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Caste or Economic Status: What Should We Base

Reservations On?
EPW ENGAGE

From the debates generated by the Mandal Commission recommendations, we examine

criticisms and the underlying principles for caste-based reservations.

The NDA-led government has passed a gazette notification securing reservations for 10% of
the economically weaker sections. This decision has been criticised soundly as an electoral
gimmick ahead of the 2019 general elections.

Reservations have always been a contentious issue in India, especially after the
implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations which advocated that 27% of
the jobs under the Central government and public sector undertakings should be reserved
for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). The debate over what the basis of reservations should
be has been a particularly polarising point in the discourse. The government's latest
notification has sparked this debate once again by offering reservations based on economic
status.

Through the Economic and Political Weekly’s archive, we revisit this debate.

1) A Longer History of Reservations in India

The idea of caste-based reservations has always been vociferously resisted by the dominant
social forces in the country, right from colonial times. It was suggested that reservations
were a British machination to “divide and rule” India. In his article, discussing the history of
reservations in India, Bhagwan Das highlighted the importance of English being instituted
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as the official language which served to further insulate Dalits and backward castes from
employment and educational opportunities. With the Poona Pact, 1932, the disprivilege
faced by Dalits was accentuated once again as their identity was subsumed under the Hindu
fold.

“The Poona Pact had far-reaching effects and obstructed their progress in
other fields also. The government issued orders regarding reservation in
services vide resolution No F 14/17-B 33 dated July 4, 1934 (Gazette of India,
part I, July 7, 1934). Reservation in public services was provided for all
minorities excepting the depressed classes:

In regard to the depressed classes, it is common ground that all reasonable

steps should be taken to secure for them a fair degree of representation in the
public services. The intention of the caste Hindus in this respect was formally
stated in the Poona Agreement of 1932 and His Majesty's government in
accepting that agreement took due note of this point. In the present state of
general education in these classes the government of India considers that no
useful purpose will be served by reserving for them a definite percentage of
vacancies out of the number available for Hindus as a whole, but they hope to
ensure that duly qualified candidates from the depressed classes are not
deprived of their opportunities of appointment merely because they cannot
succeed in open competition.”

2) The Mandal Commission’s Recommendations

Violent protests erupted against OBC reservations that were suggested by the Mandal
Commission, the implementation of which would mean a 7 percentage point increase in
reservations for the backward classes over the existing level of 20%. Indu Bharti, writing in
1990, said that anti-reservationists demanded that the system of reservations be done away
with altogether, even though increasing quotas would hardly erode upper-caste dominance
in the bureaucracy.

“The B P Mandal Commission, set up in 1978, had submitted its report in 1982
to the then Indira Gandhi government. The commission listed 3,743
communities as Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and placed their proportion in
the country's population at 52 per cent. While allowing the scheduled castes
and tribes, who form reservation equal to their proportion in the population
(22.5 per cent), the commission recommended only 27 per cent reservation for
the OBC even though these constitute 52 per cent of the population because
the Supreme Court, in its judgment in the famous Balaji case, had ruled that
more than 50 per cent reservation was unconstitutional. The Mandal
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Commission report was put in cold storage by the then government.”

3) Disputing Principles

One of the primary criticism against reservations has been that they should not be caste-
based, and should be based on economic status instead. Dipankar Gupta makes an argument
about socially valuable assets being the basis for reservations and argues that OBC
reservations were not justified on the grounds that they were dominant agrarian castes who
were not entirely alienated from assets.

“Reservations for the ex-untouchables and tribes were instituted because of

the fact that they lacked those assets which a market-oriented liberal society
values. They had neither wealth, nor land, nor education. To romanticise the
labours of hereditary cobblers, scavengers, agrestic serfs, and other menials is
certainly a view taken safely from the outside. Why else is it that it is nobody's
ambitions to be a scavenger or an agrestic serf? Regardless of the intrinsic
worth or dignity of such labours the moot point is that such skills that the
historically disprivileged possess are not acknowledged as social assets worth
acquiring. Only an apologist of the caste system and of the estates order can
argue otherwise. It cannot, however, be said that the OBCs are without socially
valuable assets as their initial point of departure. Large sections of the OBCs
are made up of castes and caste clusters of the rural rich.”

