FROM BUSINESS WORLD OF 19 DECEMBER 2006
Privilege &
handicap
Against
passionate opposition from the upper castes, the government has pushed through
Parliament the Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Bill.
Arjun Singh, the minister of human resource development who was the major force
behind this bill, has promised that he would bring forward further legislation
to extend reservations for Other Backward Castes to other educational
institutions. It was extensively pointed out, on the basis of official data
from National Sample Survey, that OBCs are backward only in name and that over
the decades they have been catching up with forward castes in education as well
as access to lucrative occupations. But the compulsion of the Congress to win
over vote banks is so strong that rational argument had no chance.
It is in the
context of this political inclination of the party in power that the Sachar
Commission report is being viewed. The government enacted OBC reservations for
political advantage when the economic case was weak. The Sachar Commission has
avoided the word, but recommended something close to reservation in a number of
fields, such as credit and education. In any case, the Commission provides an
empirical basis for Muslim reservation to anyone who needs it. For a government
that has gone in for OBC reservations in the face of facts, the factual case
for Muslim reservations will not only be welcome but compelling.
In our view,
reservations as a means of tackling backwardness have outlived their
usefulness. Fairer economic criteria are today just as easy to use as caste
criteria, and economic backwardness can be more appropriately tackled by means
of economic assistance than by reservations. This is as even more true of
Muslims than of other social groups. For Muslims, unlike scheduled castes, have
not historically suffered from social exclusion. Most of their common
occupations are not demeaning or isolating. In fact, an unusually high
proportion of them are self-occupied: they are craftsmen and small businessmen.
Business is generally the avenue to riches. It has not, however, been one for
the Muslims. If it has not been one for Muslims, it is because they are
concentrated in handicrafts and traditional occupations that have declined
because of competition from modern industry.
In these
circumstances, it is not Muslims that need remedial action, but their
occupations. In countries that industrialized earlier, when modern industry was
less productive and its intrusion into the economy more gradual, it was common
for workers in traditional industry to acquire industrial skills and be
absorbed into the modern sector. It has not occurred to the same extent in
India because industry today is more productive and employs much fewer people
to produce the same quantity of output; it is also because modern industry has
located itself in the south and the west, whereas the north was the home of
traditional industries, especially those of which Muslims were masters.
Although the remedy may have become less effective, it has not disappeared. The
best way for Muslims out of backwardness is through modernization of their
traditional crafts. We have a structural rather than a communal problem; the
solution is to transform the structure rather than create new niches in already
overburdened educational institutions and public services.
However rational
structural solutions may be, they are not likely to appeal to politicians who
are driven by electoral compulsions. It is also difficult to bring a radically
different principle of assistance into operation when reservations have been
the favoured means for over a century. So a second-best solution also needs to
be thought about. The present jigsaw puzzle of reservations cries out for
rationalization. The lists of those who are included and excluded differs
between the centre and the states, and from state to state. The quotas differ
equally widely. Quotas within quotas were initially used by the British
government to win over sections of local populations; their indigenous
successors have practiced this art with even greater guile and finesse. And
yet, a caste or religious group should be eligible for reservation or
ineligible on the basis of its social indicators. There is no scope for degrees
of eligibility, and no empirical basis for the precise percentages of
subquotas.
Hence what the
centre, and the states under its leadership, need to do is first of all to
standardize the list of those to be included, and then to institute a standard,
common quota for them all without distinction of caste, creed and religion. Ideally,
there should also be a mechanism for judging the progress of communities and to
remove them from the quota when they have ceased to be backward. But let us at
least progress from a nation of a thousand castes to one of two classes – one
going forward on merit and another on reservations.
