| | | Good morning! | | There’s a lot to be said for affirmative action — especially given that privilege works in subtle and invisible ways. I’ve seen it change lives. One of the earliest states to do this in scale was Tamil Nadu. By the 1980s, the reservation for people from scheduled castes and tribes, and other backward classes, was 68% in the state. In the early 1990s, it was taken up to 69%. And, a few years later, a law to the effect was approved by the President and placed in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution — beyond the reach of judicial review. By the 1990s, the impact of this was already becoming visible — helped along by two other developments, the IT boom, and the privatisation of technical education in the state. By the 2000s, it had changed the state’s social and economic fabric. My parents still lived in Chennai then. Their maid’s daughter was in a BPO (after graduating from a college she might have found it difficult to gain admission to minus affirmative action). The two sons of the man who managed their washing (picking it up and dropping it off twice a week, cleaned and pressed) were both engineers working overseas. The problem with reservations, though, is the problem with freebies — they become entitlements and rights. As a senior Delhi minister recently told me after his party came to power, it didn’t matter what he, or anyone else, or indeed the party itself thought about the many freebies the previous government had announced in Delhi. The freebies were there, which meant they had to continue. And that is the problem with the caste census. With the government announcing that it will conduct a caste census along with the much-delayed national census analysts and commentators have jumped through hoops trying to defend something they opposed till last week. The truth is that a bad idea does not become a good idea just because it is adopted by the government (just as a good idea doesn’t become a bad one simply because it has the government’s backing). And the truth is that a bad idea does not become a good one just because it has support across the political spectrum – from parties in government and out of it. Back in the late 1980s and the 1990s, the Mandal movement (on reservations for other backward classes) successfully countered the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and for some time now, the opposition parties, including the Congress, which has traditionally not favoured reservations, have sought to do the same thing 30 years later by pitching a radical version of social justice as the panacea for the inequality that’s so evident in the country. The BJP-led NDA’s decision to go in for a caste census is an effective counter to that pitch – but it is a purely political one. My colleague Roshan Kishore is of the opinion that, for now, the BJP’s acceptance of the demand for a caste census, is a victory for the Mandal (and social justice) camp, although he admits that the BJP is entirely capable of selling this as a sort of Mandal 3.0 that aims to break the hegemony of dominant OBCs. | | … but may need reinvention Like everything else, affirmative action needs to be reinvented given today’s context and circumstances. That will require a representative measure of backwardness. For instance, I would, if I were asked, define backwardness around five dimensions: asset-ownership; education; nature of employment; income; and a composite health and well-being score. Some of this data is already being collected – the census itself, for instance, seeks details on asset-ownership and education – and it should be possible, with a little effort, to collect the rest. Such data could enable targeted and nuanced intervention – where it is needed most. The caste census, in contrast, is a blunt instrument, one that assumes that efforts of three-quarters of a century have done little to address inequality. And it doesn’t take an active imagination to see how the results of a caste census are unlikely to be restricted to reservations in educational institutions and for government jobs (and promotions). After all, existing quotas are now also applicable in local bodies (with some caveats). There have already been demands for proportionate representation, and it is possible that there could be even more extreme demands. Interestingly, it isn’t as if we are not aware of India’s caste composition. Existing surveys, such as the Employment Unemployment Survey (EUS), the National Family and Health Survey (NFHS) and the Periodic Labour Force Survey – apart from the last Census, although it is now very dated – already provide a clear picture of the proportion of scheduled caste and scheduled tribe population; the share of other backward classes in a state’s population; and the share of OBCs by faith. This only serves to further the argument that politics, not the need for better policy making, is behind the decision on a caste census – unless the methodology is refined to reflect real backwardness. | | What if everyone is entitled? For over three decades now, various governments have sought to breach the 50% ceiling on reservations put in place by the Supreme Court (in the milestone Indra Sahwney case). The apex court, in turn, has sought to protect this ceiling; the only exception was in 2022, when in a 3:2 ruling, a five-judge bench signed off on 10% reservation for so-called Economically Weaker Sections (EWS). As my colleague Abraham Thomas pointed out, because constitutional courts (including the Supreme Court) have repeatedly insisted on quantifiable data “to justify state action”, the caste census announced by the Union government could change the way they (constitutional courts) view new efforts to breach the 50% ceiling . That could mean 70%, 75%, perhaps even 80% reservation. | | And what if everyone is middle class? HT Wknd’s columnist Kashyap Kompella asks an important question this week: “Who’s rich, who’s middle-class, and who’s poor in India? ” Actually, as he answers later in the article – and as anyone who has bothered to think about the question will agree – “everyone thinks they belong to it: the rich who consider themselves “upper-middle” (is it superstition or guilt that keeps us from acknowledging where we really are on the spectrum?); the ambitious-but-poor, who don’t want that label, and believe they will soon transition into the class of people whose greatest concern is where to buy their next smartphone.” I’ve said it before, but it merits repetition: HT Wknd isn’t just the best weekend supplement across Indian newsrooms; it is also the most intelligent. And that’s because of columnists who write almost exclusively for it – like Kashyap. This week, for instance, apart from a numbers-oriented essay on the rich and the not-so (and those in-between), Wknd profiles the 65-year old particle physicist who has just won the Wolf Prize for discovering the “composite fermion”, and who first encountered particle physics in school – a Hindi-medium one in Sambhar, Rajasthan. | | It’s a bird… It also features a well-researched column on the chicken by our climate columnist Mridula Ramesh (Did you read her sharp take on the Indus Water Treaty last week?). This week, Mridula weighs in on the humble chicken, which I will now look at differently having read her column. Apart from being one of the most efficient sources of protein, the world’s most produced meat is also its greenest , she writes. And least expensive. | | Some new music, and some old Both Lucius and Goose have new albums. Lucius’ self-titled album may well get the band (which has been around since the late 2000s), the kind of recognition it deserves, and Goose’s new album Everything Must Go is a sort of degustation menu for listeners who know that the band (and its songs) are better, longer, and different live. But I’ve also been listening to Heart of Gold , a tribute to Neil Young that features artists such as Fiona Apple, Eddie Vedder, Mumford & Sons, Courtney Barnett, and Anders Osborne. Great songs; fine singers. | | | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | |
