One More Reservation
By Anand Teltumbde
08 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org
It is very symbolic that the ire of people built up against price rise
all over the country was so easily punctured by the government with
the Women's Reservation Bill. Unlike earlier times in its tumultuous
history of 14 years, it has already been passed in the Rajya Sabha and
could well be passed in the Lok Sabha but for the opposition of Yadavs
and Mayawati. The UPA has decided to table it in the next session,
perhaps to use it to overcome another crisis. Reservation in this
country has proved to be a potent weapon in the hands of ruling
classes to raise public passion and control political barometer.
Indeed it is strategic that UPA holds on to it as long as possible.
Because if it is passed and made into law, it will lose a weapon in
hand until it creates another reservation bill. Of course, there is no
dearth of demands for reservation; going by the trend they may rather
outlive the polity.
From an Exception to Proliferation
The provision of reservation came as an exception to the fundamental
right to equality in favour of the scheduled castes (SCs), who
suffered deep entrenched social prejudice against them and the
scheduled tribes (STs), who were physically detached from the
mainstream society and potentially faced the same fate as the
scheduled castes. Prejudice was such that no matter what attributes
they possessed, the society would not accept them anywhere other than
where they were traditionally supposed to be. The reservations to the
SCs, as a matter of fact had come through the colonial times and it
was just a matter of continuation of what already existed post
independence. To that was added the STs. The Constitution makers
failed to attribute this exception to the disability of the Indian
society to treat its own people equal and vaguely associated it with
backwardness of these communities. Had it done so, the reservation
would have had self terminating logic: motivating the larger society
to do away this disability and hence the reservation itself at the
earliest possible time. Unfortunately, the way it is couched, has made
the reservations self perpetuating.
Apart from the reservations to the SCs and STs, the Constitution
empowered the state to make special provisions for the advancement of
the classes which are 'socially and educationally backward'. The
special measures do not necessarily mean replication of the quota
system as for the SCs and STs. But its default meaning was taken as
such by politicians to forge reservation into a political weapon to
manipulate people. The cardinal criterion for reservation in a country
like India characterized by pervasive backwardness can only be the
insurmountable social prejudice, which leaves no other viable option
than an exceptional measure such as the countervailing force of the
state to counter it. Quota verily represents that force. This
criterion cannot be diluted to backwardness. The special measures to
be taken for others to remove the ubiquitous backwardness could well
be to ensure that the few traditional elites do not get further
enriched by the developmental investments of the states at the cost of
multitude of masses. Despite reservation galore, this is precisely
what has not happened in India. The rich have been getting richer and
the poor poorer.
With huge empowerment of the landed middle castes as a result of the
post-independence Nehruvian modernist project comprising land reforms
and the green revolution, among others, drastically changed the course
of politics in the country. The elite of these amorphous middle castes
taking advantage of the caste ties and the electoral system
consolidated themselves to wield enormous economic, social and
political power and threatened the monopoly of the traditional ruling
castes. The phenomena of emergence of regional parties from mid 1960s
and inauguration of coalition era from mid 1970s is manifestation of
this process. The main plank of their consolidation was the rhetoric
against the upper castes and the hatred for Dalits, perceived as
unduly pampered with reservation. The elites of the BCs could
skillfully transform the popular grudge against reservations for the
SCs and STs into the passion for their extension to other backward
castes, thus setting into motion the competitive backwardness to claim
reservation.
The Mandal reservations to the BCs eventually opened the pandora's
box. Now, the reservations are naturally being demanded by all
conceivable categories. Muslims are closer to getting it, thanks to
the Sachar committee recommendations. Dalit Christians should not be
very far. There is a demand for reservations to poor among the upper
castes and of course the incipient demands for splitting the quota
according to sub castes and sub sub-castes. With increasing crisis for
people, reservation projected as panacea is bound to get proliferated
beyond limits.
Have Reservations Really Worked?
Before extension of this exceptional principle to all and sundry, the
responsible polity would evaluate whether it has served the original
purpose in its prototype form in the case of SCs and STs. If we
objectively look at the evidence, one could definitely say that it has
catalyzed huge spread of education among these communities and caused
significant socio-economic development through the employment in
government and public sector. Although extremely limited in its
potential, its motivational impact has been tremendous.
