03-30-2007, 04:36 PM
Editorial in Pioneer, 30 March 2007
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Caste irony
The Pioneer Edit Desk
<b>At 76, quota data is too old</b>
By ordering a stay on the Central law enabling 27 per cent reservation for the so-called 'Socially and Educationally Backward Classes', popularly known as OBCs, in Union Government controlled educational institutions, including IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, <b>the Supreme Court has made two very commonsensical and constitutional points. First, it has questioned the modalities of implementing OBC reservation.</b> The court has not taken a puritanical or theoretical stand against all quotas; hence, those Communist leaders who have accused it of a "retrograde" verdict are going way over the top. <b>It has only argued that data from the 1931 Census can hardly be the determining factor in the administration of a caste-based affirmative action programme. No Indian Census has used the caste parameter since the one in 1931. The 1941 census was disrupted. By the time the 1951 census happened, India had become independent and abolished caste-based enumeration. As such, the Mandal Commission, which submitted its report in 1980, extrapolated numbers from the 1931 Census and arrived at the figure of 27 per cent while recommending OBC quota in Government jobs. Since then, this figure has acquired a strange sanctity.</b> Over the past year, Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has sought to set aside 27 per cent of all seats in Central higher educational institutions for OBCs. He, too, followed the Mandal template and went by the 1931 roll-call. <b>The court has now rightly stressed that a 76-year-old Census is hopelessly outdated. If the Government and the political class are insistent on caste quotas, what they need to do is get authoritative numbers. For this, caste has to be reintroduced as a query in the 2011 Census and all future enumerations.</b> Should that not be deemed appropriate, then an alternative but equally authoritative source of demographic data, for example, reports of the National Sample Survey Organisation, needs to be accessed and institutionalised as the final arbiter.
Population groups grow and contract with time and socio-economic evolution. Individual OBC communities that probably needed the crutch of reservation in, say, 1940, may not do so now. <b>This is the second point the Court has made: "Reservation cannot be permanent and appear to perpetuate backwardness". </b>Any development programme has to be time-bound or come with a sunset clause, however vaguely defined. <b>Human development, empowerment and notions of 'self-respect' are inherently dynamic; so must be caste categorisation. At what point does a caste group cross the threshold and cease to need quotas? Is an officially designated 'Backward Caste' backward forever? Can it never be 'delisted'? Is no review needed, say every decade or so? </b>These questions are not new. They were raised as far back as 1990, when the Mandal genie was released by Mr VP Singh. Yet, like an old ghost, the issue is back to haunt India. In putting a stay on the ill-considered OBC quota in Central institutions, the Supreme Court has also made suspect the validity of the original Mandal Commission's findings and the quota regime it has spawned in Government jobs. Can these, too, be allocated on the basis of a headcount in 1931? It's a bit like, to use an analogy that is current, selecting the national cricket team on the basis of scores made 50 years ago.
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So it is possible with the right thinking the bogey of caste that the BRITs have left India with can be buried.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Caste irony
The Pioneer Edit Desk
<b>At 76, quota data is too old</b>
By ordering a stay on the Central law enabling 27 per cent reservation for the so-called 'Socially and Educationally Backward Classes', popularly known as OBCs, in Union Government controlled educational institutions, including IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, <b>the Supreme Court has made two very commonsensical and constitutional points. First, it has questioned the modalities of implementing OBC reservation.</b> The court has not taken a puritanical or theoretical stand against all quotas; hence, those Communist leaders who have accused it of a "retrograde" verdict are going way over the top. <b>It has only argued that data from the 1931 Census can hardly be the determining factor in the administration of a caste-based affirmative action programme. No Indian Census has used the caste parameter since the one in 1931. The 1941 census was disrupted. By the time the 1951 census happened, India had become independent and abolished caste-based enumeration. As such, the Mandal Commission, which submitted its report in 1980, extrapolated numbers from the 1931 Census and arrived at the figure of 27 per cent while recommending OBC quota in Government jobs. Since then, this figure has acquired a strange sanctity.</b> Over the past year, Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has sought to set aside 27 per cent of all seats in Central higher educational institutions for OBCs. He, too, followed the Mandal template and went by the 1931 roll-call. <b>The court has now rightly stressed that a 76-year-old Census is hopelessly outdated. If the Government and the political class are insistent on caste quotas, what they need to do is get authoritative numbers. For this, caste has to be reintroduced as a query in the 2011 Census and all future enumerations.</b> Should that not be deemed appropriate, then an alternative but equally authoritative source of demographic data, for example, reports of the National Sample Survey Organisation, needs to be accessed and institutionalised as the final arbiter.
Population groups grow and contract with time and socio-economic evolution. Individual OBC communities that probably needed the crutch of reservation in, say, 1940, may not do so now. <b>This is the second point the Court has made: "Reservation cannot be permanent and appear to perpetuate backwardness". </b>Any development programme has to be time-bound or come with a sunset clause, however vaguely defined. <b>Human development, empowerment and notions of 'self-respect' are inherently dynamic; so must be caste categorisation. At what point does a caste group cross the threshold and cease to need quotas? Is an officially designated 'Backward Caste' backward forever? Can it never be 'delisted'? Is no review needed, say every decade or so? </b>These questions are not new. They were raised as far back as 1990, when the Mandal genie was released by Mr VP Singh. Yet, like an old ghost, the issue is back to haunt India. In putting a stay on the ill-considered OBC quota in Central institutions, the Supreme Court has also made suspect the validity of the original Mandal Commission's findings and the quota regime it has spawned in Government jobs. Can these, too, be allocated on the basis of a headcount in 1931? It's a bit like, to use an analogy that is current, selecting the national cricket team on the basis of scores made 50 years ago.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So it is possible with the right thinking the bogey of caste that the BRITs have left India with can be buried.