No end to quota politics in India
UPA Chairwoman Sonia Gandhi and her party may counting electoral votes through the reservation bill
Once upon a time there was a Mr Mandal who headed a commission that filed a report that like most reports was duly buried because it made an explosive recommendation.
It roughly said that if an ‘advanced class’ boy is pitted against someone from a backward class, their intelligence level being equal, the outcome will be anyone’s guess because of the social advantages enjoyed by the former.
He felt that the backward classes needed a leg up if they were to beat the odds of centuries of discrimination and suggested that a certain quota of seats in educational institutions and government jobs be reserved for them.
This file with the now loved/hated quota word lay buried through the regimes of successive Congress governments till for good or for bad it was dusted off by then prime minister V.P.Singh in 1989.
And so the quota genie was unleashed, ironically by an upper caste man and a royal to boot. More quotas, sub-quotas for several caste denominations followed over the years and now one is scared to add up the quota percentages for fear that they might defy mathematical principles and add up to more than the maximum possible 100 per cent!
But just when you thought that you had seen the last of the quota games, the government has come up with another one — a quota for promotions in government jobs for SC/ST employees.
One wonders if those who beat the odds with the existing quotas to rise in society and get government jobs are still not empowered enough to get promoted on merit.
The 2014 poll factor in this is obvious but if I were a Dalit who’s come up the hard way, I’ll take it as an insult because this quota tells me that I’m still not good enough.