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The proposal to the private sector has expectedly aroused a great deal of protest. We are witnessing the same production of demeaning stereotypes that marked the anti-Mandal agitation in 1990. Whatever be the validity of the objections, it is essential that the idea is subjected to some prudent reflection. For one, any deviation from the norm of equality, however necessary this deviation may be, needs to be explained and justified publicly. After all, reservation in both the public and private sectors is going to adversely affect the livelihoods of millions of young men and women who have to survive in a highly competitive, impersonal, and harsh market economy. Therefore, people have to be persuaded that measures that benefit only a part of society are good for everyone.
Perhaps we need to take a cool look at the way reservation has been conceptualised and implemented before it is extended to the private sector. What for instance are the opportunities and the costs attached to reservation? But before this exercise we may need to ask a wider question: what is reservation for or what is it meant to achieve? An obvious answer is that those who have been victimised in history have to be compensated through assured educational opportunities and income. The second question that follows is more complex but nevertheless important: is reservation meant only for securing material assets? Is it not meant to secure what Dalits have not had access to for centuries, respect and dignity?
To put it bluntly, is there any connection between reservation and the extension of social respect to the beneficiary, on the one hand, and development of self-respect in the beneficiary, on the other? It is true that most works on protective discrimination conclude that the policies have worked rather well given the anarchic nature of the Indian political system, and given entrenched caste discrimination, even though we can count enough flaws in the implementation of these policies. But studies also show that though Dalits have managed to secure a place in the public domain, which is regulated by law, matters are more complicated when it comes to the private domain of personal interaction, which continues to be governed by social prejudice. In short, even if those who benefit from reservation are treated with professional courtesy and propriety in the public sphere, are they extended the same respect in the private sphere? Have the Dalits finally come into their own as agents who possess equal standing in society? The general response to this question is mixed but on the whole pessimistic. The question that confronts us is: why has respect not followed the grant of material opportunities?
First, there is a problem in the way reservation has been conceptualised in India, as compensation for the victims of history. The problem is that this notion not only divides society along the axis of `we-ism' versus `they-ism', it leads to patronising attitudes at best and resentment at worst. Either today's generation wonders how long it has to pay for the sins of its ancestors or it accepts reservation as compensation for past harms. These attitudes can hardly lead to the extension of respect to the beneficiaries of reservation; they make only for either condescension or belittlement. And none of this secures respect or proscribes humiliation.
In an egalitarian world view, however, those who have not been allotted their rightful share would approach the Government as the bearer of rights, as self-confident human beings who demand their share by right. The notion of compensation makes for supplicants, the notion of egalitarianism makes for rights bearers. The implications for self-respect should be more than clear.
Secondly, is it not true that reservation offers minimal sops to those who have been deprived of their rights? Does compensation mean that the resources of a given society have been equalised? For even if reservation benefits some people, their share of the common resources of a society will necessarily remain far lower than those possessed by the better off in that society. Reservation may make for humanitarianism, which is concerned with helping the worse off in society. But humanitarianism is not concerned with the fact that some sections of society own much more than is their due, this is the concern of only egalitarianism.
Thirdly, in India, social justice, which ideally should include land reform, income generation policies, redress of inequality, and securing the well being of the disprivileged, has collapsed into reservation. Reservation has come to substitute for social justice. It is not difficult to figure out why this is so. Reservation has proved a soft option for political elites, who, reluctant to carry out deep-rooted changes in society, would rather opt to enlarge the constituency of jobs and educational institutions.
The problem is that in the process of being employed as an electoral ploy, reservation has been de-linked from its normative moorings in visions of egalitarian democracy, and come to be a convenient tool of and for amoral electoral politics. The proposal to extend reservation to the private sector for instance is seen as the product of electoral bargaining with Dalit leaders, and not as the result of a careful and well-thought-out policy to which the Government is committed.
Fourthly, the public discourse of restitution for historical wrongs has inevitably led to competing and spiralling claims of victimhood, invention of new victims claiming reservation, and demands for compensation. Groups now compete over who has been most victimised in history because they aim for reservation. Instead of joining together to battle systemic injustice and
Fifthly, protective discrimination policies focus on inter-group rather than intra-group inequalities. But that even groups that have been historically deprived can be divided along the axis of inequality is obvious. We will have to ask the question: why is inequality between members of a group acceptable when inequality between groups is not acceptable? These are questions that are rarely asked of policies that target entire groups. But these are questions that trouble egalitarians. They also trouble otherwise well meaning members of society who wonder why the child of a Dalit family that has benefited from reservation for two or three generations should claim education or jobs, while the children of poor but upper caste people are left out in the cold.
In sum, the manner in which reservation has been conceptualised and implemented by the Indian state is sadly wanting. Since they are seen by society not as a justified component of egalitarianism but as unjustified rewards, they breed bitterness and antagonism towards the beneficiaries. Because reservation is seen as something `we' owe `them', resentment and hostility have been expressed through the perpetuation of demeaning caste stereotypes and stigmatising imagery. For these and other reasons protective discrimination should be taken seriously and applied sparingly. It is only then that reservation will be seen as legitimate and its beneficiaries will be spared humiliation.
By: Jasmeet Singh ProfileResourcesReport error
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