The Bahujan Samaj Party has quite clearly promoted this new category of quotas in order to shore up its electoral position in Uttar Pradesh
Reservations, or positive discrimination, in educational institutions and employment have been with us for long. This particular means of helping socially, educationally and culturally deprived sections of the population attain a measure of equality and dignity is taken as a given in our system.
Well-argued and contending positions covering various dimensions of the problem, and the way to tackle it, have been articulated many times over and the balance of opinion has found its way into the country’s policy matrix which is supported by judicial pronouncements.
This national equilibrium looked like being disturbed on Monday when the Rajya Sabha passed a constitutional amendment bill favouring quotas even in promotions in government departments. Among the major parties in Parliament, only the Samajwadis registered opposition to the measure. But this is deceptive. The Congress, the BJP, their allies, as well as other parties supported the move spearheaded by BSP supremo Mayawati only because they fear that not doing so would make them run foul of Scheduled Castes’ and Scheduled Tribes’ (for whom the promotion quota is intended) votes in future elections.
It is evident that the whole exercise is election-oriented, and does not really have a bearing on the welfare of the SCs/STs for whom it is meant. Neither the BSP nor the government has offered any quantitative data to suggest that the careers of dalit and tribals employed in the government sector has been adversely affected in the absence of promotion-related quotas. This does render the measure judicially vulnerable, should a challenge arise.
The BSP has quite clearly promoted this new category of quotas in order to shore up its electoral position in Uttar Pradesh, where the party was defeated in the last Assembly election earlier this year. The SP has opposed it precisely in order to deny its key rival a position of potential advantage. But the SP is no less poll-oriented. To trump the BSP’s presumed advantage, the SP has made a demand for promotion quota for the minorities in a tit-for-tat approach in the belief that this would help it have a near-monopoly on the Muslim vote.
What is surprising in the whole affair is that the merits of the case have not been debated on the floor of Parliament or even in the public domain. There can also possibly be an adverse political outcome for governance in the overall scheme of things if the SP withdraws support to the UPA government in the aftermath of the promotions quota imbroglio. Politics in the country is being constructed of late on the basis of political correctness and electoral calculations alone.