Scramble for reservation

IN what appears to be the rerun of an old movie, the BJP government in Maharashtra is enacting a charade that was unsuccessfully played out by its Congress-NCP predecessor exactly a decade back. As is the case now, in 2008 a committee declared the Marathas to be a socially and educationally backward community and just before the last Assembly polls, the state government decided to allocate 16 per cent reservation for Marathas in education and employment. This was to be over and above the reservation under the Mandal Commission quota. There have been similar attempts to placate the dominant agriculturist castes in Haryana and Rajasthan (Jats), Andhra (Kapus) and Gujarat (Patels).

In each of these cases, there are commonalities as well as differences. All four are warrior-agriculturist castes caught in a complex vortex of aspirations and resentment. On the one hand, they feel bypassed by the post-globalisation boom in the services and knowledge-based sectors. On the other, they face declining returns from agriculture and fear the rise of the other backward castes after the Mandal reservations came into effect. But in political ascendency, Marathas and Jats also share the distress of being edged out from their previous stranglehold over the state’s political leadership. This recent deprivation of power has provoked a series of violent outbursts over small symbolic issues by the frustrated Maratha youth.

The Devendra Fadnavis government will cite an extraordinary and exceptional situation to convince the courts to permit a breach in the 50 per cent ceiling for reservation. That will only open the floodgates for the socially dominant castes in other states to clamour for the same, thus upending the entire reservation arrangement,  which is neither an employment generation scheme nor a poverty alleviation programme. And even if it was approved, the benefits will accrue to a microscopic section of the caste in question. These intermediate castes are deluding themselves by reposing faith in reservation to extricate them from poor returns from agriculture, lack of quality education and the absence of decent, formal jobs.