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Reservation: Why this hysteria?
By S. Shukla
THE near unanimous character of the anti-reservation agitation is a consequence of the fact that a
“merit"-based system of admission and employment has failed over the last 40 years or so to produce a
sizable student body, let alone a group of teachers and academics, who would in sheer self-interest find
justification for the measures now announced. We have therefore, to look for some ways of changing the
situation. And the "meritocratically”-recruited student and academic opinion was not even aware of the issue
until the Government decision brought it up! Some of the leading lights among the academic critics of the
measure have also been the leading proponents of the Ghurye-Srinivas brand of sociology who have rejected
the Marxian Palme Dutt-A. R. Desai analysis (‘class-based” as the anti-reservationists ask for) for over half a
century, and who have failed to incorporate studies of poverty, science or the state in their syllabi and
textbooks or monographs even when urged by their own students or by authoritative review committee of
peers.
To the extent social science is self-fulfilling prophecy and to the extent it forms and informs people’s
consciousness, values and attitudes, Indian social science, taken as a whole, has been caste — not
classbased. It has not even conceded to milder dissenters, e.g., I. P. Desai — let alone Marxian heretics — a
measure of truth, not to speak of a place in their teaching a texts or, taken as a whole, teaching and research
positions in academia. As an aside, it may be added that they have been extremely shy of understanding
even communalism academically, while their model has been Hindu society.
The anti-reservationists today have almost whole-heartedly accepted reservations in the fields of
social intercourse, marriage and in respect of dependents of war victims, physically handicapped persons,
even in the matter of admissions to study courses and employment.
But we need not dwell on the questions of morality or consistency very much. The merits of the
issues under discussion are more important. These can be treated under three broad heads.
Macrodimensions, caste as a basis and reservations as mechanism.
Most of those affected by the current turmoil are, in fact, feeling the effects of situation in which
around two crore matriculates and graduates figure in the employment exchanges. The choice, until a new
growth paradigm governs the economic process, is of how to distribute this distress with a view to minimum
inequity and minimum ineffeciency of utilisation of human resources. This could possibly have been
attempted under different ideological auspices on a more autonomous basis using class or “merit” for
selection of the leading agents of growth.
Class struggles could have dissolved caste (and communal) identities and linkages to a greater
extent. So also, perhaps, less sexsegregated social life leading to mixed marriages more as a rule (and less
as luxuries of the elite as is the case today). A more autonomous and egalitarian pattern of development as in
most Communist countries could have spread education, nutrition and health more widely and brought up a
much bigger proportion of the ability grouping in all strata of society. This has not been the case.
Nor has the more meritocratic pattern of selection of students and employees been adopted. The
demand for what Americans call affirmative action or what some of us call protective discrimination has
arisen and in varying degrees been accepted. The present decision on caste reservations in public
employment has to be viewed against this background. It is quite another matter that the upper-caste
English-using urban elite of our society finds itself so totally upstaged by it that it has for the moment lost its
balance. But this cannot be allowed to persist for too long if both they and, what is more important, the larger
society are to do justice to themselves.
The mechanism of reservation in employment and admissions is essentially a divisive and generally
self-perpetuating one and is not designed to appeal to modern, rational people. Its influence tends to be
particularly unhelpful when social activity, e.g. marriage, eating together and interaction generally are along
caste, race or other inherited boundaries especially when superior-inferior or economic power or otherwise
hierarchical boundaries broadly coincide with them. Reservation is resorted to, however, when neither the
“normal” processes of operation of "merit” nor less normal processes of radical politics or class war (or just
war) work against them. The criterion of merit is particularly vulnerable here.
Most “general” knowledge tests for instance, tend to draw upon the common information of the
privileged. Gavaskar rather than the rules of the game kho-kho would, more likely, figure in a test. Intelligence
tests fail to be culture-free. Academic achievements are not unlikely to certify the educational and cultural
achievements and facilities of the parents at least in part even as they are based on ‘meritocratic” criteria.
Biases and who-knows-whom are, to put it mildly, not at all unknown in interviews, viva voces and even
practical examinations.
The consequences of the operation of bias for a less privileged group were well illustrated by
Proessor Khusro in a paper in Seminar almost a quarter of a century ago. He pointed out that if there is no
bias in selections, both the minority and the majority will proportionately share employment in institutions
managed by either community. In case of a hundred per cent bias in favour of one’s own community. they will
obtain all the employment in their own institutions, so that if they have equal propensity to start institutions,
there will be segregation but each will obtain a proportionate share in society as whole —— though perhaps
administrative and even physical force may prevent minorities from exercising this much discrimination.
If there is any bias, the minorities are likely to obtain less than their proportionate share of places as
in absolute numbers, they will lose more in discrimination in other institutions than they will gain in their own.
Extending this to educationally or socially weaker groups or to economically weaker ones as common sense
suggests, we can see that the whole system of admissions to studies and employment is weighted against
them. And, if we assume that they do not suffer from any natural deficiencies of skill or ability, this means that
society is drawing on less than its highest pool of talent by not resorting to reservations, at least in the long
run.
The crucial issue is, indeed, the use of caste as category of classification. Our Constitution makers
did not use it. Unfortunately, as stated earlier, sociologists in their academic work and common people in their
everyday life have gone against the Constitution in these matters for half or even whole of the century.
Neither the processes of non-caste, class-based politics nor pursuit of self-interest in the normal business of
life has minimised the operation of caste. The consequence of continuing as before would be the
perpetuation and accentuation of today’s privilege pattern. The consequences of the reservation strategy
would be polansation of people into three caste-groups, scheduled, backward and (the hitherto privileged)
others.
There is not a great deal to choose between the two except in terms of the self-interest of the
better-off among the currently privileged upper castes and those from among the “backward” castes. If the
country has not been ruined by the constitutionally enjoined reservations for scheduled castes and tribes over
40odd years, and Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra have survived OBC dominance for longer, it is unlikely
to be so ruined by the current step. There is a very strong case for barring the economically better off among
both the scheduled castes and tribes and among “backward” classes as also for handicapping in some way
the economically better placed among upper castes, too!
The Government move is populist. But so was bank nationalisation which substantially enlarged the
base of rural and other enterprise in India. It will work in the interest, to begin with, of the upper stratum of the
backward.
The situation calls for, not hysteria, but careful and detailed delineation of how to elaborate and
implement the policy. With an income ceiling or additional concessions for non-backward poor and insistence
on minimum competency, the nation’s interests can be adequately served.