For some time now, the issue over reservation has been at a stalemate with both sides claiming the moral high ground. This is old news, of course. The Mandal Commission’s recommendations towards increased reservation for Other Backward Classes created a furore several years ago with demonstrations against reservations needlessly claiming young lives. A young student, Rajeev Goswami, became the icon of the struggle against reservation policies after he immolated himself in public over the then government’s stand. And the V P Singh government lost serious face over the issue, never fully recovering from the blow it took to its credibility.

Are reservations necessary?

While it may be true that some sections of the Dalit society have managed to move away from their poverty-ridden past in rather spectacular fashion, it is a fact that large numbers of them continue to languish in the same abject conditions. It is a group that comprises a significant percentage of the country’s population - a huge number. Who is responsible for this sorry state of affairs? Is it completely the fault of the Dalit millions? Have they not been able to exploit opportunities that are supposedly open to all? Is social change in this context all about bringing in reforms in the way the education system is approached, financed and administered by the Centre? Will this path work better than direct reservations in centrally-funded institutes? Is reservation needed at all? Let’s explore all these questions a little further.

The Random House Dictionary defines reservation as ‘an exception or qualification made expressly or tacitly’. This definition seems to justify the action of different governments in keeping aside a specific number of seats for a community that has suffered from being ostracized socially for centuries. That they’ve been ostracized for ages is an undeniable fact. What is less certain is the politician’s motive in facilitating the reservation policy. Leaving the motive aside for a while, it’s not difficult to see that reservations are just one more way of ensuring that a hitherto oppressed community finally gets an opportunity to leave its past behind and find a place for itself socially and economically. At this point, some may argue that there are other ways of ensuring the same outcome - by making the playing field level for all. Some of the more commonly listed ways are:

to provide improved primary/secondary education so that the Dalits can match steps with the others.
to offer quotas to the economically-deprived across all communities.
to increase the slice of the educational pie by creating more seats in the open category.

All these solutions neglect crucial facts.

The first completely fails to consider the gestation period for improving education across the country. At the very least, several years will pass before we begin to see any marked difference in the quality of education provided to Dalits and its impact on them. In the meantime, are they expected to remain satisfied with the indifferent teaching staff and sub-standard infrastructure that passes off as their education today? A Dalit student with a dream of becoming a doctor may not be willing to see the long-term view and with good reason. In 59 years, our nation has not managed to provide all its citizens with the same quality of education. Let’s say that aloud this time - FIFTY-NINE YEARS! Can it suddenly be trusted to fulfill this promise? Who in their right minds would wait for this promised change to be brought in eventually, that too when governments change at the drop of a hat, and with them, sometimes their policies too? Would you?

The second solution is one that can very easily be sabotaged. When exam papers, college degrees and yes, OBC certificates too can be purchased illegally and used for admissions to higher courses and for jobs, how difficult would it be to bypass this clause? Public corruption ensures that a degree or an exam paper can be easily bought and sold. What is to stop human greed from benefiting from this policy as well? Before we know it, corrupt officials from the administration, who are meant to protect the rights of the underprivileged, will be selling official certificates that prove your status as economically deprived!

And the third ignores the ground reality that adding the kind of numbers (of seats) required to really benefit students in the open categories would need drastic revisions in infrastructure and facilities, teaching staff, budgets, etc. Not all of this is easily achieved. For example, where would institutes find the extra space required, especially since the government envisages that this increase in physical infrastructure (new buildings, classrooms) and in teaching and administrative staff would happen over the next one year before the proposed increase happens next year. Is this realistic? In any case, the government’s face-saving measure of making a provision for more open category seats or jobs is not a long-term answer to deeply entrenched attitudes of discrimination in the minds of many upper-caste people in such cases. This, like the quota system, is yet another way that doesn’t address the real issue of an unequal playing field. The government’s move to impose a further education cess (we already pay 2% along with our income tax) to finance this move will also cost the taxpayer dearly.

The common arguments against reservation

Many OBCs, women, ethnic and religious minorities continue to experience deliberate discrimination socially, professionally and otherwise, even today. All these groups, in spite of their large numbers, are often disproportionately represented in the negative in both government and in private sector jobs. For reasons of relevance, let us talk only about OBCs here. What could be the reasons? These are some of the more commonly held perceptions.

‘Merit should be the deciding factor’

Talk of merit has increased exponentially because that seems like a safe position to take. Who could really argue against that? But a closer look reveals some serious flaws in the way India has treated the idea of merit for some time now. Isn’t it at all possible that many from the backward classes are losing out on seats and jobs simply because the interviewer is not objective? Are we to believe that those in positions of authority in India have achieved the pinnacle of impartiality when it comes to perceptions based on gender, caste, community, skin colour and religion among other identifiers? A casual look at any newspaper will unmistakably show this belief up to be a delusion. Take marriage for example. The senseless desire for fair skinned brides screams at you from the matrimonial columns. Where is the merit in being fair-skinned? And statistics on Dalit literacy, enrolment in schools and dropout rates, for example plainly indicate where we as a people stand when it comes to being impartial.

