BR Ambedkar, chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution and India’s first law minister, outlined, with characteristic eloquence, the key challenge facing the new Republic — the superimposition of formal equality (one person, one vote) on a society with substantive inequality, most starkly evident in the hierarchy of the caste system. How does a nation move from equality-in-law towards equality-in-fact?
The answer was to carry forward the system of quotas that certain British territories and princely states had instituted allowing for the entry of untouchables, the most stigmatised jatis at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, into higher education and public employment.
Accordingly, untouchability was abolished legally, and jatis and tribes were identified as eligible for India’s reservation system, a policy of compensatory or positive discrimination due to the wide range of social and economic disabilities on account of marginalisation, discrimination and especially the stigma of untouchability. These are the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, or the SC-ST.
Given the salience of the reservation policy, on paper supported by the entire political spectrum, one would have expected successive governments to track outcomes, introduce self-liquidating features where needed, and add new features. In other words, make the policy malleable for maximum benefit, keeping in mind the larger goal of moving towards equality-in-fact, or substantive equality.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, this has not happened. However, researchers have tried to gauge the impact of reservations on various outcomes. The big picture verdict is that it has benefitted SC-STs as a whole.
The latest Supreme Court verdict has tried to uncover two main layers within the policy. One, have some jatis benefitted more than others? If yes, do we need to subdivide the SC quotas into sub-quotas for jatis?
Unfortunately, authoritative official jati-level data are not available. The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 did not release jati-level information. The national Census is severely delayed. Thus, we must triangulate data from different surveys and ethnographic accounts to get a sense of jati-level progress on key indicators, without any direct data on the proportion of different jatis within SC-reserved seats. This makes it hard for us to gauge if the progress (or the lack thereof) of a jati on key indicators like educational attainment, government employment or income is due to the reservation policy, or not.
It is entirely plausible that access to reservations has been uneven. Indeed, this is not the first time that the subdivision of the SC quota, or quota-within-quota, is sought to be introduced. We have examples from two states, Punjab and Bihar.
The Punjab government in 1975 divided the SC quota into two halves: 50% for the relatively backward Mazhabi Sikhs/Balmikis/Churahs within SCs, and the remaining 50% for the more successful Ad Dharmis/Ravidasis/Ramdasi Sikhs/Chamars. There are claims about how this increased representation of the former group into government employment, but not via official data.
Bihar created a category of “Mahadalits” (more dalit than the Dalits), where initially all but four of the 22 SC jatis were designated as such. Nitish Kumar established a Mahadalit Vikas Mission and introduced schemes for housing, education, and loans. Over time, the four remaining castes clamoured for inclusion in the new category; thus Bihar is back to square one, i.e., all SCs are now Mahadalit.
The moral of these stories is that a) quotas-within-quotas could be entirely justified, provided there is systematic tracking of jati-level outcomes, and b) given that reservations produce tangible benefits even for a small minority, there will be a clamour to get into the preferred sub-category, unless there is a Punjab-like policy that divides the quota 50-50 for two roughly equal-sized broad groups. Bihar’s story tells us that these decisions will be politically rather than empirically driven.
The Court judgement notes empirical data, and “reasonable” grounds that will be subject to judicial scrutiny, avoiding the perils of “micro-classification”, would be needed to convert the idea of a sub-quota into actual policy. Given that there is no sign of the national Census on the horizon, and there is no tracking of reservation benefits at the jati level, it is difficult to see how this judgement will get converted into a fair and actionable policy.
The second issue in the court verdict is about families that are economically well-off so that they don’t need protective discrimination. The majority opinion recommends a creamy layer exclusion be applied to SC-STs, as it is applied to Other Backward Classes.
The affirmative action policy has quotas as well as monetary benefits (scholarships or freeships), or relaxation (e.g., lower fees). The income criterion can be used to decide on eligibility for the monetary component to keep the monetary benefits for those who genuinely need it.
However, for quotas, especially in employment, there is no evidence that for historically stigmatised groups, improvement in class status necessarily reduces discrimination, whether in access to jobs, housing or even in the marriage market. Despite untouchability being abolished, covert and overt instances of untouchability persist. As elsewhere in the world, the stamp of a stigmatised social identity doesn’t disappear easily with economic mobility. Rohith Vemula’s tragic end brought home the fact that for beneficiaries, access to institutional spaces does not naturally translate into acceptance and accommodation.
Reservations have helped in creating a Dalit middle class, which over time can reduce stigma and gradually set the stage for creamy layer exclusion in the future. However, we are not there yet.
The Supreme Court’s concern with differential access within the beneficiary groups is not an invalid one, in principle. But where is the empirical evidence that we need to decide on the merits of each case?
Ashwini Deshpande is professor of economics, Ashoka University.The views expressed are personal
