Reservations – Some Questions and their Answers

Reservations – Some Questions and their Answers
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Q: What is reservation?

The word reservation is a misnomer. The appropriate word for it used in the
Indian constitution is Representation. It is not given to anyone in his
individual capacity. It is given to individual as a representative of the
underprivileged community. The beneficiaries of reservations are in turn
expected to help their communities to come up.

Q: Why reservation?

The policy of reservations is being used as a strategy to overcome
discrimination and act as a compensatory exercise. A large section of the
society was historically denied right to property, education, business and
civil rights because of the practice of untouchability. In order to
compensate for the historical denial and have safeguards against
discrimination, we have the reservation policy.

Q: Were Reservations incorporated by the founding fathers of the
constitution only for first 10 years?

Only the political reservations (seats reserved in Loksabha, Vidhansabha,
etc) were to be reserved for 10 years and the policy review was to be made
after that. That is why after every 10 years the parliament extends
political reservations.

The 10 year limit for reservations is not true for the reservations in
education and employment. The reservations in educational institutions and
in employment are never given extension as it is given for the political
reservations.

Q: Why give reservations on basis of caste?

To answer this question we must first understand why the need for the
reservations has arisen. The cause for the various types of disabilities
that the underprivileged castes in India face / have faced, is the systemic
historical subjugation of a massive magnitude based on caste system having a
religious sanction. Therefore if the caste system was the prime cause of all
the disabilities, injustice and inequalities that the Dalit-Bahujans
suffered, then to overcome these disabilities the solution has to be
designed on basis of caste only.

Q: Why not on basis of economic criterion?

Reservations should never be based on economic status for various reasons as
follows:

1. The poverty prevailing among the Dalit-Bahujans has its genesis in the
social-religious deprivations based on caste system. Therefore poverty is an
effect and caste system a cause. The solution should strike at the cause and
not the effect

2. An individual's Economic status can change. Low income may be taken to
mean poverty. But the purchasing value of money, in India, depends upon
caste. For example a Dalit can not buy a cup of tea even in some places.

3. Practical difficulties in proving economic status of individual to the
state machinery are many. The weak may suffer.

4. In caste ridden India infested with rampant corruption, even for an
unchangeable status like caste, the false "Caste Certificate" can be
purchased. How much easier will it be to purchase a false "Income
Certificate"? So income based reservation is impractical. It is no use
arguing when both certificates can be bought, why caste only should form
basis of reservation. It is certainly more difficult to buy a false caste
certificate than a false income certificate.

5. Reservation is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The main
aim is to achieve the active participation and sharing by the "socially
excluded" humanity in all the fields of the affairs of the society. It is
not panacea for all ills, neither it is permanent. It would be a temporary
measure till such time the matrimonial advertisements in newspaper columns
continue to contain the mention of caste.

Q: Should there be a creamy layer criterion or not?

The demand from anti-reservationists for introduction of creamy layer is
ploy to scuttle the whole effectiveness of reservations. Even now out of all
seats meant for SC/STs in IITs , 25-40 % seats remain vacant because it
seems IITs do not find suitable candidates. Just imagine what would happen
if by applying creamy layer criterion the SC/ST middle class, lower middle
class people who are in position to take decent education are excluded from
reservations benefit ! Will the poor among SC/STs be able to compete with
these 'privileged 'students' trained under Ramaiah and at various IIT-JEE
training centers at Kota ?
Of course Not.
This will lead to 100 % seats in IITs for SC/STs going vacant.

Q: How long should the reservations continue?

The answer to this question lies with the anti-reservationists. It depends
on how sincerely and effectively the policy makers which constitute
"privileged castes" people in executive, judiciary and legislature,
implement the reservations policy.
Is it just on part of "privileged castes" people who have enjoyed undeclared
exclusive reservations for past 3000 years and continue to enjoy the same
even in 21st century in all religious institutions and places of worship, to
ask for the timelines for reservations policy?
Why do not they ask, how long the exclusive reservations for particular
community in the religious institutions and places of worship are going to
continue?

