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(The author is a Professor in International Economics in Nagasaki University, Japan)

“If our political progress was to be real, the underdogs of our society must be helped to become men” (Rabindranath Tagore, Letters from Russia)

The debate on affirmative action in India is long and not always geared to the desired aim: creation of equality of opportunity. Just like Indian secularism, reservation system in India has always a different political aim to make the system more unequal than what it is. Indian secularism, rather than making the state independent of religion, is intended to provide special privileges to certain religious groups. Similarly Indian affirmative system is politically designed to provide restricted rights not equal rights to some chosen people.

The affirmative action in India has started perhaps by Vice-Roy Curzon in 1905 by banning the employment of Hindu Bengalis in the government services; the official argument was that they were too advanced and taking away job opportunity from others particularly the Muslims. Later it was extended in the military services by giving preferential treatments for Muslims and Sikhs branding them as martial races. Reservations in government jobs were introduced in 1918 in Mysore in favor of a number of castes and communities that had little share in the administration. In 1909 and in 1919 similar reservation system was introduced for the Muslims in British India. In 1935, for pure political reason the British government has provided job reservation for the backward castes.

The real idea was to divide the population of India into several warring groups along religious, ethnic and caste lines by giving special rights so that future India would be divided and weak. A number of prominent politicians had acted as the agents of the British Raj to implement that line of action; the most prominent of them was Dr.B.R.Ambedkar. Although today he is considered to be one of the founding father of the Indian nation, writer of the constitution of India and the cult figure of the backward castes with four universities named after him, during the pre-independence years he took no part in the freedom movement. Instead just like E.V.R Perier of the Tamils, C.P. Ramaswamy Aiyar of Kerala, Jinnah and Mohammed Iqbal, he was one of the staunch ‘Empire Loyalists’ hand in glove with the British to divide up India along caste, religion and tribal line. The followers of the same person today include even the Indian communists, who, forgetting the essential of Marx-Lenin, are supporting job reservation along both castes and religious lines.

Equality of opportunity is the basis of a true democracy and as such affirmative actions are needed to equalize the opportunities among the people who are endowed differently. Even in the US, affirmative actions were promoted first by President Johnson since 1974 to promote American blacks, who were deprived of most opportunities. However, it was not a success. The countries where it was most successful are Japan, the Soviet Union and other former socialist countries of East Europe along with Cuba and Vietnam. India should take a lesson from them to implement a proper affirmative action to equalize opportunity in our society.

Affirmative action in the Soviet society:

The success of the Soviet society regarding affirmative action was observed by Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote:

” Throughout the ages, civilized communities have contained groups of nameless people. They toil most, yet theirs is the largest measure of indignity. They are deprived of everything that makes life worth living. I had often thought about them, but came to the conclusion that there was no help for them. …..In Russia at last. Whichever way I look I am filled with wonder. From top to bottom they are rousing everyone up without distinction” (in Letter from Russia).

Immediately after the revolution, Lenin proclaimed the affirmative action known as korenizatsiia to provide affirmative preferences for non-Russians backward ethnic groups and poorer Russians. To gain the support of the non-Russian, who were mainly illiterate except in Georgia and Armenia, for the new state, a Sovietization in three phases was developed. First the ‘blooming’ (rastsvet) of the different peoples through a determined promotion of their respective culture, their national conscience, and the creation of national elites which eventually would lead to the second phase which was ‘rapprochement’ (sblizhenie) and finally to the third phase of ‘merging’ (sliianie).

Non-Russians were awarded their own administrative territories and accorded preference in educational and promotion policies to ensure that they could run their new mandates. The desired goal was complete assimilation of all national groups. The policy of Korenizatsiia (rooting or nativization) promoted personnel from each unit's titular nationality into a program of training and recruitment for service in the political, economic, and cultural administration.

This policy led to the creation of massive educational facilities in the Republics of the backward people, employment for the representatives of the ethnic intelligentsia, foundation of republican Academies of science and research centers supporting ethnic unions of writers, painters and film-makers. The policy was applied uniformly to create elites, which, like their culture, would be national in form, but with the same content in all units of the Union.

However, there was no fixed quota in admissions to the educational establishments or in jobs. Instead, education was made free at all stages and compulsory up to certain ages depending on their ethnic background. Every qualified student also used to get scholarship to cover his or her costs of maintenance. Education was taken to the people where they lived. Even mobile schools and libraries were established for the nomadic populations of central Asia. Certain number of students from the backward areas of the Soviet Union was taken to the very best universities and institutes of higher learning. They got separate training so that they can compete effectively with the more advanced Russian students. On their returns to their Republics they used to form the administrative and intellectual elites. The Soviet society was based on merit and search for merits among the most backward people of the Soviet Union was the continuous occupation of the academic personnel of the state.

