16 highlights
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Bribery - a major theme of Phule’s polemical 19th century writings - has not apparently changed very much.
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In this context, the idea that reservation somehow has an adverse effect on
merit'' andefficiency” looks somewhat laughable. -
Since the mass education which all the anti-caste radicals so fervently sought has also remained a distant dream, this has rendered the masses of toiling people more dependent on the literate officials and activists.
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How much do the upper castes dominate in Government service? The Mandal Commission report itself made interesting revelations. According to its statistics, the “forward castes” estimated at 25.5 per cent of the population made up 78.34 per cent of employees of Central Ministries and Departments
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Clearly, reservation had provided some scope for Dalits and Adivasis, but the “other backward” communities, 52 per cent of the total Indian population, were hopelessly behind.
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In contrast to advanced countries, where disciplines such as sociology focus on issues of ethnicity and class, or the degree of inter-marriage among various social groups, there have been no surveys of Government employment, no effort to link caste and economic status at the top levels of the social order.
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American sociologists such as C. Wright Mills and William Domhoff devoted efforts to study the
power elite'' and theruling class”, in contrast, this has been a subject about which Indian sociology has kept an embarrassed silence. -
Most of all, the insertion of an economic exclusion clause was the primary way in which elite resistance to the major goals of reservation sought to deprive it of its efficacy.
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Rich farmers, rich cowherders, rich barbers, and rich washermen - all of these, it was argued, were the biggest enemies of Dalits. The opposition to reservation clothed itself in marxist dress, saying that reservation should be based if anything on
economic backwardness'' - that is to say, onclass’ as an economic category. -
What is wrong, it may be asked, with this? First, there is no country in the world outside of India that has accepted the notion that Government employment is a logical or legitimate way of dealing with the problems of poverty!
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Taking a few of the poor out of poverty by providing Government employment for them is a mockery. The principle of
compensatory discrimination'' is meant to be applicable toethnic” (or non-class) social groups or communities which have been, for various historical reasons, systematically excluded from wealth and positions of power in society. This does not apply to the processes of simple class stratification. -
The costs to the nation of inserting the
creamy layer'' exclusion clause have been considerable. Financial and administrative costs have mounted with the continual national and State-level Government commissions designed to set up criteria for determining acreamy layer”, with continual court cases focussing on this issue. -
The Supreme Court has even forced States such as Kerala, whose own experts had determined that there was no
creamy layer'' in the State, to find one, regardless - or be liable forcontempt of court”. -
If the “creamy layer” clause were actually enforced rigorously at determined levels, it would have the effect of excluding today even children of Class III Government employees or moderately well-off farmers. But it is not of course rigorously enforced; it has simply added to the burden of bribery upon those hoping for employment for their children and has provided another source of under-the-table income for the local-level officials who provide the certificates.
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Thus the reservation system was instituted not so much on the basis of the Constitution as on that of the decades-old elite resistance to restructuring public employment.
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Finally, it continues to block a true representation of the majority of the nation’s population, a representation which the founders and leaders of the anti-caste movement had always seen as part of a full-scale political and social-economic transformation.