Barun

COVER STORY

Political consensus VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN The general reaction of political parties to the verdict has been laudatory, and it is realpolitik that seems to shape responses. V. SUDERSHAN

Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M), K.V. Thangkabalu (Congress), Swami Agnivesh, D. Raja (CPI) and S. Ramadoss (PMK) at a rally organised by the Pattali Makkal Katchi in New Delhi on November 12, 2007, in protest against the inadequate representation given to OBCs in Central government jobs. FOR over two decades and a half, the politics around reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) has developed essentially with two dimensions. At the primary level, it has been characterised by clashes between social and political forces that support and oppose reservation for OBCs in education and employment. The forces supporting the concept perceive reservation-based affirmative action as an instrument to uplift sections that have been oppressed for centuries, while those who are opposed to the idea subscribe, directly or indirectly, to the doctrine of uppercaste hegemony. At the secondary level, the politics around OBC reservation has developed on the lines of realpolitik, and this has entailed competition for popular support among pro-reservation groups. This has been the trend right from December 1980 when the legendary B.P. Mandal submitted the Mandal Commission recommendations to the government. The clash between pro- and anti-reservation politics rose to its most intense levels in the early 1990s after Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s National Front (N.F.) government decided to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations. In later years, such clashes have again captured significant space in the national political arena. Yet, there is a growing sense of realisation among social and political forces that the policy of reservation for OBCs based on affirmative action cannot be summarily reversed. Even organisations of the Hindu right, such as the Sangh Parivar led by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), which practically brought down V.P. Singh’s government in 1990 with its opposition to the move to implement the Mandal

Commission’s recommendations, seem to realise this. This realisation has, in turn, fed the political impulse to use affirmative action for popular support. The United Progressive Alliance government’s announcement, in April 2006, of the proposed move to implement 27 per cent reservation in Central institutions of higher education met with virulent opposition. Not only were there protests on the streets but the government was also challenged in court. No significant protests, however, have greeted the April 10 ruling of the Supreme Court upholding 27 per cent reservation for OBCs. Youth for Equality (YFE), a students’ organisation that spearheaded the anti-reservation agitation in 2006, has announced plans to advance its campaign with a fresh perspective, but there have not been many voices opposing the ruling. Kaushal Kant Mishra, a founder member of the YFE and a doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), said the organisation would try to stress a new definition of the term “reservation”. Since reservation is meant for “socially, educationally and economically backward classes of society”, Mishra said, an OBC graduate cannot avail himself of the benefits of reservation. Going by this logic, nobody applying for postgraduate and other higher studies is entitled for reservation. The YFE plans to appeal against the verdict and this, apparently, is going to be its line. Most mainstream political forces, however, find this position ludicrous. The general reaction of the political class to the verdict has been laudatory. Various political parties have come up with their own nuanced interpretations of the judgment and its socio-political background. According to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), all questions related to OBC reservation in institutions of higher education could have been handled smoothly had it not been for the “unwarranted aggressive approach of HRD [Human Resource Development] Minister Arjun Singh”. THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY

B.P. MANDAL submitting his report to Home Minister Zail Singh in December 1980. Party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said that Arjun Singh and his Ministry should not claim undue credit and insisted that the judicial verdict was everyone’s victory.

Javadekar added that the BJP had always favoured social justice measures and that the political force to benefit most out of the implementation of the quota would be the BJP since it had the largest number of OBC members in Parliament. This self-congratulatory tone has been adopted by parties both in the opposition and in the government. But, almost all of them, barring the Left parties, have uniformly expressed their misgivings about the “creamy layer” exclusion parameters suggested by the court. The court said that extending benefits to the creamy layer went against the basic structure of the Constitution. The ruling also contained the suggestion that children of legislators should be considered as belonging to the creamy layer. The Left parties have consistently advocated 27 per cent reservation for OBCs excluding the affluent sections, arguing that the truly deserving should get the benefits of reservation. However, a number of politicians of the UPA and the National Democratic Alliance have expressed opposition to the points raised by the Supreme Court in relation to the exclusion of the creamy layer. Railway Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad raised the issue in the Cabinet. He said that the implementation of the Supreme Court’s suggestions could defeat the very purpose of OBC reservation. According to Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav, excluding the so-called creamy layer was unwarranted because reservation was meant to address social and educational backwardness, not economic backwardness. Other leaders, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, have expressed similar opinions. Mayawati asked for a redefinition of the “creamy layer”, saying that inflation had eaten into incomes and the value of possessions. Responding to queries from Frontline, Arjun Singh said that the government had taken note of these opinions and would try to evolve a consensus (see interview). Within the Congress, there has been wrangling over the credit for the verdict. Many Congress politicians, including a large section considered close to the Prime Minister, are reluctant to see the verdict as a victory for Arjun Singh and his Ministry. The verdict was not unexpected, they say, especially since the Mandal Commission had recommended reservation for OBCs in jobs and education. “This could have been termed a real victory if Arjun Singh and his department had succeeded in getting the government’s current position on the creamy layer endorsed by the Supreme Court. In the absence of that, there is no need to present this as a major victory,” said a Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh who has been consistently opposed to Arjun Singh. Arjun Singh’s own comment, made after the verdict, projecting Rahul Gandhi as the “future Prime Minister” has been seen as further reflection of the wrangling in the Congress. Large sections in the Congress leadership saw the comment as a blatant attempt to build on the political advantage that the verdict brought for Arjun Singh.

