On caste, the road not taken

Context: Neither judiciary nor politics appears capable of addressing the complicated claims of backwardness by politically powerful castes. The time has come for a third backward classes commission.

Challenges in reservation policy

• Intellectual bankruptcy: Caste continues to be a system of discrimination, but remedies for removing that dis- crimination keep eluding us, partly because of caste-based interests and partly because of the penchant to seek satisfaction in political correctness alone.
  • Recent ruling in the Maratha Reservation case represent an intellectual bankruptcy of our politics and the deadlock that the social justice project has hit.
• Limited state capacity for enumeration: The issue of actual numbers or population share of OBCs has been talked about for over a decade, besides the need to understand the socio-economic situation of different backward communities.
• Focus on the legal aspects: The issues at are expected to be solved using legal means, however there is a need to realise that these are, in essence, political issues. They are the late legacies of the Mandal Commission.
  • Three decades ago, the marriage between politics and jurisprudence gave birth to a consensus. That consensus had three dimensions: 
    • Accepting (rather indirectly and unwillingly) that caste is the main cause of tradition- born backwardness among a large section of the population; 
    • Resorting to “reservation” as the easiest policy response;
    • Recognising and accommodating the political aspirations of the backward sections by expanding the social base of the political elite.
• Resorting to economic basis: While the Constitutional principles of reservations were earlier based on social location, granting reservations on an economic basis seems to have complicated matters.
• Current deadlock: Has three dimensions
  • It is represented by demands for reservation made by relatively better-off and politically powerful castes. 
  • It represents the deep chasm that exists within backward sections, rendering politics of backwardness nearly impossible.
  •  It sharpens caste identities and a weakens social justice agenda and tends to consolidate caste boundaries more than connecting to issues of social justice.

Way Forward: Five issues require systematic consideration in the fields of politics, policy and intellectual discussions.

• Intra-OBC differentiation: Flagged by a member of the Mandal Commission itself and most states have resorted to clumsy arrangements for “most” backward.
• Increasing intra- caste stratification: Something that was rather limited at the time of Mandal. What sociologist D L Sheth called as classicisation is now becoming the central issue, with much complication.
• Question about the specific advantages and logic of reservation in the three different arenas of employment, education and political representation.
• Identifying the limits of reservation: Including the need to think of additional measures to augment the policy of social justice.
• Setting boundaries: In a country where poverty and suffering is the norm, and well-being only a distant dream, there is a need to distinguish between backwardness primarily caused by a group’s social location in traditional social order and backwardness resulting from distortions of the political economy