POLITICS OF CASTE-BASED RESERVATION

India, a secular and democratic country is regarded as a model of p1uralistic society II is reflected in its cultural pluralism of various religions, castes, languages and regions. About 82 percent of the Indian population follows Hinduism and 15 percent Islam and its plurality is visible in the four—fold Varna system (Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) and about 5000 castes and sub-castes.

            Now the segmental aspects of traditional four-fold varna system is reflected in terms of four major caste groups created by the modern participatory democratic political system such as the scheduled castes (SC5: 16.73%), the Scheduled Tribes (STs: 7.95%), other backward classes (OBCs: estimated to be 52%) and the rest regarded as upper castes or forward castes (estimated 23%). These four modern caste categories also include social segments of the minorities.

            Reservations have become a big reality in the present-day India. Our governments are busy in giving more and more reservation to different castes or groups in the society. Reservations have old history in India, dating back to 1921, when caste- based reservation was provided to the people of Madras Presidency. From then, reservations are provided in our nation from time to time to different sections or groups of societies. In 1990, this whole process got intensitied with implementation of recommendations made by Mandal Commission.

            Caste is one of the key issues in this reservation debate whether caste is an indicator of disadvantage at all, in the present. There is now a growing volume of literature that establishes empirically the reality that all indicators of advantage /disadvantage monthly per capita expenditure, land holding, occupational attainment, educational attainment, ownership of consumer assets, type of housing, poverty ratios and so forth) are very clearly stratified by caste. Thus, while reasonably accurate income data are hard to come by, all these indicators suggest the distribution of both income and wealth are skewed along caste lines.

            This is not a trivial finding as it challenges the notion that disadvantage or advantage is randomly distributed between castes and establishes a case for focusing on groups, rather than individuals, as targets for policy making. Of course, this does not deny ultra-group inequality, hut any group based programme can he fine tuned to take that into account, if necessary.

            Caste-based reservations have existed in India for more than a century. Initially introduced by the British to bring equality of opportunity in education, reservation was later extended to other sectors of the development process to overcome the problem of economic inequalities attributed to caste. Even today concepts like affirmative action and quotas are being debated to justify reservation.

            Caste based reservation were implemented during the first quarter of the 20^th century. Scholars have argued that the low caste movements first arose in the south because of the greater ritual repression there by the Brahmins, compared to the north.

            In 2005, through 93^rd constitutional amendment Government of India also introduced 27% reservation for the OBCs (Other Backward Classes) which is presently under the preview of Supreme Court of India. Most recent protests in this series are protest from the Gujjar community of Rasthan for their inclusion in ST list. This agitation of the Gujjar community nearly paralyzed day-today life in Rajasthan and even intensified to inter caste rivalry. This was the first major incidence in the reservation politics which made many intellectuals and political parties to see the reservation issue in different light. Due to this reason, India’s Supreme Court is forced to ask the state governments and authorities about the measures taken by them to stop these violent activities or for booking the people who destroyed the property of the nation.

The major apathy with this whole episode is that the state and central governments were not able to take any concrete steps to avoid these activities. This is really a great apathy for the country like India where still violence like this is a common story and where struggling people still destroy the property of others or the nation for realizing their own dreams. Many people in India still need to learn to live in a way which is acceptable to all the people.

 This new problem has clearly made situation more difficult for the politicians who indulge in reservation politics. This problem has also started showing the unrest caused by the un-thoughtful decisions of implementing caste-based reservation in India. The chances of early solution of this problem are much less because of the large scale protests by those who are already in ST list - Meena community - because they believe that jobs and education opportunities for their community will decrease with T status being accorded to gujjars. 

This is one of the major social unrest problems seen in India after the implementation of caste-based reservation and in future also we can hope to see many more such incidents when other communities may resort to violent means to secure reservation for their community