In a landmark judgment on Thursday in State of Punjab vs Davinder Singh, the Supreme Court of India permitted sub-classification in reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SCs and STs).
The decision is a crucial step towards empowering the most marginalised and invisiblised social groups in the country and, as such, has a huge transformative potential to deepen our democracy.
The Court spoke for the most marginal groups within the SC category, whom I have in the past called “invisible Dalits”. For many of us, the statement that the SC category does not denote a homogeneous group but rather is internally heterogeneous, was talisman of sorts for decades. As someone who has done extensive research among some of these groups, I have tried to draw attention to the fact that there exist multiple marginalities among SCs and STs. The resources and benefits of our democracy need to reach such communities.
Post 1947, the Indian government has provided various forms of welfare and social support for marginalised groups. A few castes within the SC category evolved the capacity to “aspire and acquire”. They availed of the opportunities provided by reservation in jobs and educational institutions. Gradually, they became more visible and competition grew for the resources between the marginalised groups. As this process unfolded over decades, certain sub-groups among SCs and STs cornered the greater share of benefits at the expense of the more disadvantaged groups within these broader categories.
Interestingly, every state has a long list of castes and communities enumerated in the Scheduled lists. In Uttar Pradesh, there are 66 Scheduled castes, in Bihar, the number is 23. In Maharshtra, there is 59 SC castes, in Punjab, around 39 and in Andhra Pradesh, there number is around 60. From this long list of castes within the SC category, only a few have acquired visibility and prominence in various states. Many of the remaining communities from these states remain invisible, too often outside the realm of the reservation and welfare net. Most of them have not acquired even the capacity to aspire, which is a necessary condition for socio-economic and political mobility. Many have not had the opportunity to nurture their own intellectuals and leaders with the agency to articulate their issue in myriad public spheres.
There is no doubt that that the Supreme Court’s verdict will help open the doors to state benefits for these invisible communities. However, to best utilise this opportunity to further social justice in India, we need data for the identification and enumeration of such communities.
Historically, the notion of and demand for sub-categorisation within SCs emerged due to the competition between castes. Communities like the Madigas in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and Valmikis in UP became the leading sub-groups among the disadvantaged section of SCs. They acquired the means and aspiration to compete with the relatively more visible groups such as Jatavs in UP. It is this category that demanded sub-categorisation.
For the state machinery and political class, it is important that benefits reach not only such aspirant groups but also to the communities that remain invisible and cannot yet compete with others within the SC or ST category as well as with the broader society for their slice of the development pie. State governments in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Mahrashtra that are positively disposed towards the demand for sub-categorisation need to be sensitive to the needs of numerically smaller groups who live at the margin of the margins during the process of identification of castes and tribes for the Scheduled list. Often, because they aren’t numerically preponderant, such communities do not draw enough attention from political parties.
The Indian state also needs to prepare people from such groups to develop capacity and prepare them to compete to take advantage of state-created protective discrimination and social justice services. However, this process of dissemination of democratic resources is very slow in Indian society and it may take long time to the “last man in line ” to be uplifted. But the hope and possibility to that end have grown.
This is also an ethical matter. Politically powerful castes and their representatives may well come forward to speak in favour of social justice.
The writer is director, G B Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad. He is also the author of Fractured Tales: Invisibles in Indian Democracy. Views are personal
