Terms of Trade | What will proportionate reservations achieve?
While proportional reservations may help in the quest for socioeconomic equality, they cannot be the silver bullet to end social oppression.
“Why is it that the Chinese could make a revolution and you could not,” Joan Robinson, one of the world’s best-known Marxist economists from what is referred to as the Cambridge School, once asked EMS Namboodiripad, the first communist leader to become an elected chief minister in India and among the biggest figures of Indian communist movement till date. “The Chinese did not have caste,” was EMS’s one-line answer. This terse exchange — this author heard this story from Prabhat Patnaik, once of India’s most eminent Marxist economists who also taught me at Jawaharlal Nehru University — is the best explanation of the importance of caste in Indian politics. Or, to capture the essence of EMS’s response, the failure of class to dominate Indian politics.

That Indian communists were not sensitive enough to the caste question is an often-cited claim in commentaries on Indian politics, but there is also merit in the counter-narrative that the places where the communists did become politically successful were precisely where they could bring caste into their class agenda via asset redistribution (land-reforms) or social reforms (such as in Kerala).
To be sure, this is a debate which is, at best, of historical interest today. And there is more than enough evidence to argue that India’s democratic evolution has ushered in an almost continuous progressive transformation on the caste question irrespective of the nature of political formation driving this. B R Ambedkar’s struggles to ensure political representation for Dalits before independence and his vanguardist role in making sure that the Indian Constitution codified these rights, the rise of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) against a Congress system which did not provide enough representation to this large group, reservations for OBCs in jobs and educational institutions through the Mandal Commission and its regional predecessors, and the transformation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from a Brahmin-Baniya party to one which is led by Narendra Modi, an OBC leader, are some important milestones of this ongoing journey.
Mandal 3.0 brings fresh momentum to the social justice project
Recent political developments suggest that there is a renewed momentum for using the political route to further the agenda of caste equality in the country. It started with demands for conducting a caste census by Mandal-based parties, led to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) launching a forum for social justice comprising of many opposition parties, and has gained further traction with the Congress lending its support to the idea of 75% reservation in keeping with share of various subaltern groups in the population in the ongoing Karnataka election campaign.
To be sure, this is not the first time the idea of proportionate reservations is making its entry on the political scene. Mandal Commission wanted to give proportionate reservations to OBCs but did not recommend it keeping in mind the (now de-facto breached) 50% cap on reservations. Kanshi Ram, one of post-independence India’s tallest Dalit leaders and the founder of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) championed the slogan of Jiski Jitni Sankhya Bhari Uski Utni Hissedari (participation in keeping with share in population) in his street fighting years.
While the jury is still out on whether a resurrection of Mandal (politics championing OBC reservations) will be able to inflict damage on Kamandal (an accepted political lexicon for the BJP), this week’s edition of the column wants to ask a different question.
If proportional reservations are implemented in India, will it indeed be a revolutionary moment in the quest for improving socio-economic equality in India? The short answer to this question is no. And, this is not because of arguments about reservations undermining merit or promoting inefficiencies. There is more than enough academic evidence to suggest that such arguments do not hold ground. The reason is twofold and it is worth discussing them in some detail.
Social justice vs realpolitik
Reservations cannot correct social oppression if political parties continue to practise double-speak on social justice in the realm of realpolitik.
Anybody who argues that caste-based discrimination, whether in subtle or its most macabre forms, has ceased to exist in India, is very far from the truth. But what is equally true is that reservations cannot be the silver bullet for all kinds of social oppression which exist today.
Let us take the example of JD (U) and the RJD in Bihar, which first demanded a caste census and then initiated the process earlier this year — it was stayed by the Patna High Court on May 5. For all their lip-service to the cause of social justice, the JD (U)–RJD government amended the state’s prison manual to make sure that Anand Mohan, a politician who was once the poster boy of feudal upper caste politics in the state, walks out of prison where he was serving a life sentence for lynching a Dalit district magistrate. Perhaps Mohan’s ability to transfer the votes of his caste brethren – he is a Thakur – is more important than preserving even the symbolic sanctity of India’s criminal justice system, which almost always struggles when it comes to ensuring justice for the socially weak, and more so, when perpetrators enjoy a position of social privilege (and oppression).