The people who have acquired disabilities due to inhuman subjugation for
3000 years will need substantial time to come over those disabilities. 50
years of affirmative action is nothing as compared to 3000 years of
subjugation.

Q: Will not the reservations based on castes lead to divisions in the
society?

There are apprehensions that reservations will lead to the divisions in the
society. These apprehensions are totally irrational. The society is already
divided into different castes. On the contrary reservations will help in
annihilating the caste system. There are around 5000 castes among the SC/ST
and OBCs. By grouping these various castes under 3 broad categories of SC,
ST and OBC, the differences among 5000 separate castes can be abridged. This
is a best way of annihilation of castes. Therefore rather than making
rhetoric about reservations leading to divisions in the society the
anti-reservationists should make honest and sincere efforts to annihilate
castes. Have these people made any efforts towards this direction? In most
of the cases the answer is NO. The people making these anti-reservations
rhetoric, all this time have been enjoying all the privileges that the
Indian caste system offers to the "Privileged Castes". As long as they enjoy
the privileges of the caste system they do not have any qualms regarding it.
But when it comes to making castes as basis for achieving social equality by
providing representations these same people make noises. These are the
double standards of highest order practiced by the 'privileged' people.

Q: Will not reservations affect the Merit?

As regards to how Merit is defined in a very narrow sense and what it
actually means, following is the quote from an article by Prof Rahul Barman
of IIT Kanpur.

"Is merit all about passing exams? After all, are the exams a means or an
end? If the exams are means to look for ability to make better engineers,
doctors and managers, then can there be better methods to look for such
ability? After all in my first engineering class I was told that a good
engineer is the one who can produce the best out of the least resources and
similarly, management is supposed to find one's way in an uncertain
situation – or allocate scarce resources in the most optimal way possible.
If that is so, whatever I have seen of our deprived masses (of which
overwhelming majority belongs to the backward, dalit castes or adivasis),
they have the astonishing capacity to make something productive from almost
next to nothing! For the last few years I have been studying small industry
clusters, like Moradabad brass, Varanasi silk and Kanpur leather. Put
together (all the clusters in the country), they are exporting more than the
IT sector and their cumulative employment will be several times of the
whole of IT industry. In all these clusters they operate with miniscule
resources – small investment, no electricity, forget about air-conditioning,
non existent roads, lack of water, and little formal education. These
clusters are primarily constituted of these so called backward/ dalit castes
and are truly a tribute to the genius that our society is. But in spite of
centuries of excellence these communities have hardly produced any formal
'engineers', 'doctors' and 'managers', and conversely these elite
institutions have not developed any linkages with such industries and their
people. "

Reservations of more than 60 % have existed in the 4 states of southern
India and around 40 % in Maharashtra since last 50 years. On other hand in
the north Indian states the 15 % 'privileged castes' have been enjoying 77 %
of the seats in educational institutions and in employment (assuming that 23
% reservations for SC/STs are totally filled, which is not the case). The
World Bank study has found that all the 4 south Indian states are much ahead
of north Indian states in terms of their human development index. It is a
common knowledge that all the southern states and Maharashtra are much ahead
in fields of education, health, industrial development, in implementing
poverty alleviation schemes, etc. than the north Indian states. This shows
that reservations have indeed helped the southern Indian states in making
progress on various fronts. Whereas lack of adequate reservations is
responsible for the lack of development in most of the north Indian states.

Q: Have existing reservations for SC/STs been effective or not?

The reservation policy in the public sector has benefited a lot of people.
The Central government alone has 14 lakh employees. The proportion of
Scheduled castes in class III and IV is well above the quota of 16 per cent
and in class I and II, the proportion is around 8–12 per cent. So, the
middle and the lower middle class that we see today from the Dalit community
is because of reservation. With no reservation, the entry of these people in
government services would have been doubtful.
The situation is similar in education. An article in the EPW (Economic and
Political Weekly) estimates that there are seven lakh SC /ST students in
higher education and about half of them are there because of reservation.
Reservation has certainly helped but there are limitations in any policy
with the way it is implemented.