NEEDLEPOINT: They need honour & Education, not alms of reservation

Spidernet

They deserve honour and education
Not the alms of reservation

By Amba Charan Vashishth

Reservation was certainly a necessity – legal, social and economic -- when such a provision was made in the Constitution. The framers of the Constitution were men of wisdom and foresight. They knew that making such a provision permanent would make it have an adverse effect on the Indian society and may ultimately divide it on the basis of caste. They actually had a vision of India as a nation not divided on caste lines, as it was in the past till India won freedom. That was why the provision for reservation was made for just 10 years. In the Constituent Assembly, Dr. Ambedkar had with a sense of pride declared that the scheduled castes would not beg for it after that.

But that is a history now. There was a time when claiming to belong to a scheduled caste/tribe family looked embarrassing. Reservation too looked upon like a gracious favour. But today it has become a matter of pride, a sign of status, and something one should fight and even sacrifice for.

Without going into the justification or otherwise of their demand, the recent agitation by Gurjars for grant of scheduled tribes (and not the Other Backward Class status, as the Government has granted), has to be seen in this very light. Of late, in Rajasthan some sections among the forward castes of Brahmins and Rajputs too have come out with a demand for granting them backward/scheduled caste status. Even the non-Hindu religions, which hitherto prided themselves in being casteless creeds in denunciation of Hindu society, are now condescending to demand reservation on the basis of castes – a fact which their religion doesn't recognize. Such demands will continue to be on the increase as long as there is reservation.

This situation has ignited the spark of a class/caste conflict in the society. Rajasthan's Meena community, already enjoying a scheduled tribe status, is equally vehement in opposing the Gurjars.

Malady lies not in the demand, but in the politics behind in the name of votes. The reservation provision that was temporary for a decade has now become a permanent feature of the Constitution. No political party can dare to do otherwise

There was no narrow electoral politics at play when the Constitution in one of its Directive Principles provided for enactment of a uniform civil code in the country, a provision about which the Supreme Court has also reminded the Union government not once, but at least thrice. But now the electoral considerations have made our leaders deaf, blind and dumb on the issue.

Similar is the story about the Article 370 which, again, was a temporary one. Now it has virtually turned into a permanent feature, as against the spirit of the Constitution, lest it costs the ruling party votes of a particular community.

No serious effort has been made, for obvious reasons, to assess the extent of amelioration the reservation provision has ushered in the condition of the scheduled castes/tribes. In the absence of the creamy layer provision, now enforced because of Supreme Court verdict, the benefit of reservation has been usurped by only a very few families. We can count on our tips the families whose four generations are in the IAS, IPS and other prestigious Central services. Others continue to indulge in the age-old professions as before, living in slums in pecuniary.
Reality is that those who got into power and prestige because of reservation no longer wish to be identified with the castes to which they belonged. They snapped their relations with the community and married off themselves in higher castes, instead of doing so to uplift someone in their own community. For them the value of the caste certificate was reduced to just claiming benefit. Inter-caste and inter-community marriages should always be welcome. But, unfortunately, doing so in these cases has only resulted in the neglect of the rest in their own community. And that was not what our Constitution visualized.

In fact, reservation is a curse on the merit of the mankind. What we should have done was to extend the benefit of a good education and multiplicity of opportunities the higher castes enjoyed more because of their economic condition and less because of their social upbringing. We should have empowered the scheduled tribes/castes and backward classes by providing them with a good environment for higher education and coaching to compete with the higher castes on the platform of equality on the strength of their merit. It is a folly to think that the reserve classes lack merit or intelligence and that they can survive or march forward only if there is reservation to the exclusion of merit. Given the opportunity that have excelled in fields nobody could earlier think even.

Thousands of crores has been wasted during the past sixty years without any significant and tangible improvement in the life and condition of our neglected and dalit sections of society. Why were they not provided the type of education and extent of opportunities other castes enjoyed?

The present agitations by more and more castes for their inclusion in the scheduled castes/scheduled tribe category is because of the impression ingrained in their mind that the very act of their inclusion in these proud categories will overnight make their wards grab prized posts without earning the merit. A sense of inferiority complex has been generated in the minds of these neglected sections that they can never earn merit and reservation is the only panacea. The neglected castes have been made to beg for the alms of reservation and not to agitate for their right to education and merit. That is the crux of the problem. Empowering the downtrodden doesn't fetch votes; our politicians know it very well.

Our rulers will have to change their mindset to barter favours with electoral benefits from certain castes and communities. Unless this is done, the kind of situation that developed in Rajasthan may erupt in other parts of the country with similar demands from other castes/communities. Let our politicians ponder in a cool manner. ***