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While the Gurjars are protesting to be included in the ST category, The Meena community is protesting against it. They have vowed to not let this inclusion happen as they are the only community classified as ST in Rajasthan.

What do you make of all this?

In my view this is happening for two reasons. One is Caste based identity Politics and the other is Quota Reservations. Because of Caste politics people vote en bloc as a community and they benefit as a bloc. This is what happened when jats in Rajasthan were granted OBC status. Since they are powerful and well off they kind of cornered the benefit of reservations. The gurjars, that has an OBC status was later promised ST status by BJP. The community voted and BJP came to power. The Gurjars now want the promise fulfilled. Apart from reservations the gurjars have another reason to protest. They have had very less political representation throughout Rajasthan except Dausa. Dausa is perhaps the only place where they have any political clout. When they learnt that Dausa was being converted into a reserved seat their patience ran out with BJP and they have come on the streets. Now if Gurjars get included as ST then the other ST community Meena suffers because someone else will come to share the ST reservation pie. Hence they protest to maintain their exclusive benefits. All of this is ridiculous but not unexpected. Looks like group assertion in India has become the only way to achieve any kind of benefit. This is a sad situation but is Muscle power of the community the only way to get social justice?

These events also bring out a big short coming of the entire social justice programme based on reservations. Many have been arguing all along the futility of implementing such huge programmes without solid data backing them. With incidents like these one can not help but doubt the fairness of the reservation system. The entire ad hoc classification process of communities as OBCs has to stop. The government needs to collect data and clearly define criteria based on which a community can be given a particuar status. It should also tackle the issue of creamy layer otherwise what is happening between different communities will get repeated within the same communities. Thereafter will come the quotas within quotas and so on.

Pratab Bhanu Mehta has an excellent take on the whole issue.

I personally feel it is time to revamp the whole reservation system with something new.

related reading in the blogosphere

Reality Check

Retributions

The first and foremost that there is no hung assembly in UP. Thus providing a chance to focus on other things than just survival politics that had become the headache of every party in power.I hope that BSP makes use of this opportunity to get some development work started and I mean not only at basic level but also some ambitious projects especially regarding electricity, water and roads.

Secondly, this election has proved to be a setback for divisive politics . BSP has demonstrated how the future belongs to those who work with an all inclusive attitude. Now all that the BSP needs to do is show a slight sign of good governance and deliver to an extent on their promises. They can then ensure themselves another term at the help of the affairs and possibly pave the road to Delhi.

Third and most important is the hope and dignity that the election brings to millions of Dalits in the country and UP in particular. Mayawati symbolizes the breaking of upper caste monopoly over power. This election is an important landmark and will go a long way in boosting the Dalit morale. Dalits all over the country can now stand with the belief that Yes it can happen. The lesson that they should learn from this is that they should follow what BabaSaheb told them i.e. Educate, Struggle and Unite. The recent decision by Mayawati to give reservations to poor among the upper caste is an amazing step. It wasn’t long ago when Kanshi Ram said the same thing. He was against reservations for Dalits. He believed that the Dalits should be in power and give reservations to upper caste. It is about time that the Dalit community tasted power. It remains to be seen that they taste the fruits of power as well.

So far Mayawati has shown great political acumen in reaching where she is today but there are a few things that might have to change in the years to come. For one there is no other leader in BSP other than her. There is no second generation leadership. She needs to groom the second generation leadership. She also would have to mend her autocratic ways to be more successful at the higher level.

All in all I am very hopeful that this is the beginning of a change in UP and the relationship of dalits to power.

A lot has been written about the election and Mayawatin in the Blogosphere. I provide some links that are related.

Great Bong on Maya Memsaahib

Confused on Maya Memsaahib

Krish on UP Elections

Hindol Sengupta - Why I am afraid of Mayawati

Shivam Vij - On Why Hindol needn’t fear Mayawati

Kamla Bhatt - Excellent Profile Of Mayawati

Vinay Singh on UP elections

Since the announcement of reservations for OBCs by the HRD ministry in last May, we have seen lot of ideas/discussions from either side of the reservation debate. Out of all this I have been trying to think how and if can caste be removed from the forefront of all this.

What constitutes on OBC has always been at the core of the discussion in most cases. Hopping around the blogosphere I have come across some of these questions.

