Give them quotas

The increasing audibility of the demand for extending job quotas to the upper castes, and the growing willingness of the system to give it a respectable hearing, symbolise a reservation policy that has completely lost its way. The promise of social justice for the socially and educationally backward classes was soon hijacked by the politics of votebanks. And it now threatens to mutate into the bloodless mathematics of proportional representation. Was it inevitable that Mandal would become fodder for a cynical politics? Why is it that all the checks and balances have failed 8212; the permanent backward classes commissions to review the lists of beneficiaries set up by the apex court, for instance? We also need to ask the politicians who are ever-ready with a quota, and especially at election time, what they have done so far on those other promises to the backward classes. Where is the greater investment in primary education, the reaching of health facilities, access to pure drinking water, empowerment of the girl child? The policy of reservations has become a metaphor for a politics of evasion and resignation. Irreversible quotas, subdivided into ever finer slices, are easy doles. They require neither the political will or commitment, nor the long-term, thoughtful vision that is necessary for a more meaningful programme of social justice.

It is time to call the bluff of the politician in a hurry. Time to demand a more honest, more imaginative, politics. One way to do this is through a more engaged public debate. Somehow, somewhere, a halt must be called. Or else, in this election season, all the people may be fooled all over again.