Notwithstanding these positive aspects, like any other developmental
scheme without remedial mechanism, it has accentuated inequality among
these castes. The people (and the castes) with first movers advantage
increasingly monopolized its benefits and left the rest relatively
poorer. While the beneficiaries are individuals or their families,
with the ruling idiom of caste, it engendered feelings of resentment
against the beneficiary castes, and provided fodder for the vested
interests to further divide these castes.
This flaw in the policy could be easily plugged by bringing in a
non-caste criterion of a family unit. The prospective reservation
should be considered applicable to the families, which have not yet
availed of reservation. (see my article Reservation within
Reservation, EPW --). This is simple and doable solution but it would
not be accepted by the political class as it takes away caste, which
has been their golden goose.
In addition, there is political reservation which is ignorantly mixed
up with the reservation in education and employment available to the
SCs and STs. It came from the Poona Pact between Gandhi and Ambedkar
in 1932 as a compromise to do away the grant of separate electorates
in the Communal Award of Ramsay McDonald. At the time of its
incorporation into the Constitution, Ambedkar himself was not sure
about its efficacy and wanted it only for 10 years. However, this
reservation has been getting unanimously extended before it is due to
expire by the ruling class parties. From this broad evidence also one
could surmise who the real beneficiaries of this reservation are. But,
even beyond this, one could find out whether it has benefitted the
Dalits masses for whom it was meant. The answer is in definite
negative. Late Kanshiram summarized his assessment of this policy in
his pamphlet, 'chamcha yug' (the era of stooges). It produced totally
contrary result to what was perhaps intended. Instead of creating a
proportionate representation of Dalits in the legislative bodies, it
has completely decimated their representation by producing stooges out
of Dalit politicians. While in numbers, this reservation, unlike
others, has been always fully implemented; it has never meant even a
feeble voice of Dalits in legislature. The so called Dalit
representatives have been always subservient to their ruling class
upper caste bosses to whom they owed their existence. It only created
a political class among Dalits, which fattens itself on the political
rent derived from the ruling classes.
Reservation to Women
The current bill purporting to give 33 percent reservation to women in
state legislatures and Lok Sabha is also destined to be
counterproductive in a much bigger measure. There are no two opinions
that women who hold up half the sky are short-shrifted in the male
dominated world and that they should rightfully own up at least half
of the world. There is no dispute about their suffering myriad forms
of discriminations and atrocities: As children, they are discriminated
in food, health, education; as adult women they are discriminated in
choice of livelihood, wages, and suffer physical abuse and rape. There
cannot be any controversy therefore about the need to stop injustice
on them and restore what is rightfully theirs but unjustly denied to
them. The issue is about the way of doing it.
Firstly, women are a very generic and broad category, comprising
castes, classes, races, and communities of all kinds. Despite the
history of over 150 years of women's movement, they have not achieved
a coherent voice and rather showed up as inevitable splintering in
recent years. There is nothing common for instance between an urban
upper caste woman and a typical Dalit woman in a village. The former
though suffering subtle discrimination in patriarchal society enjoys
enormous social power whereas the latter is triple-oppressed, as being
poor, Dalit and a woman. The mainstream concept of women's liberation
therefore is alien to Dalit women. As a reaction, they have been
observing their women's liberation Day on 25th December, (instead of
8th March) the day the Manusmriti was burnt during the Mahad
conference. Its stance is not against men but against the mainstream
women's movement that seeks to overlook the oppression of majority
women. There is a tendency seen in even other caste and community
groups to articulate their dissent against the mainstream women's
movement.
Secondly, the idea of reservation has been problematic with regard to
its professed objective but certainly useful to politicians.
