Reservation Policy - Does it cater to vote bank politics or levels playing field for economically disadvantaged?

According to the author, Reservation policy is inadequate and does not yield the desired results

Reservations about Reservations!

Ajaz Ahmad (Rising Kashmir)

There is a very poignant story I once read that aptly sums up the irony of the reservation policy.

Eklavya is a character in the Mahabharata – a young man very zealous about learning the art of archery from Dronacharya the guru of the Pandavas and the Kauravas. There is only one hitch though; Eklavya belongs to a low caste. Accordingly as he approaches the guru Dronacharya and asks to be his pupil, the guru refuses saying that it can’t be so because of Eklavya’s low birth. Now this Eklavya turns out to be a mighty determined character and goes on to teach himself to wield the bow to the extent that he achieves mastery in the art of archery.

One day somehow his prowess comes to be noticed by Guru Dronacharya who enquires from him as to who has been his teacher. Eklavya maintains that in fact Dronacharya is his guru and shows him a statue of himself saying that he would always practice in front of this statue of Dronacharya that he has built as a virtual guru for himself. Dronacharya is impressed but worried at the same time by the fact that his pupil-by-proxy looks all set to outshine his royal students. To offset this ‘crisis’ he asks for Eklavya’s thumb as his due as a guru (guru dakhshina) thereby rendering the low born wretch incapable of ever handling a bow and arrow.

This is the story so far as the epic Mahabharata is concerned and a touching story indeed but our story does not end there. The writer of the modern version of this story – a satire – goes on to add that Eklavya went through the cycles of birth, death and rebirth working hard to gain merit in each life cycle so much so that ultimately he is reborn in the present age and finally achieves the highest possible state of existence– that of being born as a high caste Brahmin. He seeks out Dronacharya, who in this age happens to be the principal of a professional college.

Eklavya approaches the great teacher and asks to be admitted under his tutelage now that he has managed a high caste birth. The principal shakes his head sadly and tells him that he could have got into his institution were he from a low caste, his high caste birth in itself being a factor against him!

Indeed this story serves to highlight the restrictions that one’s birth in a particular caste, low or high, puts on his future prospects. The recent controversy about the OBC quota in educational institutes and jobs including the prestigious IIMs has again brought this issue into the limelight at the national level.

Even locally, here in our state, the issue will soon be a topic for bitter debate once again as the results of entrance examinations for various professional colleges will be declared and merit will once again become a casualty of the quotas.

Has reservation policy really fulfilled the objectives that it sought to attain? Does reservation really lead to the uplift of the underprivileged classes? Is reservation about social justice or injustice?

The caste system was not supposed to be rigid to begin with. It was later on that this segregation of people into various classes merely on the basis of the vocations they pursued degenerated into an inflexible categorization of people based on birth. A person whom destiny chose to place in a particular class remained in that class no matter how much he strived to overcome it.

Unfortunately the same rigidity afflicts the reservation policy. A person belonging by virtue of his birth to an unprivileged class might be presently considerably better off than a person from a supposedly privileged class in terms of socioeconomic conditions and education but he continues to milk the disadvantage-converted-to-advantage that his birth has conferred upon him. Thus a policy aimed at providing social justice ended up fostering injustice. Merit became hostage to the accident of being born in a particular class or community.

That the lot of the underprivileged classes remains unchanged even today is itself a pointer towards the failure of the reservation policy. It is because ultimately this policy also favours the privileged, the privileged lot among the unprivileged that is.

A great majority of the people belonging to these classes do not have access to basics like food, medical care and primary education making the provision of job reservations and quotas in higher education irrelevant for them. Reservations are meant for individuals and select families rather than being an equitably distributed advantage for the masses. It ends up creating more classes, a subclass of a privileged few within an unprivileged whole.

That reservations promote inefficiency is evident in itself. Rather than ‘elevating’ an underprivileged person by granting him concessions in the level of efficiency required for a particular position wouldn’t it be more pragmatic to ensure that he is brought up to the level of efficiency required? Now that would be uplift in the real sense! Rather than pull up an individual the present system of quotas and reservations aims at pulling down the system.

What is more, ultimately it is the underprivileged lot which suffers more because of this rigid policy. A person who is born in a family several generations of which have enjoyed the privileges of reservation naturally gets to study in the best of schools and enjoys the best possible facilities in terms of housing, healthcare and education. Now when this same person sets claim to the ‘reserved quota’ another person who belongs to the same underprivileged class or say a backward area and is still underprivileged definitely stands at a disadvantage when pitted against this person.

Thus again this system ended up catering to the elite. It is a fact that most of those who benefit from the reservation policy are the ones who no longer need it!

Half a century of reservations has not changed the glaring fact of a considerable number of people in this country still having to forage for food in the filth of dustbins, or of parents selling their daughters at a price less than that of a cow or that a failed crop means that a farmer has to commit suicide.

This is because the reservation policy is mere patchwork and not a concerted effort at long-term uplift and welfare. Such a policy will however continue to flourish, in spite of its flawed nature, so long as politicians use it as a sop to establish and maintain potential vote banks and of course the privileged few that benefit from it will ensure that it does flourish.