India is smouldering with discontent. A nation that is ordinarily a fertile ground for unprecedented revolutions and transformations, is currently gripped with people from different communities fighting for reservation. I have watched with concern from up close how caste threatens to be the death of the idea of a secular, united and peaceful India. Reservations based on caste were born out of the desire of the founders and framers of modern India and its constitution to improve the lot of the socially and economically oppressed 'lower castes'. In the hands of lesser and pandering politicians the whole issue became a political football. Then came the Mandal Commission and all that followed brought us to the latest Patels' or Patidars' agitation for reservations. [related-post] Now Haryana is burning with rage born of real or imagined caste grievances. The caste has been an ugly constant in India from times immemorial to the modern. I have seen up close the marauding hordes burning and killing, rioting and shooting, all in the name of justice and injustice of Reservation - in the latest case, for the Jat caste. Shamefully the Army was needed and called out to restore order. Such is the state of Indian democracy and such is the tragic obsession India now has with Reservation - an explosive and loaded word in the current environment in India. After more than a dozen deaths and scores of injured Indians, the violent criminality and thuggery is rewarded by the government with the promise of reservation for the Jat community. Politicians are numb with fear; the fear of losing the votes of one community or the other. They continue to extend reservations - something started for a temporary effort to right the historical economic wrongs - to anyone that can bring people on to the streets and perhaps killing and injuring a few people. And if a few people are killed the cause becomes all the more 'glorious' and in the name of 'restoring order' and 'listening to people' the governments buckle, perhaps to buy peace. But such purchase of peace sets a dangerous precedent; the forces of more caste based reservation have been emboldened. The Patels/Patdars of Gujarat - just as the Jats of Haryana not so poor or backward - may unfortunately take the cue from the Jats and threaten to turn their so far essentially peaceful protest into a violent one. Unfortunately in the den of opportunistic and pandering politicians of India nothing - in this case violence - succeeds like success. No one in government or the elected opposition has the moral courage to call for a much needed review and reexamination of the very idea of reservations, started as an affirmative action program, but now turned into a claim of a birthright. India needs to uplift hundreds of millions out of dire poverty. It is also reasonable to assess whether its model of affirmative action has stood the test of time, has borne the results expected from it or does it need to fine tuned, sharpened, enhanced or replaced with a different kind of affirmative action. If Indian politicians continue to blindly and silently continue to descend into the bottomless gutter of pandering, India is in danger of becoming a battlefield of warring factions pitted against others based on faith, caste, region and language. If the current crop of politicians numbly slumbers on, India needs to search for a new and bolder breed of leaders.
