jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski utni

jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski utni
bhagidari”
Dear friends,

1. I think one of the things that we need to do is to
bring together the original constituents of the
Bahujan Samaaj, and work towards original credo of
Bahujan Samaaj Party (BSP). Originally Bahujan Samaaj
was supposed to include all except the upper caste
Hindus – SC, ST, OBC & minority religions. And credo
of Bahujan Samaaj Party used to be “jiski jitni
sankhya bhaari, uski utni bhagidari” (power to be
shared on the basis of the numerical strength). It is
another matter that Mayawati jee has since changed the
doctrine to "jiski jitni hai taiyari, uski utni
hissedari" (power according to the level of
preparedness). She has also changed the constituents
of Bahujan Samaaj as well, replacing Muslims by
Brahmins and Other Upper Castes (OUCs), and giving up
all connections with the OBCs. However, we don’t have
to necessarily follow our political leaders like sheep
follow their herdsmen or herdswomen. We can never be
sure whether one has sold himself or herself to one or
another party or person. We need to follow the
dictates of our own logical conclusions and our
conscience.

2. Logic suggests that since we don’t have much
money, nor do have media & muscle (guns), we need to
have support of as many people with us as possible, to
achieve our goal. We must also remember that there can
never be unity among groups without fairness to each
other. What we seek from the upper caste (power-share
in proportion to our population), we must grant to our
own less fortunate brethren among us (power-share in
proportion to their population). As such, we must
support the concept of quotas within quotas, as far as
practicable. In other words, care will have to be
taken to see to it that none of the sub-groups within
the upper of the lower castes groups is able to gobble
up share of power of the other less fortunate ones. To
that end, each of the major caste groups (SC/ST/OBC)
would need to be further sub-divided into something
like, say, 2% sub-groups. There are many castes that
are bigger than 2% of the population; they should
constitute a sub-group by themselves. The ones that
are smaller than 2% would need to be grouped with
other numerically smaller castes with nearly equal
educational level to bring their joint population to
more than 2%. Each of these sub-groups may then be
allocated power in proportion to their population. If
disparity is found among the numerically small caste
constituents of a sub-group, they may perhaps use
roster to distribute power among themselves.

3. We should be cognizant that the Brahminical forces
are in a position to buy or hire some of us and make
us not only their political stooges, but also their
agents in the media as well as in academia. Among us
there may be people who would like to impress upon us
that “the social contradiction has shifted. This is
the era of Dalits vs Shudras, and Dalit movements must
accept this social reality and redraft their
strategies”. It should not be difficult for us to tell
why is someone saying whatever if we tried to figure
out where that person is getting his/her salary from.
We should not get distracted by a few incidents of a
few individuals among us exploiting some others. Truth
is that we are all selfish and exploitative. However,
in order to save ourselves from biggest exploitation
at the hands of the strongest among us (the upper
caste), we may have to, to a certain extent, overlook
selfishness and exploitative deeds of others above us,
towards us. We will oppose all exploitations (even
those by some of us against some of us) without
considering them to be our permanent enemies. Just as
we are all selfish, the truth is that no group is a
permanent enemy, or a permanent friend of any other
group. We should be open and able to cooperate with
other common victims of exploitation and injustice.
Such cooperation may strengthen their bonds so much
the relatively stronger one of them may not try to
exploit the lower ones. Biggest injustices have to be
opposed first. Smaller injustices may end due to
cooperation and subsequent goodwill in the fight in
opposition to the biggest injustices.

4. I think many of the Muslims have been too timid to
join demands for their share of pie. Brahminical
forces had blamed Muslim demand for their own share of
pie as the cause for division of the country, and that
has stuck in the minds of many Muslims. In the face of
umpteen riots in most of which Muslim casualties are
generally much higher than others, many of the Muslims
probably just feel happy to be alive. On the top of
that, of course, BJP/RSS are most vociferously against
any thing like quota for Muslims. Without giving any
specific reason, they seem to suggest that it will be
the worst possible thing for India. They seem to imply
that it (quota for Muslims) will lead to another
division of the country. However, recent news
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1637344,curpg-1.cms
from Mumbai is heartening: “Muslim groups on Sunday
demanded reservations for the community in politics
and jobs on the basis of population.” Please see the
full news below. From our side, we should make every
possible effort to bring them into movement towards
100% reservation. Needless to say, the larger is the
number of people demanding their share of pie, the
stronger will be our voice. In the absence of money,
media and muscle, we must do all that can be done to
increase our number to as much as possible, perhaps,
to at least 85%.