Maybe we could go all out for privatization then, perhaps that will solve all our problems! We would all have to be objective then because privatization demands excellence and does not pay homage at the altar of appeasement. However, many in the socially and economically privileged carry deep-rooted and potentially damaging perceptions about ‘backward’ castes. It seems very unlikely, however, that these perceptions based on centuries of collective conditioning will be abandoned hastily in the interests of the organization. If it were that easy, then the US, a nation that has enshrined equality of the sexes in its constitution (as has India), wouldn’t have had any issues over the glass ceiling at work. But the glass ceiling, while it definitely seems to be on the decline, continues to exist, despite the fact that private companies have been around for a very long time. So privatization cannot be the simple counter to deeply entrenched perceptions in the minds of the elite. These practices help perpetuate the domination, intended or not, of the elite. Discrimination based on subjective behaviours such as these is clearly very difficult to eradicate in a hurry no matter how good the intention. Is it helpful to argue that reservations haven’t helped the position of Dalits in the last 50 years because discrimination against them hasn’t gone anywhere in that time either!

‘Incompetence’

This adjective is now quickly gaining credibility as an argument against the increase (or even provision) of quotas. Apparently, reservations lead to increasing incompetence in the system. Which basically means that the country is being flooded with doctors, engineers and other professionals who are a menace to society. This could well be true since we periodically hear of patients dying because of mistakes on the operating table, buildings collapsing because they were badly built and so on. On the other hand, claims abound that beneficiaries of the quota system are often so incompetent that they drop out of their courses midway. Or they fail their exams. The system has therefore succeeded in weeding them out. This would mean that the higher education system produces largely competent professionals. And that these competent professionals are the ones we are entrusting our lives to when it comes to say, medical help. Yet we continue to hear of patients being misdiagnosed, treated wrongly or even dying due to doctors’ negligence. Where are we going wrong? Who are these doctors and where did they get their education? They can’t all be Dalits. And if they largely are, then who is giving them these jobs and why? Similarly, they can’t all be incompetent since it’s the same foolproof system from above that has created them. But wait a minute - does this foolproof system actually weed out the incompetents? Here’s where we come up against another interesting phenomenon - non-caste based quota.

‘Are non-caste based quotas okay?’

An interesting question to ask is ‘Are people against reservations generally, or are they against caste-based reservations alone?’ Reservations based on economic criteria (especially in private institutions), such as NRI/ Management quotas and payment seats, are as strongly against the idea of a ‘meritocracy’, a term that is being bandied about rather loosely by those opposing reservations. Do the rich, who can afford to pay for their seats, have a gene that ensures automatic ‘competence’? How does having pots of money make you more intelligent than being from a ‘backward’ caste? By that logic, Paris Hilton should be an intellectual giant! And for many of us, our entire academic life has been in private schools and colleges run by trusts established to cater to different communities/ minorities. Those are also reservations - and based just as much on lowered standards as the caste-based ones. And maybe, just maybe, this is where some of those incompetents floating around causing untold damage are coming from!

Reservations are meant to give a push to SC/STs and OBCs to get into institutes. To obtain the relevant qualifications and come out of these same institutes, they have to write and pass the same exams that others have to without any consideration for their caste. So, in fact, when you see a professional from the ‘backward’ classes who has passed out from a reputed institute, chances are s/he has gone through a lot more than other students who have led a far more privileged life in terms of economic, social, cultural and historical backgrounds. Far from being incompetent, these select few have proved their mettle as they have had to compete with the academic cream of Indian society that comprises the student body of most IITs and IIMs despite most of them carrying the load of their historical baggage of alienation, exclusion and disentitlement and very importantly, their lack of fluency in English, the language of the elite in India. To make an example of the Dalit who has managed to succeed without any reservations is to ignore the harsh social and economic realities of the rest.

Is this the new face of Indian caste politics?

The real deal may be this. The anti-quota stir is not about incompetence or the unfairness of reservations at all. If they were really about these, why do our masses choose to remain silent when incompetence is exhibited consistently even when the complicit relationship between a conscienceless buyer and a greedy seller of professional degrees has been established time and again by the national media? No, it cannot be about incompetence. And is our anti-quota protester indignant and outraged when he sees seats being earmarked for the moneyed? Isn’t this the kind of reservation that deprives the middle class student of his open category seat? No - it cannot be about the inherent unfairness of reservations, for they should have been out on the streets when management quota seats were sold to the rich, irrespective of their eligibility.

