Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala
The stigma of caste continues. A student of Delhi University was killed by her parents for marrying outside the caste. Chief Minister of Bihar Jitan Ram Manjhi has said that upper caste people are “foreigners” since they are descendants of the Aryans who came from outside the country. There is hope despite this pervading darkness. Punjabi Manohar Lal Khattar has been appointed Chief Minister of jat-dominated Haryana; and a Brahmin Devendra Fadnavis has been appointed Chief Minister of Maratha-dominated Maharashtra. People of UP voted in large numbers for the BJP cutting across caste lines in the recent general elections. These events indicate that the hold of caste on consciousness of the people is thankfully receding. In this backdrop let us examine how other countries have dealt with such social divisions and whether they have relied on reservations to undo this evil.
Malaysia inherited a division of the society between indigenous Bhumipturas and immigrant Chinese who controlled most businesses. Reservations were instituted for Bhumiputras in university admissions and Government jobs in the seventies. Now, many decades later, PM Najib Razak has reduced the level of reservations and simultaneously announced a series of measures aimed at offering more business and training opportunities and affordable housing. A book on Affirmative Action in Malaysia by Edmund Terence Gomez says that reservations have led to the “the emergence of a small, politically powerful and disproportionately wealthy Bhumiputra elite; and weak human capital.” The ‘weaker’ minorities loose incentive to work hard and move ahead because the easier ladder of reservations is available. Malaysia is moving away from reservations towards skill- and entrepreneurship development.
A study of the impact of preferential admissions given to women in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania by Jane Onsongo concluded that focusing only on the point of admission is not effective. Parallel programs of remedial pre-university programmes and financial assistance are necessary. A study of South African affirmative action program aimed at bringing blacks into the mainstream by Dirk Hermann of Solidarity concluded “Affirmative action has succeeded in creating a small, black middle class and elite who benefit from both affirmative action and black economic empowerment. The largest part of the black community still lives in abject poverty and has not seen any of the benefits that affirmative action is supposed to deliver.” He suggests moving away from racial targets to skills development.
In 1965 US President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an executive order that requires private employers to provide equal opportunity in employment to all citizens. But the same order held quotas as unlawful. In 1969 President Richard Nixon implemented affirmative action for federal contractors. The United States has empowered the Blacks without putting a system of reservations in place. In fact, it can be said that upliftment of the Blacks in that country woes itself to not putting reservations in place. Absence of reservations have given a clear message to the Blacks that they will be assisted in rising up the ladder but they will have to put in commensurate effort. Problem with reservations is the energy of the left behind community is directed towards seeking favours instead of upgrading them to meet the global competition. Reservations have kept the lower castes in India enmeshed in backwardness.
The move across the world, no wonder, is away from quotas. It is being realized that quotas help create an elite within the backward sections and actually weakens them in the long run by removing incentives for attaining higher education and entrepreneurship.
Gandhi was against forming separate constituencies as demanded by Ambedkar because that would strengthen ‘birth’ as the main identity of the person. It would lock the Dalits into their lower caste perpetually. Gandhi wanted that Dalit-hood of the Dalits should be obliterated without leaving a trace whatsoever. He agreed to reservations as an interim measure as demanded by Ambedkar. I think both Gandhi and Ambedkar have proven right. Gandhi was right in that reservations have strengthened the caste identity instead of diluting it. Ambedkar was right that the whole scheme will get mired into ineffective measures of education and the like unless a direct and quick measure of upliftment such as reservations in Government jobs was put in place. The time is at hand for us to move on. We have created a large middle class of Dalits. The task is to create an incentive among them to upgrade their skills and compete in the mainstream. I knew one Dalit teacher. He did not have a permanent job. He was very active in organizing the Dalits. Then he got a permanent job in a University. Overnight all his social activities evaporated into thin air. Such is the impact of reservations.
The model espoused by us is to create a elite comprising of bureaucracy and rouge politicians. Ours is a Government of the bureaucracy, for the bureaucracy, by the bureaucracy (and rouge politicians). Purchasing power of the country is concentrated in the hands of this elite. They not only get hefty salaries but also many times over in bribe money. The common man remains poor. Next step is to co-opt the brightest from among the weaker sections in the ruling elite. The brightest among the Dalits are made IAS officers and these join the upper castes in ensuring that their Dalit brothers remain poor. The last step is to keep the weaker sections distracted from the sucking of wealth by the bureaucracy-politician axis. A policy of Divide and Rule is set into motion. The weaker sections are told that their hapless condition is because of the exploitation by the upper castes. The real cause of exploitation by the bureaucracy-politician axis is quietly hid under the carpet. Like the clever cat that ate the bread by making two dogs fight with each other; the bureaucrat-politician axis eating away the wealth of the nation by making the weaker- and upper sections fight with each other.
The need now is to take following three steps. One, whittle away the excessive and overbearing privileges of the bureaucracy-politician nexus. Two, put in place a strong policy for market-based job creation by providing incentives to employment to the private sector. Within this, special and extra incentives may be built in to provide employment to weaker sections. Indian businesses have suggested that the Government may provide tax incentives for employing larger numbers from the weaker sections. Three, dismantle the entire government education system and replace it with education vouchers with which the weaker sections may access good quality education. We need to learn from the best practices of affirmative action from other countries otherwise we will be left behind in this globalized world. These steps will spontaneously spell the end of caste-based parties.
(The author was formerly Professor of Economics at IIM Bengaluru)
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