5. The credo of “jiski jitni sankhya bhaari, uski
utni bhagidari” resonates much more with European
political philosophy than with the American
philosophy. In Europe they have come to accept rights
of groups. When people talk of rights, right to
equality is the first thing that has to be granted. As
such, groups in Europe have equitable power sharing
arrangement, meaningful implementation of which
necessarily requires tacit approval of quota system.
This is more obvious in multilingual societies like
Switzerland and Belgium than in other countries that
are monolingual ones. On the other hand, in America,
at the height of their civil rights movement, when
they reluctantly had to concede equal opportunities to
their discriminated minorities, they did so under the
fuzzy name of “affirmative action”, with categorical
rejection of quotas. On account of categorical
rejection of quota system in America, we must be
careful in the use of terms like “affirmative action”
and “diversity”. These are fuzzy terms that have been
especially given currency in order to avoid the use of
quotas. That is the reason why I have seen in the
Economic Times and other newspapers some of the Indian
industrialists or their spokespersons stating “YES to
affirmative action” but an emphatic “NO to quotas”.
When the government happens to be a bit more liberal,
affirmative action may signify quota or close to
quota. On the other hand, when the government is a
conservative type, “affirmative action” and
“diversity” would mean pretty much nothing. In the
USA, affirmative action has come almost to naught.
Their diversity, in most cases consists mostly of
having a few Chinese, Indians, African Americans and
some others that look different from white. The most
deprived ones (African Americans and Spanish speaking
persons of Latin American origin) hardly get their
share of the pie. The US system has a lot to be
desired. Europe, specifically, Switzerland, is a much
better model for us to emulate than the USA. We will
talk more about the Swiss system of power-sharing in a
bit greater detail towards the end of this write up.

6. The only thing for which we can cite the example
of the USA is their use of affirmative action in the
private sector right from the beginning of enactment
of civil rights acts. They never thought the private
sector would be outside the purview of affirmative
action. On the other hand, somehow in India, people
were given the impression that private industries were
personal property of its owners and that they have to
be free in hiring and firing of their employees; that
they cannot be subjected to any kind of quota system
among their employees. Personally, I think tax
incentive is the best way of inducing the private
sector to adopt quota system. A detailed plan as to
how tax incentive can be used to make quota system
enforceable as well as palatable would be a subject
matter of a separate post.

7. Let me give a couple of more arguments in favor of
reservation system. This is because the more we are
convinced about a cause, the harder we are likely to
work for the cause. Further, in our everyday life in
arguments with our adversaries, we should be able to
strengthen our arguments from as many points of view
as possible.

7a. Making a devil’s argument, suppose there is an
identifiable group of people that happens to possess
super-intelligence. Would such a situation make it
acceptable for us to have a royal class of
super-intelligent group controlling all power? How
would such a system be different from colonialism?
Would such a system be any different from the system
envisioned by our own great rishi by the name of Manu?
If reliance on purely so-called merit-tests results in
filling all positions of power by individuals from
“super-intelligent” group alone, making them “royal
group”, and effective colonial masters, would that,
and should that, be acceptable to the majority? If the
British had so arranged that Indians would have found
it difficult to have higher education, would they have
been justified in continuing to rule our country for
perpetuity, on the basis of their performance in some
sort of merit-test? If master-slave relationship among
groups of people, i.e., colonial relationship, is not
an acceptable way of life, what is the remedy? Would
the royal class have any interest or incentive in
improving the slave-like condition of the rest of our
society? Particularly, if the super-intelligent group
happens to be in minority, would they have any stake
in any kind of democracy? Or would they reject
democracy as a politics of vote-bank?

