Thirty years ago, on August 7, Indian politics and society
changed. In a historic move, the VP Singh Government decided to implement the
recommendations of the Mandal Commission, and open up reservations for
Other Backward Classes in Government jobs. This came in the wake of the
gradual political rise of the backward communities, which was due to a set of
complex factors. The first was the demographic weight of the backward communities.
The second was the fact that OBCs were not a natural constituency of the
Congress and preferred peasant-based formations, socialist parties and regional
parties. All of them were on the ascendant at that time. The
third factor was the impact of the Green Revolution which led to their120 economic empowerment and desire for upward professional mobility.
The immediate political trigger for Mr. VP Singh’s decision was an
effort140 to
counter the Mandir politics of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which sought to
prioritize religion over caste, but its impact160 went way beyond that. The Mandal moment saw ferocious backlash
by sections of upper castes. This opposition was articulated on two points. The
first point was that reservations compromised merit, and the second was that if,
at all, reservations should open up beyond what was offered to Scheduled
Castes and Tribes, it should be on economic lines. These
arguments hid beneath it a real fear of losing power and opportunities. It
launched an era of open hostility between upper castes240 and backward communities, particularly in the Hindi heartland.
OBCs became a force to contend with, and it is no surprise that no Government
in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar can now be formed without their active support. But
it also opened280 up a Pandora’s
Box. Firstly, those communities which did not have a share in the
reservation pie were enraged, and political parties, in order to appease these
communities, continued to expand reservation to the extent that now
economically weaker sections320 of dominant
communities avail quotas. In many States, there is over 70% reservation
in key spheres. This has undermined the entire purpose of reservation which was
envisaged as a tool to address historic injustice. It has now become an
exercise360 in power
distribution and employment generation. Secondly, within OBCs, some communities
benefited more than others, which led to a political divide and demands
for sub-categorization. The process of sub-categorization is currently underway.
Over the years, the implementation of Mandal Commission’s
recommendations has empowered communities. But the entire architecture of
reservations needs a review, with the aim of creating a just, 420 inclusive and equal society, without pandering to populist
movements.
By giving reservation to OBCs in employment, Mr. VP Singh was
fulfilling only one half of the first recommendation of the Mandal Commission.
The Mandal Commission was set up on January 1, 1979, under the chairmanship of
BP Mandal. It submitted its report on December 31, 1980. The second half of480 the Commission’s recommendation was the reservation for OBCs in
central educational institutions. The OBCs had to wait till 2006 for this. The
Mandal Commission had also recommended land redistribution and change in relations
of production. The Commission said in its
report that reservations in Government
employment and educational institutions, as also all financial
assistance will remain mere palliatives unless the problem of
backwardness is tackled at its root. It also underlined that bulk of the small landholders, tenants, agricultural labour,560 impoverished
village artisans and unskilled workers
belong to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. It was the
Commission’s firm conviction that a radical transformation of the existing
production relations is the most important single step that can be600 taken for the welfare and upliftment of all backward
classes. No Union Government has taken any
substantial steps to bring about the structural change that was
advocated by the Mandal Commission. We are moving in the opposite
direction. Even though640 OBCs have
got 27 per cent reservation
in employment and education, implementation remains inadequate. Agriculture,
the backbone of the rural economy, has become economically unviable. Industrial
capital remains firmly in the hands of the upper castes. Last month, the Central Government admitted in the Madras High Court that OBCs were not
given reservation in the All India quota of medical700 seats in courses such as the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor
of Surgery and Bachelor of Dental Surgery since 1986. This720 will hopefully change from next year as the High Court has given clear
directions to set up a committee to look into this issue. But one
wonders how many such other cases exist in which OBC reservation is not
being implemented just because no one has noticed yet. For example, the Indian Institutes of Management do not offer reservation
in teaching posts and have no intention of doing so in the future. These 20
IIMs had requested the Union Government800 to include them in the Institutions of Excellence category, which
would exempt them from the implementation of reservation in faculty
positions. The data collected by some scholars shows that OBCs occupied only 8 percent posts in the Class A of840 Central Government services and
only 10 per cent of the Class
B posts. These figures demonstrate the severe under-representation of the
communities that make up more than half of India’s population.