Reservation by design promotes the interests of the better placed ones
among the target population. As a result, while a small section of the
population progresses, the rest is left behind. At the time when
reservation was conceived for the SCs and STs, these considerations
were not material simply because there was no visible elite among
them. Whosoever came up was to be a role model for the rest and was
supposed to represent their interests. Now that the second and third
generations of beneficiary Dalits are around, the evils of reservation
system have surfaced clearly. The demand for categorization
articulated by Madiga Dandora may not be maintainable in many ways but
cannot simultaneously be dismissed as baseless or motivated. The point
is that it basically bares the limitation of reservation policy. Since
reservation for the SCs and STs is premised on the social prejudice,
its outright abolition is out of question in view of these prejudices
still visible, but there is certainly a case for plugging their
obvious lacunae.
Politics behind Progressive Veneer
The situation at the time of instituting first reservation no more
exists for any segment of population, least with women today. The all
pervasive clamor for reservation today can be considered as
symptomatic of our unscrupulous politics. The proposed women's
reservation is also not beyond it. It has extended its hands beyond
castes and communities to a new terrain of gender. Ever since, the
rise of the middle castes ushering in the coalition era of governance,
our traditional ruling classes, innured as they are to monopoly power,
have been uncomfortable. While other reservation issues can be raked
up, they have small potential and uncertain outcome. However, if they
could bring in vast population such as women's, under the purview of
reservation, they could hope to cross the coalition barrier. Women's
reservation bill in the current form can benefit the major political
parties, with relatively more feudal hold on population than others,
in getting their women elected to disproportionately more number of
reserved seats to improve their tally. Behind its progressive veneer,
this appears to be the motivation.
The objection of Mayawati and Yadavs to the bill for not providing
quota for the SCs, STs, BCs and Minorities actually smack of this
precise fear that the bill if passed in the present form would erode
their base. In face of it, it would appear misfounded, but in reality
it may not. While there will not be any difference to the
constitutional reservation for the SCs and STs, in case of others the
disturbance in constituencies due to rotational system proposed in the
bill, the more entrenched political halo of traditional political
families would score over the parties such as BSP and SP. This may not
even be remedied by reserving seats for BCs and minorities.
As regards its core objective, it is naïveté to believe that this
reservation would benefit oppressed section of women. If even in a
relatively cohesive population like Dalits, the political reservation
has produced huge negativity, the outcome of the political reservation
to women, as disparate as Indian society, fragmented by castes,
classes, communities, religions, languages, regions and so on, could
only be expected to be worse. What way more number of elite women in
parliament going to empower Dalit women in a village? Largely, these
ladies would act as proxy of their men benefactor, who got them
elected with their political halo, money and muscle power. Women's
woes are not as much a matter of legislation as it is a matter of
societal attitudes, which could be challenged at the level of practice
and arrested by an efficient administration. In this way, reservation
at the Panchayat level becomes more important than this one. Also, if
there is a real political will for improving the situation of women,
it would be better achieved by instilling gender sensitivity in the
administration and making it accountable.
Progressive Automatons
Empowerment of women is laudable objective. The pathetic state of
women in our country cries for urgent action to improve their
situation. India ranks shameful 114 among 134 countries of the world
on the scale of gender equality. This situation cannot be remedied by
instituting lopsided reservation. Increased representation of women in
our legislature bodies is certainly desirable but if it is going to be
mere surface reality and contrarily reinforcing the traditional power
structure, it needs to be rethought. Most issues of democratic
representation sought to be solved through reservation perhaps could
be resolved better in the electoral system of proportional
representation as proposed by many analysts. It may be worthwhile to
have a national debate on these issues than rush with stereotypical
solutions.
It is a pity that our national life is governed by stereotypes.
Reservation as a universally progressive policy is one such
stereotype. It has assumed the status of a holy cow for our
progressive people. That is unfortunate because it makes so much easy
for the ruling classes to play havoc with the polity. Reservation in
the Indian society divided with numerous fault lines is intrinsically
fraught with many lacaunae, which could turn it quite
counterproductive if not conceived properly. It is being certainly
used effectively by the ruling classes as a strategic tool to
manipulate people. Our progressive automatons need to learn this basic
fact.
Anand Teltumbde is writer and civil rights activist with CPDR, Mumbai
tanandraj@gmail.com
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