Reserved Reaction

A SUPREME COURT seven-bench judgment has removed the creamy layer from Scheduled Caste and Sched­uled Tribe reservations and, so, even if completely right in the argument it made, has opened the doors for political upheavals that will continue for a long time to come. It is now upon the political class to decide who and which groups within the SCs and STs would be eligible for reservations and one does not have to imagine too much to know the repercus­sions that would follow. There would be those who really need it, the most backward, for whom reservations were designed. At that initial moment in time, presumably all those in the category met the criteria, but 75 years later, some would have moved up the ladder. Those who remained the most backward would now push for the execution of the judgment to the government. Then there would be those who stand to lose out because they are in the creamy layer. The very fact of them being present there means that they also wield greater politi­cal heft. Taking reservations away from them will serve to unite and mobilise them, in turn, making them even more powerful. Between these two forces, there will be the minefield that will have to be traversed and no political party has any clue how to do it.

This you can see with the divisions and rivalries between Other Backward Classes over reservations. In Maha­rashtra, at present, there are ominous signs of it as the Marathas, under a new leader, are becoming increasingly strident and being cajoled, leading to other OBC groups becoming vocifer­ous too. Politicians, like the Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar, are already hinting at the trouble that is on the horizon but his party itself has to not alienate its base and cannot avoid the is­sue. Other states have been seeing such phenomena. The present judgment will now add the SCs and STs into this mix.

Out of the seven judges, six were in agreement, which shows just how self-evident the case is for a creamy layer clause. If there are people who deserve it more, it is only justice that they get it. The judgment also said that political expediency cannot be what determines eligibility and it must be based on quan­tifiable data. But India is a country that is still desperately poor and being less backward is far away from being prosper­ous. Groups that have a decisive say in politics, like the constituencies that Bihar and Uttar Pradesh’s politicians have ridden to power on, are still overwhelm­ingly indigent. Also, even looking for quantifiable data can be very damaging politically, as can be seen in the reluc­tance to hold an OBC census. Anything that is touched over reservations has the potential to spiral and boomerang.

India is never going to solve this problem by slicing the pie in a hundred different ways and carefully calculating who must get how many fractions of it. It can only lead to more social tension and relentless crisis management. Unless the country develops and becomes industri­alised enough for dignified employment all over, and not just in urban centres, there is no light to this tunnel.

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