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As a Civil Servant in Tamil Nadu for 29 years, I could see that the Scheme of Reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on the one hand and the so-called Backward Classes on the other has always been used as an instrument of politics in India and not as a lever for the promotion of socio-economic equality in society. There is a distinction between those schemes that are directed towards advancing social and economic equality and those that are directed towards maintaining a balance of power. I find that, by and large, reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are, for all their limitations, directed basically towards the goal of greater equality for all. Reservations for the Backward Classes and for Religious Minorities, whatever advantages they may have, are directed basically towards a balance of power. The former are in tune with the letter and spirit of the Constitution; the latter has landed us in what Chief Justice Gajendragadkar called - `a fraud on the Constitution`.

There are now three types of Rights under the Indian Constitution:

a) Fundamental Rights open to all citizens regardless of caste, colour, creed or faith or religion;
 
b) `Fundamendel` Rights open only to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes on a hereditary basis founded on what I call the `Fundamendel` Law of Inheritance. I must make my position clear. In this context I am referring to Austrian Genetist Gregor Mendel`s (1822-1884) Law of Inheritance. His principles have been invoked to give some special privileges to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes as a matter of inheritance by the founding fathers of our Constitution!

c) `Fundamandal` Rights open only to the Other Backward Classes. They derive their rights from Mandal of the Mandal Commission.

I have often seen supporters of the Mandal Commission enthusiastically grouping the Other Backward Classes along with the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This is an error of judgement, not always made in innocence. The Other Backward Classes have a very different position in Indian Society from that of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It is true that their traditional ritual status was low and that they were latecomers to the competition for university degrees and government jobs. But only the Harijans and Adivasis have been for centuries victim of active social discrimination, through segregation in the first case and isolation in the second. They alone have suffered the kind of psychological and moral injury that justifies their being treated now with special consideration. It is a known solid fact that the castes and communities grouped together as the Other Backward Classes have not suffered collectively that kind of injury in either the recent or the distant past. In Tamilnadu and the rest of India they include locally dominant castes, some of whose leaders are among the worst tormentors of Harijans in the rural areas today.

Some social scientists have held that the Other Backward Classes should be grouped, not with the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but with the religious minorities. When the Mandal Commission was about to give its report, the students` union of Aligarh Muslim University drew attention to this obvious fact when it welcomed the recommendations of the Mandal Commission and added that the benefits proposed by it should be extended to the Muslims. If the idea behind reservations is that power should be so distributed as to maintain a balance between all castes and communities, then the plea of the Muslim students is not unreasonable. But that was not the basis on which reservations were adopted by the Constitution; the basis there was to provide special opportunities for the most disadvantaged sections of society like the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the Adivasis.

Historically we should bear in mind the fact that the Scheme of Reservations was first introduced only by the British in the old Madras Presidency. The Colonial Policy of Reservation was governed mainly by considerations of the balance of power. This being the case, there was nothing incongruous in the famous communal GO of old Madras Presidency in which 100 per cent reservation was provided, or `quotas for both forwards and backwards`. There was indeed a certain unity and coherence in the policy of the Colonial Administration: Job quotas for all on one side, and separate electorates for religious groups on the other.

The British government in India was not in any way hampered by the principle of equality of opportunity. After independence, Article 16 of the Constitution (read together with Article 15) radically altered the scope for Reservations. What was possible under the British Rule was no longer possible in the new order. Reservations could now be justified only by the argument for greater equality and not by argument for the balance of power. Ironically there are no provisions in the Constitution relating to job reservations based on numerical quotas. Those provisions in the Constitution relating to reservations in the Legislatures specify such quotas as clearly as possible, but are strictly time-bound. The Constitution maintains a consistent distinction between two kinds of Reservations, dealing with them in two separate places. But the Executive aligning itself with the ever-changing and ever-shifting waves and tides of political partisanship from time to time after 1947, with some help from the judiciary, has succeeded in obscuring that distinction in the public mind.

The makers of our Constitution were committed to two different principles relating to equality:

a) The principle of equal opportunities;
b) The principle of redress.

It is difficult, even under the best of circumstances, to evolve a coherent policy that will maintain a satisfactory balance between the two. I am firmly of the view that the present policy of massive numerical quotas in public employment is a perverse and anti-national application of the principle of redress that threatens to eat up the very principle of equality of opportunity.

The Principle of Redress is a broad one that can be translated into many kinds of affirmative policy action by the State. For example, there can be substantial State investment, on a preferential basis to raise the levels of health, housing and elementary education among the weaker sections of society. Job quotas in public employment are by no means the best way of reducing social and economic disparities between castes and communities. In fact, they have serious institutional costs that far outweigh the benefits they bring to some individual members of Backward Classes.

Preferential policies can be considered as a way of creating special opportunities for some over and above the equal opportunities available in principle to all. The tension between `special opportunities for some` and `equal opportunities for all` is too obvious to be ignored by the State. If that tension is to be kept under control and not allowed to subvert the institutional system of the State and its structures, preferential policies must be used judiciously and with restraint. Now we have reached a situation in India where excepting some lizards, cockroaches and perhaps some ants and insects, the rest of the `organic` matter (as against inorganic) has been brought under the quota system for preferential treatment.

I am of the view that paradoxically, caste has increased its hold over public life, despite such modernisation as has taken place in India since independence. At the time of independence, many eminent Indians believed that caste was on its way out, and they had some evidence to support their belief. The many ritual rules by which distances between castes had been maintained in the past were declining or dying out. Marriages were taking place between sub-castes of the same caste and it was hoped that this would pave the way for inter-caste marriages on a wider scale in future. However, there was one field, that of politics, in which caste not only held its ground but also began to gain a new stranglehold on it. Caste has acquired a new lease of life in independent India and this is entirely because of the increasing use made of it by our unscrupulous politicians.

In the last 35 years, a tacit consensus seems to have emerged amongst political parties that all political bodies — Zilla Parishads, State Cabinets, Party Committees — should be so constituted as to represent the major castes and communities. Representation in Indian Polity has come increasingly to mean the representation of castes and communities. I would like to ask two questions in this context:

i) Does a political body become `representative` only when its composition matches the distribution of castes and communities in the larger society?
ii) Should all public institutions, irrespective of their functions, be constituted in the manner of political bodies or political parties?

What is disturbing and disgusting is the growing belief among top leaders of political parties that if caste balances are good for the domain in which they operate, they ought to be good for all institutional domains.

What will be the long-term effect of our System of Reservations? The most serious implication of extending caste quotas is that all public institutions like the universities, hospitals, scientific research laboratories, defence establishments and courts of justice will come to look more and more like political bodies. Every public institution will then be riddled not only with caste but also with politics, for caste has no place in these institutions except as an instrument of politics. The transcendental destruction of India or, if I may say so, the collective and mutually agreed upon gang rape of Bharat Matha would then be complete giving ecstatic joy to all the enemies of India.

V Sundaram IAS

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