We have heard of surgeries in which the stomach gets stitched up with the scissors inside. India’s Reservation regime is one such classic case of the remedy turning out to be more fatal than the disease. If the caste system is deemed pernicious, the quota raj is a higher perversion of human dignity, and worth: Mandal seems a bigger monster than the much-maligned Manu. For, the statutes have only compounded the alleged conspiracy hatched by the shastras!
The need for surgery itself was suspect. Though Reservations in India date back to the 1880s and continued with Constitutional sanction post Independence, the last two decades were most momentous. Mandal in 1990 was a watershed. It was a diabolic trick enacted by ‘Weepy’ Singh, the doctor in distress, to save his own skin rather than to advance social justice. Now, it is nobody’s case that the self-evident ills of society should be left unredressed. Particularly, discriminations of all sorts are crimes by humanity against humanity. While homo sapiens of all hue have constantly endeavoured to invent newer means of putting down their fellow sapiens, caste discrimination is India’s own historical patent. But this genetic and multi-generational injustice cannot be erased in a jiffy. Much as there is a pressing urgency, social justice is a long gestation project and cannot be rushed in with a few strokes of the pen: Dispensing social justice is not like distributing free colour TVs. And it cannot certainly be compressed to fit into the poll timetable of politicians like Weepy in the past or Ks of the present. But, unfortunately, the impatient politicos have always resorted to the scalpel and instant relief instead of therapy and permanent cure. The result is that the already fragmented society has only got further butchered.
And the diagnosis itself looks faulty. In today’s material world economic emancipation is a sure ticket to social emancipation. A fat purse can largely erase the ‘sins’ of a dark skin or a lowly birth. As a corollary, a fair skin or a high birth are no free passes to glory, economic or social. Again, much is made of inter-caste discriminations. But what about intra-caste or intra-family discriminations wherein the rise of an underdog is always resented? Indeed, the human eye is programmed to look up to you-know-who in times of trouble and look down upon others, without discrimination, in good times. Caste, therefore, is not the sole cause of discrimination, much less economic deprivation. If so, how come there is such a huge crust of creamy layer? And pray, why did not the cream percolate to the lower levels, within that caste cake? But more on that later.
Now to another basic question. Can quotas truly address the ‘social’ problem of caste? Is it the right weapon to fell that ‘age-old demon’? Politicians and many social scientists deem so. Double- fault! Reservations have no such power. It is an instrument to alleviate economic backwardness which in my view is the only backwardness that a country and its constitution aspiring for a caste-less society should take cognisance of. Shooting the quota arrow at social backwardness will not just miss the target but will boomerang. There are adequate arguments and evidence, statistical and experiential, to prove that quotas have failed as a social tool.
For instance, how can you abolish caste when you actually make people more conscious of it? If you seek to erase discrimination with discrimination, will not the net discrimination in the kitty either remain the same or become more instead of nil as intended? How can you impart self-respect to the oppressed classes when you convince them that being backward is actually a virtue and a profitable option? And worse, how can you make people develop talent and skill when they are led to believe all they have to do to move forward is to ‘become’ backward? Now to some uncomfortable numbers: At the time of implementation of the Mandal report in 1990 there were about 1300 castes classified as backward. In 2006 the number of OBC’s stood at 2297! Well, population rise is understandable. But how can Mandal, or for that matter, the mastermind Manu, account for the rise in the number of castes? Clearly, there is an incentive to declare oneself as backward. Or it may be that post-Mandal, more castes have really become backward. Whatever, given the lure of quotas it looks we must start thinking of a ‘musical chair’ system.
TN is indeed a proud pioneer of the quota game. And like many of the ills that plague the State today, this too can be traced to the founding grand-fathers of the Justice Party. The J party was launched, not by impoverished or ostracised dravidians, but by socially well-entrenched and well-to-do individuals. ‘Justice’ in their scheme of things meant eradicating Brahmin domination and if possible Brahmins themselves and had nothing to do with emancipation of the truly oppressed like Dalits. Reason why the truly oppressed remain truly oppressed even today though their OBC masters have secured ‘justice’ for themselves. Double tumblers thrive without any Aryan help! And the creamy layer is the thickest in TN. The Apex Court’s writ that the layer be kept out of the quota loop will doubtless hit the elite OBCs hard because they are the ones most likely to pitch for IIMs and IITs. But the entire TN political class is clamouring against their exclusion. Now how can the champions of the poor also be championing the cause of the creamy layer? The seamy side of creamy layer politics only proves that social justice rhetoric here is as dubious as rationalism.
Some legal and social pundits claim that by excluding the creamy layer the SC has taken a step in the direction of economic criteria. In which case, it is a very tentative step because caste continues to be the ‘identifying’ factor. Why not go the whole hog before the OBC count mimics the inflation rate or before we start importing castes? Indeed, if the Constitutional goal of a society sans discrimination has to be achieved, we have to perforce begin with the scrapping of caste-based reservations. But yet another plum opportunity has been missed and, worse, messed. Alas, the caste quota scissors seem to be embedded pretty deep. And they are getting sharper by the day!
e-mail the writer at [email protected]