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP

MANDAL report proposals were implemented 10 years later, in 1990, by the National Front government led by V.P. Singh. By all indications, Congress president Sonia Gandhi herself shared this perception. The terse, formal reaction from party spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan, saying there was “no vacancy for the post of Prime Minister” and that “Sonia Gandhi and Rahul have kept away from any environment of sycophancy”, gave a clear indication of this. Even the proposal for extending OBC reservation to the private sector seems to be turning into an instrument for political gamesmanship. Oversights Committee chairperson M. Veerappa Moily’s response to the verdict was to suggest extension of reservation to the private sector. Arjun Singh’s response to that was to remark that there was a lot of difference between talking and implementation and that nobody was making a “discovery” if they said that the private sector should also be covered by the reservation policy. In the midst of all this, the government has initiated procedures to implement the Supreme Court verdict. The process began way back in 2006, when Arjun Singh first proposed the idea but was suspended when the issue was taken to court. Now that the process has started again, officials in the Ministries of Human Resource Development and Social Welfare insist that the concerns of students in the “general” category would not be overlooked. Government departments are working on a plan to increase the number of seats, so that seats in the general category do not dwindle, and to improve infrastructure in Central educational institutions. The Oversight Committee had recommended a 54 per cent increase in the number of seats, over three years. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had set aside Rs.26.98 billion in the 2007-08 Budget for Central educational institutions under the Human Resource Development Ministry. Part of this money was meant for increasing the number of seats as suggested by the Oversights Committee. Budget 2008-09 has allotted about Rs.25 billion for Central universities and institutions such as IITs and IIMs.

As the Ministry works out how best to implement 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in Central institutions, realpolitik will surely be the crucial factor in shaping political reactions. There seems to be, however, little possibility of any virulent opposition to reservation surfacing again.•

WHAT IS THE CURRENT CREAMY LAYER?

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To maintain the structure of equality within the backward classes, that is, between OBCs on one hand and SCs and STs on the other, the concept of creamy layer, which is a qualitative exclusion, has to be retained as constitutional requirement.

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The concept of creamy layer is based on the means test to strike a balance with the secular notion."

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The current creamy layer includes children of Constitutional functionaries like President, Vice President, Judges of SC and HCs, Chairman and members of UPSC and state PSCs, CEC and CAG.

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It also includes children of Class I and Class II officers in Central and State PSUs, Colonel and above in Army and equivalent posts in Navy, Air Force and Paramilitary.

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The third category comprises children of doctors, lawyers, CAs, financial or management consultant, engineers, dental surgeon, computer specialists, film professionals and film artists, authors, playwrights, media professionals and property owners beyond a certain limit.

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Those with an income of Rs 2.5 lakh per annum are included in the creamy layer.

You are a thinking and sensitive Indian. You read English, live in a city and belong to an ‘upper caste’. Not that you cared for it, or thought it made any difference, till Mandal II rudely reminded you of the accident of your birth. You don’t like the caste system and its inequalities. In fact you are not in favour of any kind of inequalities. But you are hurt when being an upper caste is made to sound like an allegation. You were shocked by how cynical politicians could play their petty games and announce a divisive scheme to promote their vote banks. You felt for the protesting students and wished them success. You were outraged by the government’s decision. You look up to the courts and worry about the future of our country. If some of this description fits you, do read on. Here are some of your questions. The answers may not suit your own interest. As a sensitive Indian, you are not into promoting your self-interest. You want a fair and just society. The answers may not be to your liking. As a thinking Indian you do not want affirmation of whatever you may have believed. You are open to new facts and perspectives. Why do we need to discuss something as clear as this? Isn’t it obvious that OBC reservation is all about vote bank politics?

