http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Quota-Unquote/articleshow/7719566.cms
COMMENT
Quota Unquote
Mar 17, 2011, 12.00am IST
Reservation's biggest failure is that it seems to reinforce rather
than dilute caste-based popular clamour. Social groups, some
not-so-needy, continue to seek its supposed protective cover, often
through violent means. Try telling that to India's politicians, who've
long turned quotas into a tool of competitive electoral mobilisation.
Rajasthan's leaders sometime ago granted Gujjar demands for
self-serving ends. Today, Haryana's Hooda and UP's Mayawati back a Jat
agitation for central jobs under the OBC category. What's blinked at
is that, six decades ago, it was thought that ostracised and
marginalised groups needed reservation only as a timebound instrument
of socio-economic levelling. India has come a long way since then.
Today, reservation has ended up creating "creamy layers" in targeted
sections. The Supreme Court's 50% ceiling on quota has been breached
as well, as in Tamil Nadu. Quotas were meant to facilitate upward
mobility in terms of jobs, livelihoods or status. Instead, they have
virtually come to resemble sarkari privilege, promoting a race to the
bottom with more and more social groups demanding inclusion under
SC/ST or OBC categories. Clearly, if we're to have reservation, it
must be based on the economic criterion. More important, quota-based
positive discrimination must make way for affirmative action in the
form of efficient services delivery to the poor across the social
board.
To the UPA government's credit, social schemes are being pushed with a
broad, secular approach to promoting socio-economic uplift, be it
through Bharat Nirman or the National Rural Health Mission. Whether
NREG, the proposed food security scheme or right to education, the
focus has been on need, not caste. This is as it should be. Whereas
quotas create social friction by building coddled niches,
welfare-for-all has unifying potential, and hence can help bridge
caste divides. The midday meal scheme in schools - encouraging
community eating at a young age - is a case in point.
The underprivileged have a sense of powerlessness and low self-esteem
precisely because they've been treated as a faceless collective to be
swayed by political populism, rather than as individual citizens with
distinct identities and entitlements. Here's where UID and financial
inclusion come in. By giving the poor identity, financial agency and
provable claim to social benefits, such projects can do more good than
quotas ever could. Similarly, reservations in perpetuity can't
substitute for genuine empowerment flowing from access to education,
healthcare and infrastructure. Development, fast-tracked, will work
the magic reservation hasn't in over 60 years. In a new, aspirational
India where votebank politicking increasingly seems an anomaly, the
needy realise this. The outcome of key elections in Bihar - a state
long associated with casteist politics - has demonstrated this not
once but twice.
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