Promoting reservation

There’s a new issue at hand. Recently, the Supreme Court had struck down an order issued by the Mayawati government to provide reservations in promotions for SC/ST employees in state services. Interestingly, the Akhilesh Yadav dispensation that replaced the Mayawati rule there is in total agreement with the verdict even as that was what the upper caste employees in Uttar Pradesh craved for. These elite sections were irritated, upset and opposed to the out-of-turn promotions given to the SC/ST employees during Ms Mayawati’s rule. Though she had taken the support of the Brahmins to win the 2007 elections by raising the slogan of Sarvajansukhaya, that did not prevent her from taking some strong decisions that helped the SC/STs of the state.
The names of the districts that she adopted, the Ambedkar Parks that she established, and the Ambedkar villages that she lined up for development, have all shown in ample measure the direction her government was taking. Hers was a pro-dalit government, as her mentor the late Kanshi Ram wanted it to be. Her policy of faster promotion for the SC/STs, and not for OBCs, had created tension between these two sections of the oppressed society.
Now, the Akhilesh Yadav government’s opposition to the SC/ST promotion policy created an impression that the Samajwadi Party (SP) government is toeing the line of the upper castes in opposing not just what Ms Mayawati did, but the principle of reservation itself. In a way, this is curious, but not all that curious either. The SP is known as the OBC party and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as the SC party in the Uttar Pradesh context.
While the BSP committed a mistake by leaving out the OBCs in the matter of special promotions (in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and so on, OBCs get the benefit of reservation in promotions. It is under that quota that I too got the associate professorship in Osmania University), the SP committed a bigger blunder by opposing the very principle of reservation in promotions.
Now, the debate is: should there be reservation in promotions at all? Yes, there must be. Why? Take the case of universities, IITs, IIMs and other educational institutions. Caste consciousness became much more pronounced in those institutions after the reservations were introduced. The authorities happened to be by and large from the upper castes; and naturally, they should like to promote “their men/women”. The newly inducted “reservation” faculty in these institutions were seen as plunderers of jobs which so far belonged to the upper castes. Also, the reservation principle had undercut the scope for manipulations of appointments. Those in the higher echelons of these institutions view the higher positions as the elites’ preserve. Merit had largely not counted in promotions so far. Patronage, casteism, and much else were the force that worked behind the men and women climbing up the ladders in the academic field as also elsewhere.
In the 1950s and 60s, when only upper caste candidates went for the entry-level positions, the recruitment base was a raw master’s degree. Even the first promotion used to be given with certain period of service (say five years of teaching experience) as the essential requirement. Nowadays, several selection committees turn down SC/ST/OBC candidates holding Ph. D. and certificate of National Eligibility Test (NET), rejecting them as being unsuitable at the entry level itself. Promotions are denied to them based on negative confidential reports written by the very same heads. The Indian courts do not interfere with these selection processes, as there is some perceived sanctity attached to these.
Under the circumstances, without a very strong reservation policy at all levels of the educational institutions, how do you create a talent pool from among the SC/ST/OBCs? Even the emergent talent pool could be mediocre.
We must understand that by 1995 (the year in which the Mandal reservation system began to be implemented) a very strong self-centred ruling class has emerged from the Indian elite groups by resort to government jobs. The emergence of such a ruling elite was possible because at all levels of the government, upper caste elites occupied positions, whether or not they had merit. Merit is a convenient ploy. Its definition could be changed, depending on situations.
The elite sections raise the bogey of quality when it comes to reservations. But how many Nobel laureates did our universities, IITs and IIMs, produce before the reservation system came into operation? And, did such a production stop thereafter because of reservations? The fact is all our universities, IITs and IIMs, have always been mediocre institutions, just as our sports field failed to make a mark at every international event. They all continue to be the same even now. Reservations at the entry level of jobs had not changed that status; and reservations at the level of promotions, introduced lately, too are not going to alter the situation. Mediocrity is built into our system. The SC/ST/OBCs too are victims of that historical mediocrity.
The Indian judiciary is a byproduct of our educational institutions. The judiciary has come to the conclusion long back that mediocrity has to be shared on a 50:50 basis by the upper castes and lower castes. Whenever a reservation case comes up before the Supreme Court, it asks for accurate census data, without informing the nation how it arrived at the 50 per cent distribution.
What moral merit can the nation claim in a situation in which someone who took a fast track promotion to become, say, the Cabinet secretary, who keeps saying in national TV debates that the dalits in India have become landlords? Is not such intellectual dishonesty deadly? The least that’s expected on the part of the ruling class is a sense of shame and guilt. Where that is missing, merit does not exist.
Never in its existential history has the Indian Supreme Court asked a very simple moral legal question: Why does untouchability exist even half a century past Independence? The social strain it causes is all too clear.
If only to eliminate such practices, the social inheritors of untouchability should one day sit in the positions of, say, Cabinet secretary in Delhi and of chief secretary in the states. After all, what difference does it make if a mediocre person from the upper caste is replaced by a mediocre person from among the dalits? How can any intelligent person ask, for how long reservations — before asking, for how long caste practices and untouchability?
A statement of Babasaheb Ambedkar is repeated often: the statement that reservations should be in operation for 10 years. But, this came with a rider that the caste system and untouchability should be abolished immediately after the adoption of the democratic Constitution. Did our rulers do that? Diabolism, whether in legal or educational institutions, should not become a principle. That hurts the nation and the spirit of co-existence.
Caste is a cancer. Let us talk about removing it first. Let me be blunt. Since all promotions are meant for increased power and perks, let SC/ST/OBCs also get their due share.

The writer is director, Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Maulana Azad
National Urdu University, Hyderabad