7b. Another justification for reservation lies in
“reparation” concept. None will deny the fact that the
upper castes have oppressed the lower ones for ages
and kept them in state of serfdom and deprivation.
That calls for “reparation” for the wrongs done to the
lower castes. During the Second World War Japanese
Americans were incarcerated by the American
Government. They were later given compensation for
harm done to them. Many of the survivors of Hitler’s
holocaust were compensated by the companies that aided
Hitler. Likewise lower castes have to be compensated
for the wrongs done to them by the upper castes. What
would be the right compensation? Well, had it not been
for the oppression from the upper castes, there would
have been parity between the lower and upper castes,
in all regards, including educational and economic
situations. Therefore, all that can be done to bring
about the said parity as soon as possible (in no more
than one generation) must be done.

7c. Some upper caste individuals may claim that they
should not be penalized for wrongs done by their
fore-fathers. However, stolen goods have to be taken
away and given back to the original owners or their
progeny even if the goods were stolen by ancestors of
the current owners. Power and privileges currently
enjoyed by the upper castes, in excess of their dues
share, are nothing but goods stolen and passed on by
their ancestors. All or part of the same must be
restored back to the victims’ progenies. As for
considering it to be punitive, if we advocated
assigning a number of seats disproportionately smaller
than proportion of the upper caste in the population,
it could have been considered to be punitive.
Assigning a number of seats in proportion to their
population is nothing but just the right amount of
power they would have had, had there been no
exploitations in the past; it cannot be considered to
be punitive by any stretch of imagination. The excess
goods (disproportionate power and privilege) passed on
to the upper castes by their ancestors must be taken
away (just as any stolen goods should be taken away
from its current possessors) and distributed among the
dispossessed towards establishment of an equalitarian
society.

8. Finally, let me point out that an equalitarian
society is not a figment of imagination. It exists in
Switzerland, Belgium and the Nordic countries in
Europe. However, being a multi-lingual country, it is
most obvious in Switzerland. Here is what Wolf Linder
(in his book, “Swiss Democracy: Possible Solutions to
Conflict in Multicultural Societies,” St. Martin’s
Press, 1994, p-xv-xvi,) says: “Switzerland provides a
model example (for a multi-cultural society) because
of its enduring will to constitute an independent
political nation based on the mutual respect of its
minorities. It provides a model for finding political
institutions and patterns of behavior that enable
peaceful conflict-resolution in a multi-cultural
society.”

Linder further says, “Power-sharing, proportional
representation of different segments of the society,
not only in the government, but also in various
economic, social and cultural organizations of the
Swiss society appears to have become Swiss way of
life. … It is practiced in the organization of the
economy, in social life and even in sports. This is
true at least for linguistic proportional rule. As
Jurg Steiner (1990) writes: ‘It is unimaginable that
the executive committee of the Swiss Soccer
Association would consist of German-speakers only’.”

The table shown below is suggestive of quite a strict
quota system used in Switzerland.

Proportional Representation of linguistic groups
(percentages) in certain federal jobs in Switzerland:
Representation German French Italian
Population (Swiss citizen only) 74.5 20.1 4.0
Federal Administration:
All personnel 76.5 15.4 5.2
Senior staff 73.6 20.9 3.5
Top Management 78.8 19.0 2.2
Expert Committees 76.9 20.0 3.1
Presidents of committees
of the National Council 76.0 20.0 3.1

In the above table, the sums of various rows do not
add to 100, as they should. This discrepancy may
possibly be because the authors decided to ignore the
statistics about Romansch speaking people on account
of their small size – I do not know. I have simply
copied the table from the book by Wolf Linder.

In connection with European acceptance of
power-sharing, I must say that they were aided in this
direction by their system of election – Proportional
Representation (PR) system of election. All of
European countries (with the exception of England and
France) use PR or semi-PR of one kind or the other.
Under PR various parties get seats in proportion to
votes obtained by them. It helps small parties gain
representation. Weaker segments of the society can
only have small parties. On the other hand, FPTP
(first-past-the-post) system that we inherited from
the British, leads to two-party system. Moreover, the
two parties can’t differ from each other much, as they
have to try to please the “independent voters”. We
would discuss PR in greater detail in another post.

Regards,
Satinath