By
Aditya Aamir
Tuesday
the 10% EWS quota amendment bill got the Lok Sabha nod despite adding to the
laughing stock piled against the Narendra Modi government outside Parliament.
Likely headlines ranged from ‘A Steal’ to ‘Finally.’ Every party when in power
attempted to give economically weaker sections among upper castes a slice of
the reservation cake. They failed because either the process followed was wrong
or because there was no heart in the effort. Lalu’s RJD calls the bill
‘midnight dacoity.’
Besides,
the Supreme Court has put a cap of 50% on quotas. The 10% quota will jack up
reservations to 60%. Will this latest attempt leapfrog the top court bump? The
Lok Sabha passed the EWS Quota (124 Amendment) Bill without much ado Tuesday
evening. Every party supported it. At the end of the day, the joke was on whom?
Wednesday,
‘Modi’s Masterstroke’ was greeted with ruckus in the Upper House. The bill
requires a two-thirds majority to become law. The “masterstroke” is a strike
aimed at general elections 2019. The Opposition, especially the Congress, is in
a dilemma. After winning MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, it cannot be seen
standing against upper castes. The BJP wins either way. There are aspects to
the bill which place the bill plonk on the poll-plank.
It’s
income-based reservation, a departure from caste-based quota. Strictly-speaking,
however, the caste spectrum just went the whole hog and the reservation pie
grew bigger by 10%. The Rs 8 lakh income per household per annum and 5 acre
land per household also doesn’t sound ‘EWS’. There is also religion in the
slideshow – Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, Sikh… You name
it and they are in it, eligible for reservations in education institutions and
central government jobs.
The
Lok Sabha also walked through the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019, but only
after an acrimonious debate. This bill is no ‘jumla’, it’s serious. Most
northeast parties oppose it. Hurt minorities – Hindu, Sikh, Christian,
Buddhist, Jain, Parsi – from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who have been
refugees in India for over five years qualify for Indian citizenship. The
cut-off date is December 31, 2014. But the bill is being hounded as “divisive”,
vile competitor to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and violative of the
Assam Accord.
Opposition
parties also see “sinister.” It is “not secular.” Muslims do not figure among
the persecuted lot. There are the harassed Shia Muslims in Pakistan. And
persecution of Ahmedia Muslims in Pakistan is real, say detractors. Right, but
Ahmedias are persecuted in Pakistan because Pakistan doesn’t see them as
‘Muslim.’ Do Indian Muslims consider the Ahmedia as ‘Muslim’?
Anyway,
adding ‘Muslim’ to the mix brings national security into focus. And to say that
Muslims are persecuted in Muslim-majority countries sounds like a ‘jumla’.
Also, “secular’ doesn’t exclusively refer to Muslim-inclusion. The Trinamool
demand to include Muslims has a poll-ring to it. Come to think, the sum of the
non-Muslim religions also screams ‘general election 2019.’
That
is where the BJP’s and the Modi Government’s intentions are suspect. Whether
the EWS Quota Amendment bill or the Citizenship Amendment bill, both cut too
close to GE 2019. ‘Eve’ is not just a bone from Adam’s rib, it is also ‘just
before’ steps taken, primarily to ‘woo’. And elections are when electorate-wooing
gets serious. The courtship of vote-banks, with quotas and sops paid for with
money drawn from the state treasury against RBI advice is expected.
Read
politically, the two bills suggest nervous tension in the BJP. The results of
the 5-state elections jolted the party and there are reservations in the BJP if
it will be returned to power for a second consecutive time. Will both these
bills get real and become class acts? Think of them and ‘abeyance’ is a word
that remains suspended in the mind, betwixt and between, up in the air!
Not
every pre-poll promise is kept and there is no guarantee that the BJP will
return to power to make them law. There is also the Supreme Court cap to take
off. Besides, not all politicians are like POTUS Donald Trump, who has shut
down government to build ‘The Wall”, a poll-promise he made. What confounds is
Indian mainstream media pillorying Trump. No wonder an India-compiled library
in Kabul doesn’t figure in Trump’s book as a great accomplishment.
A
criticism against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 is that it doesn’t
take into account persecuted Hindus in Fiji and Sri Lanka. Trump’s border wall
has to do with illegal immigration and US citizenship. And he’s pissed off that
a California cop, “legal immigrant” from Fiji, Police Officer Ronil Singh, was
shot dead the other night by an illegal immigrant, the bullet fired point-blank
to Ronil’s chest. And Indian television media brands Trump’s Border Wall a
‘Jumla.’ Some people don’t know when to shut up. (IPA Service)
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