Anandiben Patel’s government in Gujarat has done the right thing – at least in principle – for the wrong reasons. It’s right to have a means test for quotas but it’s wrong to introduce quotas as a political bribe.
The Patidar demand in Gujarat is a reminder that when B.P. Mandal visited Karnataka as part of his mandate to “identify the socially or educationally backward”, some Brahmins pleaded to be described as “backward”. They failed because they lacked the political clout of Rajasthan’s Gujjars or the Patidars for whom Gujarat’s Bharatiya Janata Party government has set aside 10 per cent of education and employment places on the grounds that they are “economically backward”.
This morally and legally flawed gesture only confirms the burden of opportunism and avarice under which Indian life and politics groans. Clearly, the BJP which depends heavily on the affluent Patidar community went into a panic after Hardik Patel, the populist young rabble rouser, launched his street movement. With Vidhan Sabha elections due in 2017, the ruling party obviously feels it cannot afford to ignore the verdict of last year’s local government polls when the Congress won 23 out of 31 panchayats.
Whether this expedient move will win back the Patels is another matter. Lalit Vasoya of the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti thinks it is too little too late. “In Rajasthan, the Gujjars got quota in the special category and so have Jats in Haryana” he commented. “So why can’t the Patels get the same in Gujarat.” It was not a question. It was a demand that mirrors the fragmentation of Indian society into small pockets of self-seeking sects and castes with no one particularly keen on a unifying national label.
Legally, the Gujarat decision flouts the Supreme Court’s injunction that the combined reservation for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes should not exceed 50 per cent. That was the ruling in the landmark 1992 judgment in Indra Sawhney vs. Union of India which was also a stinging and thought-provoking critique of the stratification inherent in the Hindu social system. Presumably, Gujarat will cite the precedent of Rajasthan (also BJP-ruled) which last year passed a Bill providing for 14 per cent reservation for the economically backward, meaning Gujjars, as Mr Vasoya pointed out.
But it remains to be seen whether either measure will pass the test of legality. Tamil Nadu is in a different category because a 1993 constitutional amendment (the Tamil Nadu Backward Classes, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Act) allowing the state to continue the 69 per cent quota avoided judicial review by being enacted under the Ninth Schedule of the constitution. Narendra Modi would undoubtedly love to repeat that sleight of hand to bail out Ms Patel’s regime in Gandhinagar but the BJP’s Rajya Sabha position makes any constitutional amendment difficult.
Given today’s clamour for caste-based reservation, it is ironical to recall that all nationalists, led by Mahatma Gandhi, objected fiercely to the British government’s 1932 communal award providing separate representation for Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Anglo-Indians, Europeans and the Scheduled Castes. The depressed classes were assigned a number of seats to be filled by election from special constituencies in which only they could vote.
However, while Gandhi fasted in protest against the communal award, many minority leaders, including B.R. Ambedkar, supported it. After lengthy negotiations, Gandhi and Ambedkar reached what was known as the Poona Pact which provided for a single Hindu electorate, with reserved Scheduled Caste seats within it. Other religious groups like Muslims and Sikhs retained their separate electorates. Gandhi’s opposition was mainly to splitting a monolithic Hindu polity. The socially damaging impact of reserved quotas does not seem to have been considered at that stage.
Some scholars hold that caste-based reservation began as long ago as the second century BC with the varna system with its separate job entitlement for each of the four groups. Be that as it may, agitations for special privileges for groups that saw themselves as socially and economically handicapped can be traced back to the 19th century. Demands were especially vocal in several princely states, especially in South India. But when quotas were introduced in 1950, enlightened leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru were convinced they were for only a decade. Instead, more and more Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes demanded inclusion as the rich pickings from the system created what a Commissioner for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes called a “vested interest in backwardness.”
Another way of expressing this is “creamy layer”, a term that Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer coined in 1975 in the State of Kerala vs N.M. Thomas case to describe the emergence of the group that took most advantage of reserved quotas. He warned then that instead of uplifting the entire community, the “benefits of reservation shall be snatched away by the top creamy layer of the backward class” and that these fortunate few would “consume the whole cake”.
The Indra Sawhney vs Union of India judgment upheld the 50 per cent ceiling, emphasised the concept of “social backwardness”, and prescribed 11 indicators to ascertain backwardness. The nine-judge bench also established the concept of qualitative exclusion, such as “creamy layer”. However, this applies only to OBCs and not to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes.
Initially, no one thought of defining backwardness in financial terms. The creamy layer criteria was introduced at Rs 1 lakh in 1993, and revised to Rs 2.5 lakh in 2004, Rs 4.5 lakh in 2008 and Rs 6 lakh in 2013. In October 2015, the National Commission for Backward Classes proposed that an annual family income of up to Rs 15 lakh should be considered the lowest for OBC status. The NCBC also recommended sub-dividing OBCs into “backward”, “more backward” and “extremely backward” groups. The 27 per cent quota would be divided among them in proportion to numbers to ensure that stronger OBCs did not appropriate most of the quota benefits.
There is no denying that Indian society has advanced substantially since quotas were first introduced. But it’s difficult to say how much of this is due to reservations and how much to the trickle-down effect of overall growth. But there is no denying that despite progress, Indian society lags behind most other countries in all the indices of development. Moreover, the reach and power of the cash economy is such that under 3 per cent of the population bears the total income tax burden. Some 89 per cent of these 35 million taxpayers are in the 0 to Rs 5 lakh tax slab. Gujarat’s Rs 6 lakh family income criterion is not only negligible but is unenforceable.
But this is trying to rationalise Ms Patel’s action. Her scheme is not rational. It’s a blatant attempt to bribe Patidar voters. Present signals are they don’t consider the bribe attractive enough, even if it is not struck down as being against the law of the land.
