By
Harihar Swarup
Now
that Parliament has passed the Constitution
amendment bill providing for a new 10 per cent quota for the “economically
backward” among those outside other quotas, what is likely to be its fall out? Evidently, a
Pandora’s Box of new quota demands is set to be opened. This is because the
government’s move will see the 50 per cent limit set for quotas by the Supreme
Court being breached. And, once this happens it will literally be free-for-all
in the great quota race.
Expectedly,
10 per cent economic quota Bill has been challenged in Supreme Court, just 24
hours after it was swiftly piloted through both houses of Parliament. The
petition filed by Youth for Utility, contended that the Bill violates the basic
features of the Constitution and contradicts several Supreme Court judgments
protecting the fundamental rights.
The
50 per cent cap put down by the Supreme Court is already too high. Raising this
any more will grievously injure meritocracy as well. For those very reasons B R
Ambedkar, chief architect of the Constitution, was against expansive quotas. In
his Constitution Assembly speech on November 30, 1948, he has explicitly stated
that reservation should be for minority of seats and only for backwards classes
who did not have representation in the state. Instead of this self-limiting
concept, quotas have continued to expand over the decade, driven by the force
of vote bank politics.
As
a result, there is a race to the bottom today with communities demanding
provisions originally meant for the most deprived sections of the society, that
too only temporarily. The relaxed criterion of the EWS (reservation for
economically weaker sections) – such as annual income up Rs. 8 lakhs — make
over 95 per cent of Indians eligible for it, which means that positions under
the quota will broadly be recycled within the same groups
This
looks like a version of the great Indian trick, a feel good gesture our
political class doles out. Expect that this causes actual harm, sacrificing the
principles of equality as well as merit in higher education and governance.
Failures on jobs and education front are sought to be dealt by expanding the
reservation empire. If nation is to succeed, however, there is no sort cut
around the hard task—providing quality education and jobs to its people.
India’s political class must turn its mind to this, and the apex court must
nudge its mind them down this road by reiterating the 50 per cent upper limit
it had set.
The proposal to give 10 per cent
reservation like several other schemes of Modi Government, is neither novel nor
innovative. The Congress government, led by P. Narasimha Rao, did provide
similar reservation, but a nine-member bench struck down (1992). The present
bill, passed by both the houses of parliament may meet the same fate.
The BJP, as a party, has not been a
great votary of social justice through reservations. In fact, the RSS chief
Mohan Bhagat called for a review of the reservation policy. But anticipating
its political fallout in Bihar Assembly election, the BJP disowned Bhagwat’s
remark. (IPA Service)
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