Recently, the honourable Chief Minister of Telangana proposed to increase the ST reservation quota to 10%. With all groups combined, the reservations appears to go beyond 50% of the total. Is this allowed? The percentage for other groups cannot change as it might raise angers. It is a sad failure of our political-academic- intellectual scholarship in post-colonial India that we could not draw a better understanding of our varnas and jatis in the light of our traditions. Not only we accepted the colonial superimposition of the word ‘caste’ (which has no Indian equivalent) on our social systems but we successfully created a whole lot of groups and perpetuated the story of a ‘caste-system’ in India.
Reservations unfortunately have become the most potent political tool in India with much collateral damage. We are perhaps the only country with an extensive Constitutional program of ‘positive discrimination’ (seats reserved in assemblies, public jobs, and professional academic institutes) in favour of deprived groups to integrate them into mainstream and address centuries of neglect and oppression. A permanent government policy now, not the original intention of our Constitution makers, positive discrimination raises important questions about the nature of justice; the trade-off between justice and such other equally desirable values as efficiency, social harmony, and collective welfare; and the propriety of making social groups bearers of rights and obligations.
It also raises questions about the redistributive role of the state, the nature and extent of the present generation’s responsibility for the misdeeds of its predecessors, and the meaning of social oppression. Justice is generally an ‘individualist’ concept; the due to an individual based on his qualifications and efforts. Justice needs redefinition obviously in non-individualist terms if social groups are subjects of rights and obligations. We should also demonstrate continuity between the past and present oppressors and oppressed. We must also analyze the nature of current deprivation and that it is a product of past oppression conferring moral claims on the oppressed.
Scholars like Dr Bhikhu Parekh say these questions are important in India where positive discrimination has no roots in the indigenous cultural tradition and is much resented. There are few studies either challenging or articulating the theory of justice at the basis of reservations. Some work however relies on American literature, without appreciating that the historical relations between different Sanatani groups bear little resemblance to those between the American whites and blacks.
RANDOM MUSINGS 