What is it about then?

Chances are the world is good to you if you happen to be born in an upper-caste family. This, of course, doesn’t automatically ensure financial soundness, but in most parts of the country, it does bestow certain unspoken advantages upon you. To start with, you are not considered inferior in any way. While urban areas may be somewhat progressive in this, rural India is not exactly a bed of roses for the oppressed classes who largely populate those regions. They have been branded as ‘inferior’ and are often treated as such. This branding scars the Dalit for life - she is not allowed to define her identity. That privilege is hijacked by those who see themselves as God’s chosen ones - the upper castes. Even the nomenclature is inherently biased against Dalits. They are rarely the ‘oppressed’, more, the ‘lower’ and the ‘backward’. So, the Dalit by virtue of being lower or backward gets to clean out our excreta, our garbage, our cities and our villages. And he is tolerated, as long as he doesn’t harbour dreams of transforming himself into the ‘upper’ or the ‘forward’ classes.

Much has been made of the acceptance of Dalits in the higher echelons of mainstream society. But let us be brutally honest with ourselves - just how many of them are there? And are they there because of us - or despite us - regardless of the conscious and unconscious attempts by the elite at excluding them from the benefits of being a part of the privileged? Tolerance of the other sets a limit, acceptance does not. In fact, it asks the privileged to let go of some of their privileges so that the other has an opportunity to rise up to the same level. A very good question to ask ourselves is, ‘Is India accepting its oppressed or simply tolerating them?’

Valid points of anti-quote protestors

Some points that the anti-quota protesters have brought up are extremely valid and need to be debated thoroughly. For example, in many reputed institutions, reserved seats are often not filled at all. These are not opened up to the general category students and are therefore wasted. Data from IIT Mumbai supports this claim. Apparently, nearly 50% of the reserved seats in IIT Mumbai are not filled up thereby denying an opportunity for the open category student to get in inspite of having scored higher than the Dalit student. Another question being asked is “why are there reservations at the post-graduate level especially since quotas already exist at the graduate level?”. The answer to this question probably lies in the politician’s efforts to portray himself as the messiah of the oppressed. This needs to be challenged. Also, what is the government doing about providing a high standard of primary education to the poor in our villages? Why has there been little or no improvement in the last 60 years? Why does the government legislate without a national debate to further controversial policies such as these?

All these are extremely compelling questions brought up by the anti-reservation protesters and need to be addressed squarely by the government. But the anti-reservation protesters are doing the oppressed a great disservice by linking blanket labels such as incompetent and undeserving with terribly divisive and badly implemented administrative measures like the quota system. Questioning the efficacy of these half-baked measures and focused protests against them will also help in other ways. It will help Dalits see that India is not against them for being Dalit, that they are not alone, that people do care about them. The value of such a perception in the minds of the oppressed cannot be underestimated for openness and understanding flower where every voice is heard, no matter how insignificant.

Does it have to be an either/or situation?

This raging issue has clearly shown that a democracy works well only when there is sustained public participation in influencing policy in issues, directly and indirectly relevant to them. When this is absent, elected representatives find themselves in a position where they have to debate and decide policy based either on their own attraction for a particular viewpoint OR the tendency many of them have, to manipulate policy in order to benefit from vote bank politics. Given this, it is vital that the process of dialogue take centrestage rather than confrontation, fault-finding and issuing ultimatums. So much energy and time is being invested in reinforcing ideas that are at best serving any one of the two parties in the conflict.

When such debates go on for years altogether, we may urgently need to stop in our tracks and ask the all-important question - are there only two positions that we can take as a people? The dominance of the ‘either/or’ perspective is a clear indication that we are fast turning into a creatively bankrupt society. Perhaps the time has come for the two groups to shed their positions and come together to fight the real enemy - no, not the government, but caste-based discrimination! Far-reaching reforms, such as increased government spending and more seats in institutes offering primary and secondary education are a must. But of what use are such progressive ideas and laws when people are inflexible when it comes to jettisoning their own outdated perspectives?

The anti-quota protesters are asking, ‘why are we unfairly being made to pay the price for the oppression of the ‘backward’ castes that were committed in the past?’. The mistakes may largely have been committed in the past by an unaware and uncaring people, but their debilitating effects continue to surge relentlessly forward into each new generation of SC/STs and OBCs till today. Maybe the protesters should instead be asking: “Why were we not on the streets protesting vehemently when the Dalit faced severe violence because of his caste, when he was displaced from his home for ‘the greater common good’, when public money earmarked for his welfare was swallowed by an apathetic administration, when he was denied a job because he is Dalit? Where were we?”

“… Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wind.

…Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wind.”

-Bob Dylan, Blowin’ in the Wind