#dnaEdit: Reserve and rule

The Maharashtra Cabinet’s approval to 16 per cent reservation for the dominant Maratha community and 5 per cent for Muslims is not just a brazen act of political expediency; far worse, it adds up to spelling doom for the idea of reservation. This cynical use of reservation to court community vote banks, with elections around the corner, damages the original intent of affirmative action serving as a vehicle for social equity and economic mobility for historically disadvantaged sections. After Wednesday’s award, 73 per cent of Maharashtra government jobs and education are in the reserved category leaving a minuscule 27 per cent where merit is the sole qualifier. This is despite the Supreme Court judgment mandating that reservations be capped at 50 per cent in employment and education. Defending its questionable action, the Maharashtra government claims to have acted on credible findings of backwardness amongst the Marathas and Muslims and announced its resolve to fight a legal battle, if challenged in the courts. Would the government please release this data for public scrutiny? 

The untenable decision provokes another question: after 15 years in power, is the Congress-NCP ruling coalition so bereft of showcaseable achievements that it had to rely on selective appeasement. Socially or politically, it is undeniable that the Marathas are the dominant community in Maharashtra. In contrast, the reservation provided to the Muslim community could have been justified, if undertaken much earlier. The Sachar Committee noted that the incidence of urban poverty in Maharashtra was much higher among Muslims(49 per cent) compared to SC/STs(33 per cent) and the general population(20 per cent). But by lumping them with Marathas at this late stage, the allegations that the Congress woos the Muslim community at election-time, only to forget them later holds true. Conversely, the BJP’s charge that the Congress selectively appeases Muslims also holds true, putting the community at a disadvantage and making them suspect in others’ eyes. It is surprising that the Congress has learnt little from the general election defeat. In December, the UPA government included another dominant community, the Jats, in the central OBC list. But in the Jatlands of Western UP, Haryana and Rajasthan, this gambit could not prevent an overwhelming electoral drubbing.

The spectre of the reservation policy crossing all norms of constitutional propriety has disquieting implications for India’s social harmony. Tamil Nadu, another state which has exceeded the 50 per cent  threshold, and offers 69 per cent reservation to an assortment of OBCs, MBCs, SCs and STs, has staved off legal challenges because its 1994 reservation legislation is listed in the Constitution’s Ninth Schedule. Tamil Nadu also offered the justification that the OBCs, MBCs, SCs and STs make up 89 per cent of its total population. The ninth schedule legislations, mostly land reforms laws enacted by various states, were kept out of judicial review during the executive-judiciary standoffs on right to property during the first decades after Independence. But in a landmark judgment in January 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that it could strike down any law included in the Ninth Schedule if it violated the Constitution’s basic structure. Despite the growing reservation footprint, backward classes have moved beyond the pro-reservation slogans, at least temporarily, as was evidenced by the support for Narendra Modi’s “development for all” mantra. Voters appear to be seeing through the ruse of the ever-expanding reservation quotas, but the Congress remains stuck in the past.