LEGALLY SPEAKING - Social engg now a race for backward status

Dhananjay Mahapatra





The gory details of a 24-year old woman's grisly murder have muffled the loud footsteps of a disturbing development -a race among forward castes to figure in the backward class list to reap reservation benefits.A twenty-something Hardik Patel packed a meaty punch in his brazenly militant appeal for inclusion of the Patel community in the list of backward classes. Its potent impact spooked authorities into shutting down the internet and mobile services in many areas of Gujarat to prevent possible flare-ups.
Traditional landholders, the Patels have done exceedingly well in almost every field, especially politics, giving several national and regional leaders, not to forget a string of chief ministers in Gujarat.
It appears rather incongruous for members of the community to feel marginalized and ignored despite achieving phenomenal success, both materially and socially, and steadily throwing up so many role models.
The Morarji Desai government had set up a commission headed by B P Mandal on January 1, 1979, to identify socially and educationally backward communities to provide them with reservation in government employment. The commission, in its report in December 1980, recommended 27% reservation to other backward classes (OBCs).
In 1990, the V P Singh government dusted out the report and implemented its recommendations.Protests and judicial scrutiny could not impede the new political mantra -social engineering.
Two decades later, social engineering got a facelift when the Centre extended the 27% OBC quo ta to admissions in educational institutions. This too got the thumbs up from the Supreme Court.
Though it upheld extension of OBC quota in college admissions, the SC had expressed its view against the perpetuation of reservation. It disapproved of the politically motivated tendency to swell the list of OBCs. It had suggested a comprehensive study on OBCs to exclude those which had benefited from quota to shake off the historical social and educational disadvantages. Will a ruling party ever bite the survey bullet when elections continue to be fought on caste lines? They have scant regard for repeated SC rulings to limit the quota to 50% of the total availability of jobs or seats in colleges. In many states, it touches the 70% mark.
As space for merit shrinks in jobs and educational institutions, a cauldron of frustration is getting fuelled by competent youngsters, left behind by the not-so-competent armed with an OBC certificate. No wonder, the Jat community agitated and succeeded in getting OBC status. The SC had to step in and rescind the Centre's decision.
In the Ashoka Thakur judgment, which upheld 27% quota for OBCs in educational institutions, the SC underlined the recent trend of `forward' castes seeking `backward' status.
It warned, “When more and more people aspire for `backwardness' instead of `forwardness', the country itself stagnates.“
The SC had also warned, “While affirmative discrimination is a road to equality , care should be taken that the road does not become a rut in which the vehicle of progress gets entrenched and stuck. Any provision for reservation is a temporary crutch. Such crutch by unnecessary prolonged use should not become a permanent liability .“
While striking down quota for Jats in Ram Singh vs Union of India (March 17, 2015), the SC had said the determination of social and educational backwardness to warrant award of reservation benefits to a community must be based on contemporary data and not historical perception.
The SC had asked that if government after government claimed to have achieved all round development of the country and communities, why were more and more communities getting included in the list of OBCs and not a single exclusion? Was this the meaning of all-round development that more and more communities were getting backward?
No ruling party dare order a survey that would deprive communities of reservation as they fear losing votes in a geographic unit whose demographic equation has been virulently afflicted by politically crafted social engineering which has divided communities on the lines of those who have the OBC tag and those who don't.
In the Ram Singh judgment, the SC had said reservation should reach the most deserving. The yardstick to determine which community deserved reservation should be evolved using contemporary standards and must necessarily move away from caste-centric definition of backwardness, it had said.
“The perception of a self-proclaimed socially backward class of citizens or even perception of the `advanced classes' as to the social status of `less fortunate' cannot continue to be a constitutionally permissible yardstick for determination of backwardness,“ it had said.
Till political parties muster enough courage to undertake a comprehensive study and exclude communities which, through reservation, have climbed high enough in the socio-economic ladder, many Hardik Patels will emerge as rallying points for frustrated young victims of reverse discrimination.

Determining backwardness

Sometimes political mobilisation and not socio-educational backwardness decides the distribution of the benefits of reservation for specific communities in education and jobs. While striking down the inclusion of Jats in the Central list of Other Backward Classes (OBC), the Supreme Court voiced its opposition to the State’s tendency to go by the “perception of the self-proclaimed socially backward class” in deciding the beneficiaries of reservation quotas. The Jats spread across nine States are relatively more prosperous than many other communities in northern India but they used their numerical superiority to influence and pressure the government into including them in the OBC quota. The state should not be influenced by political considerations and it must exercise great care in identifying emerging forms of backwardness. Past mistakes or “wrong inclusions” in the reservation list, according to the judgment, could not be the basis for further additions. However, the court was careful not to dismiss any change to the list of OBCs. On the contrary, Justice Ranjan Gogoi who wrote the judgment directed the government to recognise emerging socially and educationally backward groups such as transgenders, who are among the most distressed, for the grant of reservation benefits. The judgment is thus important not only for its articulation of the rationale for identifying the groups that need to be kept out of the reservation system — politically dominant and economically prosperous caste groups — but also for its support for the inclusion of heavily disadvantaged groups such as transgenders, who cannot ordinarily be classified as a social class.

