FROM THE TELEGRAPH OF 30 MAY 2006
Caste as a
policy variable
There are two
curious features about the agitation against reservations for other backward
castes (OBCs). First, whereas the 1989 agitation engulfed universities, the
present agitation has been largely confined to doctors. Second, although the
agitation is against further reservations, public discussion has largely
proceeded on the premise that reservations are good and that only their extent
is debatable.
The first
feature is explained by the fact that we are in the examination season. Student
agitation at this time may entail the loss of an academic year for students in
the middle of or about to go to examinations; the cost is high enough to deter
students. V P Singh being a good, decent, naïve fellow, declared his
reservations in summer, just as vacation was ending and students were getting
back to college. That was a good time for an agitation. Wily, Machiavellian
Arjun Singh chose a time when students would be busy with better things. But if
the present conflict continues till July, the government may face a more
widespread agitation. At present, the police can easily beat up doctors; three
months from now, a hundred times as many students may be on the streets, and
the police may have to flee their wrath.
We in this
country do not have much experience of student agitations. I once got it in
Dacca, where I had gone for a conference in 1990. The dictator – I think he was
called Zia – wanted to teach university students a lesson. He released two hooligans,
Ovi and Neeru, from jail, and asked them to do the necessary. They collected some
miscreants and invaded the university. The students proved too much for them,
and they had to flee. Next day, they went with a bigger gang. That time, the
students not only beat them up, but they came out and brought the capital to a
halt. The conference was wrecked. We foreigners barely managed to run to the
airport and escape. Three days later, Zia fell.
I can hardly
think of that happening to Manmohan Singh. After all, he has CITU hooligans
prepared to defend his regime. But public disturbances can be a hazard for
poorly governed countries like ours, and any government should think twice
before provoking a general agitation. Even those who are prepared to face
high-caste backlash would think twice if they faced the possibility of a caste
war; especially in the north, it could become uncontrollable.
The second
feature is the disconnect between discussion in the media and the doctors’
agitation. The doctors are clear: they want an end to reservations. The public
discussion is more qualified; by and large, everyone has proceeded on the
assumption that reservations are good, and the opposition has at best proposed
cosmetic changes.
This is
explained by the fact that public discussion is entirely amongst the arrivés –
those who have made their careers and occupied bastions of privilege, and who
therefore do not feel threatened by reservations. It may also be that when they
went to college, there was less competition and less stress on merit. There
certainly was when I went to college. First-generation students in my class in
a Bombay college could have been counted on the fingers of one hand. Even
Maharashtrian students were a hopeless minority. Most students came from
families that made up the establishment; and the establishment was much smaller
in those days. Today, there is far more competition to get into colleges,
especially the better ones. There are many more selection tests, and the
majority of students are selected through these examinations. That is
particularly true of professional studies such as medicine, engineering and
information technology. But it is also fairly true of other subjects. There
too, most of colleges’ intake is based on some general examination or the
other.
This is why my
generation – and later ones – could accept reservations as a byproduct of
democracy. The present generation (I mean high-caste) on the other hand, feels
that it got into the university system by hard work and demonstrated merit;
conversely, that SC/STs and OBCs are just free-riders who want to get there
without working for it, by sheer accident of birth. The accident is not
entirely uncorrectable; many high-caste students no doubt buy bogus
certificates of low caste and ride free as well. That is what Chandrababu Naidu
found when he got the origins of students in hostels for low-caste students
investigated. But the system is not entirely subverted, especially in
relatively well governed states; they are where the feeling of injustice is
strongest.
Leftists and
other friends of the lower castes, of course, allege injustice of the other
kind: that high-caste students do well because they are born in better-off
families, often to educated parents, and thus get advantages at home – literate
company, books, computers, parental pressure to perform – which contribute to
their better examination performance. In their view, therefore, it is only fair
that the disadvantaged should jump the queue and go to the front even if they
fail examinations.
This argument
implicitly assumes that the low-caste people are poor and uneducated, and that
jobs do not require merit. Both propositions were approximately correct at the
time of first-generation reservations, roughly between 1950 and 1975. The caste
divide was an economic frontier at that time, because rural society was
organized functionally; lower castes served higher ones, generally menially,
and so their incomes were a fraction of those of upper castes.
This divide has become
less pronounced, not because villagers have changed, but villages have. There
is more migration to towns and to far-away jobs; those who once were scavengers
and carcass-cutters have become general labourers. The supply of manual work
has shrunk with the multiplication of automotive vehicles; today, there is
hardly anyone to be seen in cities and vast areas of the countryside pulling
handcarts or ploughing. With the broadening of labour markets, some low-caste
people have done well, and a few have broken into the ranks of the middle
class. The OBCs, in particular, are no longer economically below average.
The second was
not true, but was made true. The government was once a meritocracy – and an
aristocracy. When it gave jobs to SC/STs, it also recruited on an enormous
scale. The result was that the vast majority of government servants could just
enjoy themselves in the midst of files, while the work was done by a small
minority. The work too suffered – our governments today do very little of what
governments are supposed to do – but it did not stop.
Today, a huge
and expanding sector of employment has come up where skill matters. And the
future of the country as a global provider of goods and services depends on
whether this sector is allowed to survive and expand. The government may get by
with expansion of educational institutions to accommodate the incompetent; but
the private sector cannot. And because the private sector has become so
important now in professional education, education also cannot afford
reservation. That is why reservations are unsuited to modern India; and so is
affirmative action. One can think of better pro-poor policies; but first one
has to get out of the old mindset.
