The Key To Revitalising India’s Reservation System

Context: Affirmative policy regimes in India need reforms and be subjected to a continuous performance audit.

About the reservation policy

• Enunciated the principle of justice: In a deeply unequal and oppressive social order, reservation is a system of affirmative action that provides historically disadvantaged groups representation in education, employment and politics. 
  • It allows the Indian government to set reserved quotas or seats, which lower the qualifications needed in exams, job openings etc., for “socially and educationally backward citizens.”

Problems with current policy

• Still no equity: The current system suffers from a “problem of reification” where the assumption that the disadvantages of every sub-group within each category are the same is severely misplaced. 
  • Justice G. Rohini Commission’s report on the sub-categorisation of OBCs concluded that - 
    • 97% of central OBC quota benefits go to just under 25% of its castes.
    • 983 OBC communities, 37% of the total, have zero representation in both central government jobs and admissions to central universities.
    • And just 10% of OBC communities have accrued 24.95% of jobs and admissions.
• Furthering social divisions: Asymmetrical distribution of reservation has severely deterred political projects of unified subaltern solidarity.
  • Parties that were once able to build large Bahujan solidarities are now finding it difficult to garner such support.
• Insufficiency of data: Lack of legible data on socio-economic conditions of varied social groups at local levels of State and on the implications of liberalisation and other social changes on varied caste groups.

Way forward

• Develop a wide variety of context-sensitive, evidence-based policy options that can be tailored to meet specific requirements of specific groups.
• A socio-economic caste-based census becomes a necessary precondition to initiate any meaningful reform in the affirmative action regime in India.
• Institutional reforms: India need an institution alike the Equal Opportunities Commission of the United States or the United Kingdom, which can -  
• Provide timely information: By making a deprivation index correlating data from the socio-economic-based census of different communities, including caste, gender, religion etc.
• Undertake an audit on the performance of policies upholding social equity.