Closely linked to the setting of norms for identifying new groups for reservation benefits is the court’s downplaying of the importance of caste in deciding reservation benefits. While caste was indeed a prominent reason for historical injustice in the country, it could not be the sole decider of backwardness of a class. Instead, new practices, methods and yardsticks would have to be continuously evolved moving away from the caste-centric definition of backwardness, the court ruled. Surely, the fact that the previous United Progressive Alliance government notified the reservation for Jats despite advice to the contrary from the National Commission for Backward Classes played no small part in counter-posing historical injustice to emerging forms of backwardness in a changing society. But the question that arises is about the exclusion of castes and social groups already in the reservation list in a continuously evolving society. The court might have left a small opening for revisiting the whole list of reservation beneficiaries in the light of new socio-economic realities.

Keywords: Other Backward Classes, Supreme Court, Jats, reservation benefits

Reinvent Reservation





Affirmative action must go beyond caste and factor in economic backwardness

The Supreme Court's decision to strike down reservations for the Jat community by inclusion in the central list of Other Back ward Classes lays bare the deplorable vote bank politics that successive governments have indulged in. It will be recalled that the previous UPA government had granted OBC status to Jats on the eve of 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Subsequently, the NDA government defended the decision in the apex court. Describing the policy as a reflection of negative and retrograde governance, the Supreme Court has asserted that caste alone can't be the criterion for determining backwardness.There's no denying that the reservation policy has been distorted far beyond its original intention. What was supposed to be a temporary tool to uplift the weakest sections of society has seen an increasing number of castes join the quota bandwagon. The floodgates were opened by the Mandal Commission. It triggered a curious race to the bottom with several socially privileged groups such as the Jats demanding reservations on the basis of perceived historical disadvantages. Recall the absurd case in 2007 of the Gujjars demanding Scheduled Tribe status in Rajasthan even though they were already classified as OBC.
Unfortunately, all political parties have tried to further their respective political agendas by promising reser vations to different groups and slicing the quota pie progressively thinner. But if reservations truly worked, logic demands that at least a few communities wouldn't need quotas after decades of reservations.However, as pointed out by the apex court, there have been no exclusions from the OBC list despite overall development in the country.In reality reservations have only created a privileged creamy layer within beneficiary communities.
It's welcome that the Supreme Court has urged the government to devise better methods to determine backwardness. Affirmative action cannot be blind to present-day realities. Though in many cases caste overlaps with social backwardness, there's a need to invert today's approach and consider factors such as economic backwardness. This will automatically factor in caste disadvantages, as the poorest tend to belong to lower castes, while also keeping out the creamy layer. Instead of the extensive slicing and dicing of the electorate that goes on today to serve political interests ­ at the cost of sparking caste antagonisms and entrenching the caste system ­ a neat and elegant solution is to make economic backwardness the primary criterion for affirmative action.

Quotas do not hurt efficiency, says study

It measured impact of reservation on productivity in Railways

A first-of-its-kind study of the impact of reservations in public sector jobs on productivity and efficiency has shown that the affirmative action did not reduce productivity in any sector, but had, in fact, raised it in some areas.

Despite being widespread and much-debated, India’s reservation policy for the educationally and socially backward classes is poorly studied. While there is some research into the impact of reservations in politics and in higher education, there has been no study yet of its impact on the economy.

In the pioneering study, Ashwini Deshpande, Professor at the Delhi School of Economics, and Thomas Weisskopf, Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, measured the impact of reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) on productivity and efficiency in the Indian Railways between 1980 and 2002. The study was published in the World Development journal

The Indian Railways is the world’s largest employer where affirmative action applies, Ms. Deshpande said. It employs between 1.3 and 1.4 million people at four levels of employment — Group A to Group D, with Group A employees being the senior-most. There is 15 per cent reservation for the SCs and 7.5 per cent reservation for the STs at all levels, with additional reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The study looked at SC and ST employees in Group A and B only, since people from marginalised backgrounds would have been unlikely to reach high levels of employment without reservation.

Since an individual’s impact on productivity is impossible to estimate, Ms. Deshpande and Mr. Weisskopf compared zones and periods of time with higher numbers of SC and ST employees with those with lower numbers, keeping other variables constant. They found no negative impact on productivity and efficiency in any area, and some positive effects in some areas of work.

“Beyond the numbers, we can speculate about the reasons for why there might be some positive impact of affirmative action,” Ms. Deshpande explained. “Individuals from marginalised groups may be especially highly motivated to perform well when they attain decision-making and managerial positions, because of the fact that they have reached these positions in the face of claims that they are not sufficiently capable, and they may consequently have a strong desire to prove their detractors wrong,” the authors suggested.

This is a possible explanation which rings true for Scheduled Caste employees of the Railways whomThe Hindu spoke to. “At every level where there is discretionary power, SC/ ST employees are systematically discriminated against,” said B.L. Bairwa, the president of the All-India Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Railway Employees Association.

He cited a number of cases from across the country that he was battling, of deserving backward caste railway employees who had been passed up for promotions, transferred arbitrarily or given adverse records. “When an SC or ST employee rises, he has to prove himself and work extra hard. I am not surprised the efficiency goes up,” he said.

Keywords: Public sector jobs, Indian Railways