Of course it is. The motives of the politicians in this game have been consistently unholy and motivated by a calculus of votes. But to blame politicians for it is like blaming a shopkeeper for wanting to make profit. This is the logic of market/electoral democracy: the fear of losing customers/voters makes a shopkeeper/politician serve the customers/citizens.

The politicians who led the abolition of slavery or the end of Apartheid or the Indian nationalist struggle were not always motivated by lofty ideals. Like in market, in politics too, individual venality can contribute to collective good. In any case, whether something is right or wrong should be evaluated independent of who said it and why. Okay, let us evaluate it independently. The Scheduled Castes may have suffered from caste oppression and untouchability. What could possibly justify reservations for the OBCs? Sure, the OBCs did not face untouchability and most of them did not suffer from the worst oppression of the caste system. But they have suffered from systematic disadvantage in accessing education and middle-class jobs. Look at its effect today: according to the National Sample Survey, out of 1,000 upper-caste Hindus in urban India, 253 were graduates. Among the Hindu OBCs, this figure was only 86 per 1,000. The picture gets worse if we look at postgraduate and professional degrees. Caste-wise break up from another study shows that access to higher education still reflects the traditional caste hierarchy: the rate of highly educated is 78 per 1,000 among the Hindu Brahmins, around 50 or plus for other ‘twice born’ caste Hindus, Christians and Sikhs (with the exception of Rajputs who now include many upwardly mobile non-dwijas), but only 18 for the OBC and even less for SC and ST. The inequalities in the level of educational attainment of different caste groups are still unacceptably large. This situation is not an outcome of any natural differences in IQ of different caste groups or uneven desire to pursue higher education. These differences are principally an outcome of unequal opportunities. That is why the government needs to step into this. Before we get into this, tell me who are these OBCs? Who decides who is an OBC and who is not? OBC or Other Backward Classes are backward communities other than the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. These are mostly ‘shudras’ in the traditional varna hierarchy: below the ‘dwija’ or the twice born but above the ‘untouchable’ communities. But not all ‘shudras’ are recognised as OBCs by the government. The Mandal Commission used a survey to shortlist those ‘shudra’ communities that were ‘backward’ in economic and educational terms. Since then the National Commission for Backward Classes, a statutory body set up on the orders of the Supreme Court, takes the decision about which caste or community and in which state (or sometimes region within a state) should by given the legal

status of an OBC. The system is not perfect—the NCBC has been too lenient about including new castes in the OBC list and reluctant to exclude any—but it is not arbitrary. The government can start with this ready-made list And why do they get 27 per cent reservation? What is their share in population? Isn’t that a disputed figure? The Mandal Commission claimed that the OBCs were 52 per cent of India’s population. This figure was based on back-of-the-envelope calculation by remainder method and has not been backed by any social scientific evidence. The NSS has put the figure at 36 per cent, but this is based on ‘self-reporting’ and likely to underestimate the OBC population. The most robust estimate is anywhere between 40 to 44 per cent. We can’t have more precise information because the Census does not collect information about the OBC population. But this entire debate about their population size is irrelevant to the current reservation scheme. The figure of 27 per cent has nothing to do with their population estimate. This figure is dictated by the Supreme Court judgment that prohibited more than 50 per cent reservations. Since the SC and ST reservation already accounted for 22.5 per cent, the maximum permissible for any additional group was 27 per cent. As long as everyone agrees, which they do, that the OBCs are more than 27 per cent of the population, the dispute about their share of population has no relevance for their reservation quota. Doesn’t this quota deprive the upper caste of their legitimate share? All the upper castes (all those from any religion who do not qualify currently for SC, ST or OBC quota) are about 33 per cent of population. Even after the OBC reservation is introduced, at least 50 per cent of the seats in higher education will still be open to them. So, strictly in the narrow caste-share calculations, it is not clear how the upper caste are being deprived of ‘their’ due. The problem is not that of their share of the cake; the real problem is that of the very small size of the cake. The number of seats available

in higher education is just too small compared to the pool of eligible and deserving candidates. Let us get back. That the OBCs are disadvantaged does not mean that they should get reservations. Does it? You are right. This only means that something needs to be done. Whether that something should be reservations is not self-evident. We need to ask two basic questions here: what kind of instrument of affirmative action is most suited in this situation? And what should be the criterion for identifying the beneficiaries? Yes, that is the whole point. Why should caste be used as the only criterion of ‘backwardness’?