The history of
reservation for the backward castes goes back to 1902 when Shahu Maharaj, the
ruler of the princely State of Kolhapur, reserved 50 per cent jobs for backward
castes which included all communities except forward groups such as Brahmins,
Prabhus, Shenvis and Parsis. When India’s Constitution came into force in 1950,
the question of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes was already settled. But what
is meant by backward classes and who should be included in this
category were questions that remained mired in controversy for decades. The960 Jawaharlal Nehru Government
set up a backward classes commission in 1953, which drew up a list of 2,399
communities listing980 them as
backward. But the Government did not act on this report. The
Nehru dispensation was largely hostile to the idea of accepting caste as the
basis for defining backward classes. This view was shared by the upper
caste-dominated media and academia too, which would have preferred secular
criteria such as income, literacy, or occupation. The belief that acknowledging
ascriptive units such as caste would make them firmer in the minds
of people was held by many political leaders and thinkers. Due to the
Government’s inertia, the OBC category could not gain any meaningful
traction nationally until August 7, 1990. 1080 Retrospectively speaking, the four lost
decades did immense harm to OBCs. They remain severely under-represented in Government
jobs and the corridors of power, and, after the promising start of the
1990s, their political representation has also weakened. Hopefully, the1120 30th anniversary of the
Mandal moment will give a new fillip to their politics.
On August 5 and 6 last
year, the Narendra Modi administration took two steps that fundamentally
altered the lives of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. First, it removed the
special status that the State enjoyed in the Indian Union under Article
370 of the Constitution. Then, Parliament enacted the Jammu and Kashmir
Reorganization Act, which demoted and divided the State into two Union
territories. To ensure1200 that there
was no protest against these steps, the Modi administration arrested all the State’s
political leaders, except those belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party,
imposed Section 144, and snapped all communications in and with the State. The
BJP claimed these measures would improve security, and give the people
of Jammu and Kashmir the same rights as prevailed in1260 the rest of India. One year has passed.
How do we assess those claims? Take security first. There has been1280 a sharp rise in
insecurity on the borders, but some improvement internally. We are
still struggling to reverse the Chinese incursions into Ladakh, and
cross-border firing by Pakistan has risen sharply. Internally, there has
been a drop of around 30 per cent in casualties comparing the period from August
2019 to July 2020 with the same period in the preceding year. But
we also find a rising trend in casualties from April 2020, which is
worrying. The reduction in casualties was achieved at considerable human cost.
According to figures given by the Jammu and Kashmir administration, this came
at the cost of the detention of 6,600 people, including children, under the
draconian Public Safety Act, the continuous imposition of1400 Section 144 to date, the
restriction of mobile telephony and Internet, and a new media policy that
allows security agencies to censor media outlets. Most of the detainees
have been gradually released, but the majority of political leaders spent
anywhere between1440 eight to 11
months in detention. Many of them were released only after agreeing that
they would not criticize the August actions. Since the August lockdown was
only gradually being relaxed when the COVID-19 lockdown was imposed, Jammu and
Kashmir has suffered one year of closures. According to the Kashmir Chamber of
Commerce and Industry, businesses across all sectors of the economy have lost
close to Rs. 40,000 crore in the Valley alone. Even discounting these figures,
the economic cost to the former State as a whole must be even larger. Losses in
education and health are similarly grave. Schools had just reopened after the
August lockdown and winter vacations, when the pandemic struck. Online classes
barely worked on 2G networks. University students often missed college
admissions, teachers and researchers1600 could not participate in conferences or send
papers for publication. Healthcare professionals faced the same problems. Doctors
could not seek specialist advice on serious illnesses or exchange
the latest information1600 on COVID-19. In
the first few months after August, pharmacies could not get deliveries of
medicine and clinics were closed. 1620