To be sure, Mohan’s is not the only example of a dubious political compromise on the social justice question by its so-called vanguards in the state of Bihar. Anant Singh, an upper caste (Bhumihar) MLA who was disqualified for possession of illegal arms, was once criticised by none other than RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav for violence against a person from a weaker caste. Singh had tortured the man to death. Yadav’s militant (electoral) rhetoric against Singh has now given way for an understanding where Singh’s wife is now an MLA from the RJD. As anybody who tracks politics beyond Delhi’s sanitised spaces knows that such compromises with oppressive strongmen are not confined to the state of Bihar.
G. Krishnaiah, the dalit DM who was lynched by a mob led by Anand Mohan, reaped the benefits of reservation and yet succumbed to feudal criminal violence. No amount of reservation can stop the daily violence which tactical political adjustments with criminals, even if they are not upper castes, inflict on the weakest sections of the society, most of whom belong to the subaltern castes. It might not sound politically correct, but some of the most vocal supporters of social justice politics maintain a tactical silence on this issue. While one can always provide an apology for such behaviour citing realpolitik requirements, one must ask what is the point of claiming to do radical politics, if one is perpetuating retrograde traditions from the past.
The economics of it
Two, economically speaking, reservations are fighting to make a shrinking pie more egalitarian.
Even if one were to set aside the important point that OBCs are not a homogeneous lot and dominant OBCs have usurped most political and economic benefits of the Mandal revolution, the demand for more reservations must answer one basic question. Even if proportionate reservations are implemented in government jobs, and let us for a moment assume, even white-collar private sector jobs, what is the absolute number of beneficiaries one is talking about? At best the number will struggle to reach even a million per year. The government’s footprint in the economy, and by extension jobs, is shrinking rather than expanding, not just in absolute terms but also in terms of quality of jobs, as many government jobs have moved from being permanent in nature to contractual. The latter trend also holds for private sector jobs to a large extent. First it was contract workers replacing permanent better paid factory workers, now, it is robots.
While reservations were indeed a possible game-changer for the cause of equality in the pre-reform period and they have made the social calculus more equitable, any objective assessment will have to agree that the fate of equal economic opportunity faces a bigger hurdle from big capital driven jobless growth rather than social exclusion of the subaltern castes.
Reservations, at best, offer the consolation of winning a small battle at a time when the larger war seems very difficult to fight. In a way, the fate of reservations has become very similar to that of land redistribution. As a form of political praxis, they still constitute a radical agenda, but their ability to bring in a radical transformation is extremely limited compared to what it was in the past.
What is the harm in pushing for even a limited relief which reservations might offer?
It is justified to ask this question. Even if reservations do not solve the structural inequalities present in Indian capitalism, they will only make the extant unequal order slightly less unequal in terms of social representation. So, what is the harm in pursuing such politics? None at all if India’s political class investing all its eggs in the caste-census/proportionate reservation basket did not result in a complete abdication of engagement with the larger political economy reality.
Who is going to think of a response to the political economy crisis which India’s new capitalism has unleashed in terms of providing equal opportunities to our 1.4 billion strong population?
It is delusional to expect that the political praxis required to meet this challenge will come out of research which a handful of academics are doing in their ivory towers. Not only is a Mandal 3.0 kind of politics guilty of an error of omission (not raising these issues) here, it is also to be blamed via an error of commission route. Large parts of what is described as exploitative upper caste population is also staring at hopelessness in its struggle to find remunerative and sustainable opportunities in present day Indian capitalism. A shrill rhetoric on reservations will fracture rather than build this much needed class solidarity in today’s environment. To give an example, an earlier analysis in these pages had argued how caste-based divisions are an important impediment in building genuine farmers’ solidarity in the country.
What explains the obsession with proportionate reservations then?
The uncharitable explanation is that political parties championing this demand want to restore status quo ante (read, regain political importance) rather than bring in a genuine revolutionary transformation. The more charitable explanation is that they have become prisoners to the dogma of caste still being the central impediment to Indian revolution which brought them a lot of political capital (and did bring in some social equality) in the first half of India’s 75 years of independence. While India’s democratic revolution has infinitely complicated the interplay of caste and class in politics, one can stick one’s neck out and say that if Joan Robinson and EMS were having the same conversation when India completes 100 years of its independence, EMS will still attribute caste as the central roadblock to a class revolution, except, in this case, it will be a mechanical imposition of caste over class rather than the other way round which is where the left erred when India became independent.
Every Friday, HT’s data and political economy editor, Roshan Kishore, combines his commitment to data and passion for qualitative analysis in a column for HT Premium, Terms of Trade. With a focus on one big number and one big issue, he will go behind the headlines to ask a question and address political economy issues and social puzzles facing contemporary India.
The views expressed are personal