The idea was that merit exists among all nationalities in the Union; the state got to find them out and nourish them. As there was no unemployment, but shortages of people, job reservation was never implemented. However, to give everyone opportunity to contribute to the national services, informal system was there in every layers of the central government to maintain proper representations of all nationalities within the Soviet Union.

In the sphere of social engineering the Soviet system had imposed the rule that sons and daughters of the educated professional people cannot go to the higher education directly, they need to work as ordinary workers in factories or farms for a few years first. The idea was to diminish the class-consciousness. East Germany even had prohibited the admission of the children of the educated professional class in the universities; they had to be workers for one generation and their children in turn would get priority in admission to the universities. However, admission to the elite universities and institutes were still based on merit, there was no compromise in that sphere.

Due to this social engineering, within two decades the Soviet Union had eradicated illiteracy and had the best educated population among all nations of the world. In 1917 Azerbaijan had a predominately Muslim population that was 98-percent illiterate. Its people suffered great poverty and hunger. Little developed industry existed outside the capital city of Baku. As a result of this deliberate affirmative action programs, in 1939, 97 percent of the population became literate. Women had been accorded full legal and civil rights. Literacy Rate in 1926 in Ukraine was 41.3, and in Russia 45.0, Kazakhs 7.1, and Kalmyks 10.9. Within a few years, by 1940, they were all educated.

The fundamental reason was not reservation system for the backward people, but completely free education and massive extension of education throughout the length and breath of the country. This is the reason perhaps, Ram Bilash Paswan, one of the leaders of the backward castes of Bihar said, rather than reservation India government should have free education and mandatory scholarship for all students to lift up the backward castes. Both The Soviet union and Japan both had lifted up the totally uneducated people without any formal reservation or quota system but through compulsory free education on a massive scale.

Affirmative Action in Japan:

Education was restricted to the children of the Samurai warrior class in Japan until 1860, the feudal lords kept general population ignorant. The democratic system and the restoration of Meiji emperor in 1868, has changed the Japanese education system completely. Free and compulsory education system was introduced not only in Japan but in the areas colonized by Japan in Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan as well.

There is no reservation system as such in Japan because the principle of Japanese education system is uniformity, conformity and integrations through mass education where individualism would be severely suppressed to create a group orientation. There is no room for special rights, reservations or quotas in that regimented system of education, which is available equally for everyone. Due to the social and economic equality and relatively equal distribution of economic benefits Japanese do not normally have backward class anymore.

However, discrimination exists in Japan. In Japan the burakumin are ethnically Japanese but are analogous to the Untouchable class in India. Because historically this class had cleaned and butchered animals, tanned their hides and made leather products, they were regarded as filthy and despicable. Similar discrimination in job and in other sphere of life exists in Japan against Koreans and the indigenous Indo-Aryan Aino tribe. Gender discrimination is accepted as normal in Japanese society.

Affirmative Action in USA:

The term "affirmative action" was first used in Executive Order 11246, issued by President Lyndon Johnson. The Order called on federal government contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." President Johnson expanded the Executive Order in 1967 to protect women from discrimination as well.

During the 1980s and 1990s there were heated debate in USA to support or oppose this affirmative action, which was minimum to start with and designed to give some access in the upper layer of the economic and societal stages for the backward people, means blacks or Hispanic. Those who were already educated or advanced financially among the blacks or Hispanic, equivalent to the ‘creamy layers’ in India, got the benefits. Others, who were poor to start with, remained so. Thus, the affirmative action could not change the basic nature of the most unequal society of the world, where just one percent of the population has more share of the economic pie of the country than the rest 90 percent of the population.

Due to wide spread resentments most parts of the affirmation action legislations were blunted during the days of President Reagan. Today, about 26 percent of the population is functionally illiterate. There are decreasing social mobility, wide spread homelessness and poverty among the blacks and Hispanics population. Affirmative action could not affect the characteristics of the society very much.

Affirmative action in India:

In Indian situation, because of the reservation system based on caste, the state could not lift up those who are backward or poor, as they may not belong to the castes or tribes qualified to receive such aid from the state. That is the main reason for the demands for reservation for Muslims and Christians. Also, the reservation system has turned castes against each other, as they have to compete for the small social and economic benefit in a very poor country. The failure of the existing system of reservation based on caste and tribe is very obvious. The characteristics of this failed system are many.

Reservations for Scheduled Castes (SC) in schools and government posts remain largely unfilled, whereas reservations for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) are generally filled to capacity. A 1997 study indicates that nationally preferential policies only benefit 6 percent of Dalit families. Moreover, the same study reported that "none of India's elite universities and engineering institutes had filled its quota for members of scheduled castes."

People from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes continue to be absent from white collar positions. For the country as a whole, members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes -- combined -- did not receive as much as 3 percent of the degrees in engineering or medicine, though together they add up to nearly one-fourth of the population of India, according to a study by Sowell(2004).

