The party will push for a blueprint with an in-built economic criteria
KOLKATA: In the slippery tracks reservation politics, CPI(M) is playing it safe by treading the middle path. Reservations? Yes. But provisions should be made to bring socioeconomic factors into the gamut of caste-based reservations. That is the essence of the party’s position on the issue.
According to the party, reservations have been reduced into a non-issue in their bastions by the redistribution of land among every section of society.
While this can be debated, CPI(M) will use its influence on the UPA government at the Centre to prepare a comprehensive blueprint on reservations with an in-built economic criteria.
According to Biman Bose, the CPI(M) politburo member and state secretary of the party’s West Bengal unit, the party is of the opinion any reservation has to be in conjunction with socio-economic criteria, which would automatically exclude the affluent and those who have access of higher education or jobs.
He said his party has also advised the UPA government not to act in a hasty manner. “Before implementation, the government should prepare a proposal, which should be put for a public debate. In this way, the widest agreement can be reached before the implementation,” Bose said.
Commenting on the party’s approach to the reservation of seats in the higher education, he said the party is of the opinion that since there is a scarcity of seats in higher education, especially in professional institutions, the government should undertake steps so that the reservation is accompanied by a commensurate increase in the number of seats in the institutions run or aided by the government.
Elaborating on the proposal for expansion in the number of seats in such institutions, Bose said the Union government should take specific initiative to incorporate students from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are yet to be covered under the reservation category. “There should be separate allocation of seats for such students,” Bose said.
Meanwhile, senior politburo member and CITU general secretary Chittabrata Majumdar said reservation could never be the ultimate solution. “Until and unless proper distribution of wealth at the grassroots level can be ensured, reservation will act as a temporary step for the social upliftment of the backward class,” Majumdar said.
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