It was time someone pricked the social justice hot air balloon floated by the cynical ‘weepy’ Singh as a bogey to distract the nation’s attention from his tottering regime. It did not help him to preserve his perch and power, for he fell in 11 months, but the demented act has paralysed the country ever after. Today’s politicos, cutting across parties, are addicted to quotas, having tasted electoral blood to their enduring benefit. Many champions of the poor have since rode the wave and ambled ashore to positions of power and pelf, but the socially disadvantaged themselves have only receded like those waves to the depths. Victims of their saviours, really!
What the SC has done now is to call the bluff of such politics by calling for the true statistics about backwardness. It has made a legitimate case for first identifying the criteria for backwardness, then singling out the real back ward populace and then targetting the reservations to the truly deserving, leaving out the creamy layer. The SC has also talked of a time frame for reservations. The caste data on which the government has made out its current policy is the 1931 census. To believe that those figures could still be valid, one has to be nuts or … an Arjun Singh! The apex court has also rightly rejected the government’s argument that the general seats would not be affected as the total seats would be increased. It beats one what percentages are all about then!
On the qualitative front, the SC has also hit out at vote-bank politics and the tendency to assert backwardness as a virtue. Indeed, in India, the reigning mantra is that one has to ‘become backward’ to move forward in life! It is caste certificates that matter, not true inadequacy. The SC now wants such inadequacy to be factually verified and established on firm foundations. This can only be good news for the truly oppressed.
But this is certainly bad news for the UPA in particular and politicos as a whole. Collecting data of such magnitude would take years. Now how would that fit their own immediate electoral time-table or short-term calculations? They would however seek to put on a lofty cloak and make it seem like an exalted debate between Parliament and Judiciary. The competitive exhibitionism will commence and crocodile tears will flow profusely.
In TN, the charade is already on, with a State-sponsored Bandh. As if the Government works on other days! Here, the quota is a whopping 69%, much above the Mandal mandate.The current SC verdict is about OBC reservations for centrally-funded higher educational institutions, and is not relevent for the State administration. Matter of principle, the paragons would pronounce. Pray, how does screwing up the daily lives of scores of citizens, the poor included, enhance the cause of social justice?Indeed, itwould have been quite rational if the bandh was on April 1. After all the entire show is only to fool the gullible!.
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