The government provides scholarship to SC students to attend school, but that is not enough: "Even when the government provides primary schooling free of charge, the costs of books and supplies may not be affordable by very poor people. For secondary education, rural students especially may not always find a school nearby, so that those whose parents cannot afford the costs of commuting or relocating -- and paying for housing and boarding -- have little realistic prospect of attending, regardless of preferential admissions policies."

Some Scheduled Castes do better than others with the system, raising the demand in some quarters for "quotas within the quota". A particular case in point are the Chamars, historically a leather-working (and therefore untouchable) caste. In the state of Maharashtra, the Chamars are among the most prosperous of the scheduled castes. A study found that they were 17 percent of the state"s population and 35 percent of its medical students. In the state of Haryana, the Chamars received 65 percent of the scholarships for the scheduled castes at the graduate level and 80 percent at the undergraduate level. Meanwhile 18 of the 37 untouchable groups in Haryana failed to get any of the preferential scholarships. In the state of Madhya Pradesh, Chamars were 53 percent of all the scheduled caste students in the schools of that state. In Bihar, just two of the 12 scheduled castes in that state--one being the Chamars-- supplied 61 percent of the scheduled class students in school and 74 percent of those in college.

Conclusion:

It is essential for the government to accept that the affirmative action policy based on unscientific criteria like caste or tribe, as introduced by Ambedkar and enhanced by V.P.Singh for pure political reason, has failed in India. However, the government and the political parties, even the communists, want not only to preserve this failed system but to intensify it by including religion in the equation. There are demands by Tista Shitalabad in the People’s Democracy, the organ of the CPI(M) that Muslims are also backward and they deserve reservations. In India the communists have forgotten class rather than caste, tribe or religions, should be the criteria for affirmative action. They also forgot the lesson from the Soviet Union that mass free education in a gigantic scale can remove social and economic backwardness within a few years. In Asia, the experiences of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam also demonstrate that what India could not achieve in 60 years can be achievable within ten years if the policy framework is designed to remove inequality of opportunity.

To solve the problem of unequal opportunity India should have reservations based on poverty and physical disability irrespective of religion, tribe or caste. Like in Europe, education must be free at all levels in both universities and specialized institutes of higher learning; all students should get automatic grants to cover their maintenance costs, as it is in Europe. Villages should be either consolidated or mobile schools should be set up for remote villages. Villages should have public libraries and reading room, as it was in the Soviet Union, so that poor students can have space to study. To remove linguistic discriminations and to have proper representations of all provinces an informal system of fair representation or quota can be maintained regarding jobs in both public and private sector. That system exist in the United Nations offices and also in the United States. However, caste system must be abolished by law by making it illegal for anyone even to mention his or her caste.

The main cause for unequal opportunity is the income and wealth inequality and grinding poverty among the rural population who still depends on mahajans and money lenders. An attempt was made in 1979 by nationalizing the major banks to remove the money lenders from the rural economy but since 1991 the government has reversed the system causing increasing poverty of the farmers and their dependency on the money lenders. It is essential for the government to set up rural banking networks to remove private money lenders and to extend both educational and business loans to the people who would be rejected otherwise by any private banks. Affirmative action is not just quota and reservation but to provide incentive for the poor to stand on their own feet. Without a public banking networks it is not possible to do so.

Demands for reservation of jobs are due to lack of supply of jobs in relation to the supply of manpower. This is a characteristic of all capitalist unplanned economies of the world. All developed countries have unemployment, sometime it become crippling. However, when the job opportunity is rare, reservations for the chosen people cannot solve the problem of unemployment but only create resentments among the unemployed who will be deprived just because of their birth.

The solution is a proper manpower planning as a part of a comprehensive economic planning for the nation, which was never carried on in India. As Albert Einstein said (in Monthly Review, May 1949):

“Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child.”

Economic reform policy has intensified the mismatch between the available job and the number of people unemployed. This problem cannot be solved in a market economy that depends increasingly on external forces beyond the control of the national government. A comprehensive national economic planning is more needed to solve the problem of unemployment than to restrict the opportunity of employment for the chosen few.

Affirmative actions are needed to create equal opportunity and remove discriminations, but caste and tribe based reservation system cannot do that job. Reservation system based on caste and tribes cannot provide money to the poor students of the backward castes to travel to schools or colleges or to buy books or to have a space to study. Severe poverty exists even among the higher castes and among those who are not qualified to receive the benefits. There is no shortage of Brahmins among the coolies or Riskshawallas; thus, there is no reason why their children would not receive any benefits but relatives of Jagjivan Ram, Lallu Yadav, Narayanan, Pawan Chamling, Purna Sangma, Sibu Soren or Mayavati, all multi-millionaires, have reservation in higher education and jobs. This is the most unethical system one can imagine that exists in India. However, both the Congress party and the CPI(M) want to perpetuate and enhance this system of injustice.

Dr.Dipak Basu

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