Congress vs Congress

The Congress 8212; both party and government 8212; have been at the receiving end of some searching queries ever since HRD Minister Arjun Singh decided to experiment with the politics of quotas. It has now fallen upon the Supreme Court to raise two important ones: One, will not these OBC reservations divide a nation along lines of caste? Two, on what basis has the government arrived at the norm of fixing 27 per cent for OBC reservations? Two basic questions that the UPA government should have asked itself.

It8217;s a pity it chose not to do this. In one of those strange coincidences of history, it appears that these two questions are the very ones that Rajiv Gandhi had raised when the V.P. Singh government frog-marched the nation into the Mandal I mess. An Express report has just pointed out that Rajiv Gandhi 8212; as Leader of Opposition 8212; had emphatically come out against the attempt being made by V.P. Singh to divide the country in order to rule it. While committing himself to affirmative action, Rajiv Gandhi had argued that such action should be so designed as to reach the poorest and weakest within the socially and educationally backward classes. Like the Supreme Court today, he also had wondered whether the data and information behind the Mandal recommendations were sound and credible. If the UPA government had shown a little more deliberation, or had even cared to acquaint itself with the concerns raised by one of its prime ministers 16 years ago, it may have perhaps trodden a more circumspect path on OBC quotas.

The irony is that even the political dividend the Congress Party hopes to garner out of its latest move may prove fatally counter-productive. Social scientists have often pointed out that the Congress became the centrepiece of the post-independence political system in the country because of its distinctive 8216;hold-all8217; appeal. The Nehruvian consensus, which had once informed the core of the Grand Old Party, meant that it could hold variegated ideas and ideologies together; that it could be all things to all people. In fact the party8217;s most significant decline was coterminous with the rise of the twin-forces of Mandir and Mandal I. Today, as it attempts to ride the Mandal II juggernaut, it risks unleashing the very forces that had once driven it into a political cul-de-sac.