Reservation reform

What the Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad has raised is none of those familiar controversies over the governor's office and Centre-state relations...

What the Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad has raised is none of those familiar controversies over the governor’s office and Centre-state relations. It is an issue of social justice that is involved in Andhra Pradesh Governor C. Rangarajan’s reference to the President of an ordinance sought to be promulgated by the Telugu Desam government.

Few indeed can fault the Governor on the statutory soundness of the move. The ordinance to introduce categorisation among candidates of the Scheduled Castes for reservations in employment and education can be seen as the kind of measure for which prior presidential sanction under a constitutional provision is preferable, if future complications are to be avoided. Those hailing the Governor’s "wisdom" and the "victory" for the SC may, however, be grossly unfair to him. There is nothing on record to suggest that he is opposed to the ordinance and its objective and resorting, therefore, to stalling tactics. Or that the objective can elicit serious objections from advocates andsupporters of the affirmative action.

The case for the proposed categorisation is clear. It is one for a scheme that will serve the real and original purpose of reservations as the authors of our Constitution (certainly not excluding B.R. Ambedkar by whom opponents of the ordinance swear) perceived them. One against a scheme that has served the entrenched interests of only a section of the originally intended beneficiaries. Against a scheme that has, in other and well-known words, catered only to the "creamy layer" of the target sections of the society.

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When the Supreme Court in its landmark judgment on the Mandal issue talked of the benefits of the reservations policy being "siphoned off" by this layer, it was confining itself to the list of the Other Backward Classes.

The pronouncement raised a storm of protest at the time, but the point has come to be conceded by now, though without bringing closer the prospect of a radical reform of the reservations system in this regard.

Reservations for theScheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have always been far less controversial than for the OBCs. There is no way to describe except as a national consensus the acceptance all round and all these years for a special deal for sections of the population that have remained oppressed for ages. But decades of reservations have led to the development of a "creamy layer" among these sections as well. It is only by the logic of a transparent lie that this layer can be allowed to corner the benefits of reservations. An end to reservations for the already empowered among the SC and ST, as much as the OBC, is what is really warranted.

The categorisation, however, can help in a politically complicated task. It is worth noting that it was not legislative difficulties that forced the government to come up with this ordinance. The State Assembly had, in fact, adopted a unanimous resolution earlier for such categorisation. Few will be surprised, however, if the consensus fails to prevail over the pressures of casteistpolitics. The problem of reservations reform is as relevant to the advance of Andhra Pradesh as Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu’s Cyberabad plans.

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