Jat intelligensia distances itself from quota demand

Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, August 29

Even as several Jat bodies prepare strategies to put up a concerted agitation to press for their demand to grant reservation to the community, a number of learned and well-meaning members of the Jat community have started raising their voice against reservation demand through various social media networks.

Social media forums such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp are flooded with messages disapproving the quota demand. The members propagating such messages maintain that it is not justified to get the Jat community categorised under the backward classes to get the benefits of reservation.

“Reservation was originally meant to benefit the members of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes who actually needed and deserved it. The inclusion of other communities under the reserved categories has opened a Pandora’s box, with nearly all communities vying to become backward to get the quota benefits,” observes noted DR Chaudhry, a writer-cum-social activist of the state.

Several other members of the Jat intelligentsia echo his views, asserting that it would be demeaning for the Jat community to get included in the list of the backward classes.

Dr Ranbir Singh Dahiya, a former senior professor of surgery at the local PGIMS, maintained that preferably, the castes and communities that were already included in the reserved categories should remain intact. And if the government actually wants to benefit the downtrodden, the benefit might be extended to the economically weaker sections of society, irrespective of their caste or community.

Dr Dahiya as well as many other community leaders point out that the real challenge and concern for the Jat community members is the crisis in agriculture and it should also be a priority area for the government.

“I have seen my parents’ anguish over dying agriculture. But they never ever taught us to fight for quota. They used to make us feel proud of ourselves for belonging to a community known for its toughness in the fields as well as on the frontiers. I feel the community needs to revive its toughness. Reservation is like an elevator. It should be meant for those who can’t climb the stairs,” reads a Facebook post of a local journalist.

Communiques to this effect are also being circulated among numerous WhatsApp groups and through other social media networks.