1. Who is an OBC?
2. Why is such and such caste an OBC?
3. How can such and such caste and the other caste be lumped together? That is equal treatment of unequals.
4. How come a rich OBC’s son deserves reservation compared to a poor upper caste kid?
5. What about reservations for women?
6. What about reservations for Muslims? Or religious minorities?

And there are many more.

At this point I would liked to throw in the idea of a deprivation certificate and deprivation score as the basis of providing reservations.

Deprivation Certificate(DC) would be a certificate with the certificate holder’s identification and a deprivation score. Here are some key points.

1. Everybody(no matter what caste, creed, sex, race or religion ) is required to obtain a DC from the govt. very much like a birth certificate.
2. A DC would be a required document for admission to educational institutes and jobs.
3. The Score will be calculated based on many different criteria. I will throw in a few, feel free to add/remove more
   • Caste
   • Family History
   • Gender
   • Economic Status
   • Geographical region
   • Religion
4. The Score will be valid for a period of say 5 years and after that it must be re-calculated. This is necessary because the score depends on factors that are not constant.
5. Every criterion would carry a certain weight. How much? I guess that is the tough question that would have to be answered. But the thing is that the weight can also be revised over a period of time. For example, caste could carry more weight than economic status. Or even one caste could have more weight than the other.

Reservations based on DC and the score would fill the non reserved seats from everybody based on the merit and the reserved seat would be filled based on the score and merit. In the case of two candidates with same marks and different deprivation scores, the candidate with higher deprivation score would get the seat.

Benefits

The biggest benefit of this, in my view, would be the elimination of the caste and its name from the fore front. Yes the caste will still be a factor but just by looking at the score one cannot make out whether the score is of a lower caste person or a person with a poor background or a religious minority or what not. A poor brahmin and a well to do OBC could end up having the same score.

It addresses the creamy layer issue as well.

Another benefit would be that it is an all inclusive framework that would take care of women, religious minorities and every other inequalities that we could think of.

It  allows for grading different criteria by allocating weights to each.

In this scheme of things an individual can be evaluated on his/her own merit and the biggest thing is everybody by applying for the DC and the D-Score will essentially have to prove that he or she is deprived and the score will reflect that. The re-evaluation of score leave room for people to move out of the benefit net.

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Recently, a large corporation hired several cannibals to increase their diversity.

“You are all part of our team now,” said the Human Resources rep during the welcoming briefing. “You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please don’t eat any employees.”

The cannibals promised they would not.

Four weeks later their boss remarked, “You’re all working very hard and I’m satisfied with your work. We have noticed a marked increase in the whole company’s performance. However, one of our secretaries has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to her?”

The cannibals all shook their heads, “No.”

After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others, “Which one of you idiots ate the secretary?” A hand rose hesitantly.
“You fool!” the leader continued. “For four weeks we’ve been eating managers and no one noticed anything. But NOOOooo, you had to go and eat someone who actually does something.”

The Court ruled that the 1931 census could not be a determinative factor for identifying the OBCs for the purpose of providing reservation.

I personally see this as being a good thing in the light of the recent developments. This means that govt will have to first do a study to identify the OBCs and then come up with a proposal. Such a thing is absolutely necessary for a program of this magnitude. As in the past the legislature could have legislated against such a decision and put it in the ninth schedule. But the supreme court recently ruled that anything placed in the ninth schedule is also subject to review.

Difference between reservations for SC/ST and OBCs.

This verdict does not mean that reservations of any kind should be stopped. However there is a huge difference between the reservations for SC/ST and the OBCs. The SC/STs are provided reservation because they have suffered for being SC/ST. Hence they are provided reservations based on the single criteria that they are SC/ST. No other criteria is needed because that one criteria is sufficient. Having said that I believe that even that program can be improved. This program, for all its shortcomings, has worked for SC/STs. It has had its success.

For the OBCs, the reservations are based on the fact that they are socially and educationally backward. If someone needs to get benefited by this program, he needs to be identified and proven that he is backward. For that one needs to collect data. As realitycheck has always pointed out that one needs to identify the beneficiaries in order for a program of this scale to succeed. The Supreme court has basically said the same thing about the data that was collected in 1931. The supreme court has not said NO to reservations. It has asked the govt to prove that the people who will benefit from this are really OBCs. Once the govt. gets into the exercise of identifying the OBCs there will be lot of political repercussions to these. That should be interesting to watch in the coming days.

Verdict like these and proper dealing of the issue of creamy layer would go a long way to ensure that the beneficiaries of this program are the ones that really need it.

cross posted at the Great Indian Mutiny