YSR, no sir

It is a government order once again. The Andhra Pradesh government has awarded a quota in government jobs and educational institutions to the entire Muslim community in the state. If so far certain sections of Muslims that are classified as “socially and educationally backward” were eligible for quotas, Muslims as Muslims can avail of the benefit now. Fourteen years ago, a government order transformed the discourse on caste, social justice and reservations in one fell stroke. A paradigm shift may just have been effected in AP. Then, as now, public discussion has been the passive bystander, startled out of its complacence, and forced to react, by executive fiat.

In 1950, when the Constitution of India provided for reservations in government jobs, educational institutions and the legislatures for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the measure was underwritten by a national consensus. There was general agreement that something must be done urgently to redress the inhuman social exclusion of these groups. The extension of the quotas to Other Backward Classes in 1990 was terribly controversial, however. The OBCs included castes that were economically and politically dominant in the countryside. Reservations for them in government jobs, critics argued, would extract greater costs in terms of generating resentments and compromising ‘‘merit’’. Over the years, all parties may have mandalised themselves as a pragmatic strategy but the unease persists. The fear is that a shortsighted political leadership may use quotas as a cynical dole. The greater fear is that even the well-intentioned among them may flourish the quota to mask a poverty of imagination and rigour in devising policies that can genuinely promote social justice.

The Andhra Pradesh government’s order fully confirms those fears. The need of the moment is to nuance a policy of reservations that threatens to lose its purpose — to identify target groups more specifically. Much more importantly, the need is to explore alternative forms of affirmative action that would empower disprivileged groups in more effective ways. This executive order forcibly seeks to close the options. The extension of reservations to a whole religious community is arbitrary and indiscriminate. It is the act of a government that is cynical or lazy or both. Public debate must rouse itself to immediately challenge this order.