Caste is a very useful criterion for several reasons. One, the original discrimination in access to education took place on the basis of caste; the same criterion needs to used for reversing that discrimination. Two, caste is still a very good proxy for various kinds of social and educational disadvantages and the single best predictor of educational opportunities. Three, caste and economic hierarchy tend to fuse at the upper and the lower end: the poor are likely to be ‘lower’ caste and the upper caste likely to be well-to-do. And finally, caste certificates tend to be more reliable than other proofs of disadvantage, especially the notoriously unreliable certificates of income. et all these are not good reasons to treat caste as the only criterion. Sociological evidence shows that we have multi-dimensional inequalities that cannot be reduced to a single factor. Any good scheme to create level playing field in higher education must take into count gender, regional backwardness, urban-rural divide and economic resources, besides caste. And why do we need ‘reservation’ or mandatory numeric quotas for the OBCs? Actually, we don’t. Reservation should be used as a mechanism of last resort, when every other mechanism fails to deliver desired results. While there is good reason to use reservations for the SC and ST (anything else will be sabotaged and be ineffective), this is not so in the case of the OBCs. The government could have used a system of ‘disadvantaged points’ based on group and individual handicaps faced during education. These points could be added to the ‘merit points’ for the purpose of admission to educational institutions. Professor Satish Deshpande and I had suggested an alternative along these lines. So, the government’s decision is a disaster, isn’t it? Not quite. It is obvious that the government’s decision is not the best possible decision, that the government could have taken a more fine-tuned approach. But the government’s decision to introduce a simple caste-bloc based quota is better than nothing. It is better than the existing situation that did not provide for any special opportunity for groups other than SC and ST in higher education. If some safeguards are introduced, then even this imperfect scheme can reduce the inequalities in access to higher education. How can the existing scheme be improved? One, the government should exclude the ‘creamy layer’ within the OBCs from the benefits of the new reservation. The exclusion of ‘creamy layer’ is already in operation for job reservations and the government has to simply apply it to the present scheme. Two, the 27 per cent quota should be sub-divided among ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ OBCs. Such sub-divisions already exist in many states and the government can request the National Commission for Backward Classes to prepare the lists of upper and lower OBC for each state. Third, the government can make some special provision to ensure that women have a special opportunity to access the OBC quota. How can the existing scheme be improved?

One, the government should exclude the ‘creamy layer’ within the OBCs from the benefits of the new reservation. The exclusion of ‘creamy layer’ is already in operation for job reservations and the government has to simply apply it to the present scheme. Two, the 27 per cent quota should be sub-divided among ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ OBCs. Such sub-divisions already exist in many states and the government can request the National Commission for Backward Classes to prepare the lists of upper and lower OBC for each state. Third, the government can make some special provision to ensure that women have a special opportunity to access the OBC quota. If all this is accepted, will this solve the educational disadvantages of the OBCs? No, obviously not. The principal problem of the OBCs and other disadvantaged groups is that of lack of access to quality school education. Reservation in jobs or higher education tackled the problem at the higher end. It needs to be supplemented by measures to improve the quality of teaching in government schools. This is where the real focus of government policy should be.

CONCLUSION The government should make a national level survey immediately and list out all the caste groups including that of the forward castes, and their socio-economic and educational status. The survey should take note of all the technical errors found in the various criteria adopted by Mandal and formulate more rational criteria and scientific approach towards identifying the really deserving people within the castes and communities of each stratum of our society. The survey should not mix the socially,educationally and economically backward castes (SEBCt) with the other backward classes of non-Hindu religions, i e, the religious minorities (OBCl). After finalising the list of SEBCtand OBCl, we should find out the proportion of SEBCt and OBCl employees in government services. The quantum of reservation should be finalised only after undertaking this exercise and understanding the magnitude of the problem of each caste and communities. For those who are economically well-off but educationally backward, there should be reservation for education. For those who are educationally advanced but economically backward there should be reservation for employment. And for those who are both educationally and economically backward there should be reservation for both education and employment. Pointing out the various technical errors and limitations of the recommendations of .Mandal Commission, as we have discussed so far, is not an effort to oppose the move directed towards uplifting the OBC, instead it is an attempt to make such efforts more rational, just and logical which in turn could avoid all possible criticism against such a move in future. Whatever be the criticism advanced against the recommendations of Mandal Commission, none can question its objective of uplifting those sections which are really backward—backward in terms of their educational and economic achievements. It is difficult obviously to accept the logic of giving admission in educational institutions and jobs in government services ‘to students/candidates who are relatively less qualified in terms of required marks/experience, and not doing the same to students/candidates who are relatively more qualified. To understand the meaning of this logic, we should go beyond merely looking at the marks, experience of

the concerned students or candidates. We should not ask a sweeper’s son to compete with a professor’s son to judge the competence of these two students. “There is equality only among equals. To equate unequals is to perpetuate inequality”