4) Encouraging Inefficiency

One of the primary criticisms that caste-based reservations faced, even from liberal
quarters, was that it would lead to an inefficient bureaucracy. During the Mandal
Commission debates, it was impossible for critics to separate caste from party-politics and it
was often seen as a populist measure that would not yield any benefits for the nation.

“The most popular argument against reservation is that it would encourage

inefficiency which already is high in our system. Irrespective of how the states
with and without reservations for other backward classes (OBC) have
performed with regard to their levels of efficiency in public management, it
must be granted that any reservation based on social or historical criteria
affects efficiency adversely. However, this is a cost our society must pay for a
few years, perhaps a few decades if it has to have any pretence of undoing the
effects of social and economic exploitation of the masses by a handful minority
for over thousands of years. Unless one believes in a genetic theory of
inefficiency and corruption linking these. to the backward classes only, there is
no reason, why our society should not be able to get over this transitionary
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problem.”

5) Propagating Sub-nationalism

Another charge against caste-based reservation and its implementation was that it would be
against national unity. Granting quotas by caste, it was argued, would escalate caste-based
divisiveness and encourage sub-nationalisms by allowing them to be articulated in electoral
politics. This was despite the fact that in 43 years of independence then, backward castes
who comprised 52% of the population only had 4.5% share of government jobs, as Balraj
Puri had pointed out.

“The Mandal Commission is being condemned by the intelligentsia, above all,

for what is being called its divisive role. It is in keeping with the current elite
thinking that distrusts all anti-national identities as indicated by the
contemptuous sense in which terms like regionalism, communalism, casteism
and tribalism are used. In practice, sub-national identities are becoming more
and more assertive and all those who are in the business of politics recognise
and cultivate them. Even in the advanced democracies of the west, parties
make conscious efforts to carve out their respective constituencies among
different ethnic groups. This practice is sanctioned by what are called post-
modern theories of politics which recognise ethnic identity as a basic human
urge.” ​

6) Why Reservations NEED to be Caste-Based

Despite the flood of resistance from several quarters, what could be the logic behind caste-
based reservations? Gail Omvedt argues that the objective of caste-based reservations is to
remove caste-monopoly in access to social resources. She suggests that the discourse of
reservation is forcibly turned towards economic criteria because upper-castes want to
“avoid dealing with caste”. Furthermore, she lays out the specific outcome that can be
expected from caste-based reservations.

“Caste-based reservations cannot remove poverty, cannot end economic

exploitation; they cannot "uplift the poor”. They can only make some of the
poor, non-poor. (It has to be stressed that this is also true for reservations
based on economic criteria, which is why the class organisations of the poor
have never demanded them). What they can do is end the caste- monopoly of
organised sector jobs, especially of the public sector. This is a caste monopoly
of the twice-born, most predominantly Brahmans, and as many have pointed
out, including S S Gill, secretary of the Mandal Commission, it is a caste
monopoly that has arisen out of a heritage of thousands of years of caste
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reservation in India in which Shudras and ati-Shudras were forbidden access to

power, wealth and status. Destroying or lessening this caste-monopoly helps to
create a middle class section among castes that are largely poor - a fact that is
sometimes used as a charge against caste reservations, but in fact it is
inevitable and progressive to the extent that it breaks up the correlation of
'caste and class'. This itself will not end casteism but it may be a necessary
condition for doing so.”

Read More:

In Defence of Mandal Commission | P Radhakrishnan , 1982

Mandal Commission and the Left | Aditya Nigam, 1990
Mandal Commission Will Tribal Interests Suffer | Bharat Dogra, 1990
This Anti-Mandal Mania | K Balagopal, 1990
Ideology and Adjudication: The Supreme Court and OBC Reservations | K Balagopal,
2009
Was the Mandal Commission Right? Differences in Living Standards between Social
Groups | Ira N Gang, Kunal Sen and Myeong-Su Yun, 2011