical to root.
Added to that is the wishful parade of political polemics that claim to erase an injustice of ‘three thousand year old’ vintage in just a few decades. Even advanced countries like America took over two hundred years to evolve a regime of civil liberties and equality of opportunities, constitutionally and socially. The burden of social rectification cannot be cast on just one generation and again it has to be calibrated to infrastructure creation, in terms of both education and employment, so that fresh imbalances are obviated. But successive governments and the politicians who run them have clearly goofed here. And to hide their failure and still remain in business, they sell dreams to the dumb masses. After all their timetable for power cannot span generations. It does not seem to matter to them that it only amounts to shifting inequalities from one section to another, both poor, the gross total inequalities remaining constant.
One is only reminded of the fabled monkey and the two cats!
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