It is commonplace to say about debates that they ''generate
more heat than light'' or that ''the opposing sides have
missed the essential point''. But here is one debate
where it is difficult to say either. The Indian debate
has definitely generated both a lot of heat and light,
and there are clearly valid points made at both ends
of the spectrum. So the discussion on reservation policy
is rich indeed, full of insight and careful reflection,
even if the statistical basis on which various arguments
are based is not ideal and there remain large gaps in
our knowledge about the full extent of existing social
discrimination and the actual effects of past reservation
policies.
Reservation
in public sector education and employment is a particularly
(but not uniquely) Indian practice enshrined in the
Constitution, a legal form of affirmative action designed
to provide greater opportunities to communities and
social groups that have been traditionally deprived
and excluded.
The emotions generated by reservations
are well known (witness the public agitations at the
time of the partial implementation of the Mandal Committee
recommendations on backward caste reservations in 1990).
But the more recent interest in the subject was awakened
by the promise made by the UPA government in its Common
Minimum Programme in 2004, to provide for reservations
in the private sector.
Subsequently, the controversial Supreme Court ruling
on reservation in private higher education institutions
and the consequent moves towards enabling legislation
in this regard have further stoked the fire. The resulting
spate of articles on the subject has been of such fecundity
that ordinary citizens can be forgiven for feeling quite
bewildered and unable to wade through the differing
positions.
How useful, then, to have a book which brings
together almost all the important recent writing on
the subject, from all the different (and often violently
differing) perspectives. (''Reservations and Private
Sector: Quest for Equal Opportunity and Growth'', edited
by Sukhdeo Thorat, Aryama and Prashant Negi, New Delhi:
Indian Institute of Dalit Studies and Rawat Publications,
2005) The book covers a wide range of approaches to
the issue, from reviews of the theoretical literature
on discrimination and market behaviour, to debates on
the issue of reservation versus merit, to the relationship
with globalisation and to caste and identity politics,
to a broader consideration of other remedies and other
forms of affirmative action.
The book is especially useful because it includes all
kinds of contributions, from thoughtful scholarly articles
to more polemical and passionate journalistic writings,
and from all sides of the debate, so that it provides
a comprehensive sense of the issues and positions that
are currently under discussion. It also covers various
aspects and possible mechanism of affirmative action,
in both education and employment.
A reading of this volume clarifies some points that
are of central importance in approaching the entire
issue of social discrimination and its remedies, including
affirmative action and reservation in the current context.
Several articles effectively debunk the supposed contradiction
between reservations on the one hand and merit and efficiency
on the other. There is substantial theoretical literature
on the co-existence of markets and discrimination (whether
in terms of caste, community or gender), and on how
such discrimination reduces the efficiency of the economy
- in which case affirmative action to reduce such discrimination
can only increase efficiency. In any case, it is well
known that Indian private sector also employs wide ranging
discriminatory practices (such as inheritance determining
managerial control, preferential employment based on
social networks, and so on) which are inherently inefficient.
It is now widely accepted across the world that diversity
makes economies (and indeed, firms) more rather than
less competitive. The example of countries like Malaysia,
which combined a very severe and restrictive form of
reservation and other affirmative action with remarkable
economic growth for several decades, points to this.
So the debate between merit and affirmative action is
exposed as fundamentally false.
The empirical evidence also points squarely to the strong
and still pervasive persistence of social discrimination
(which can be related to, but is not the same as, economic
disparity) in India. So extensive is this, that few
would deny the reality of continued discrimination and
exclusion, and certainly even the opponents of reservation
in this volume accept this reality. Rather, the debate
appears to hinge more on the precise form that affirmative
action should take.
Those who oppose the policy of reservation operate primarily
with the following arguments: perceptions of ''victimhood''
and the creation of democratically undesirable identity
politics; inequalities within the specified communities,
which allow a ''creamy layer'' to take advantage of the
reservations and benefit unduly while depriving the
rest of the community; the rigid and inflexible nature
of the instrument of reservation, which does not allow
for more creative modes of affirmative action; the privileging
of some caste-based discrimination while ignoring other
and possibly more undesirable forms of exclusion; the
compression of the notion of social justice into only
reservation, instead of encompassing broader socio-economic
policies such as land reform and other asset redistribution,
strategies of income generation, etc.
There is certainly some relevance to each of these points,
and no one would deny that the system that has operated
in India thus far has been inadequate not only in addressing
these issues, but even in achieving the goals set in
terms of filling the allocated quotas even in public
education and employment. Yet even these failures are
indicators of the continued prevalence of widespread
social discrimination, which operates in addition to
other forms of inequality of access.
Thus, one of the problems of the system of reservation
in the public sector is that there has been no institutional
mechanism of incentives and disincentives to ensure
effective affirmative action. At the moment, there are
''legal'' requirements for filling certain quotas, but
there are no penalties for public institutions that
do not fill them, or rewards for those that more than
fulfill them. That is at least part of the reason why
so many quotas remain unfulfilled.
However, while reservations have been inadequate and
relatively rigid instruments of affirmative action,
they do have certain advantages which explain why they
have been preferred. They are transparent, inexpensive
to implement and monitor and therefore easily enforceable.
Any other system of affirmative action must have these
attributes in order to be practical. The problem with
systems based on periodic audit of institutions to check
on their ''diversity'' is that do not have equal transparency
and enforceability.
This is not to discredit the possibility of other instruments
of affirmative action being developed - indeed, the
very complexity of the discrimination and exclusion
in Indian society suggests the need for a multiplicity
of instruments which would work together to create more
democratic and equitable outcomes.
The basic issue, of course, is that the roots
of discrimination go much deeper, in that social and
economic disparities are deeply intertwined, although
in increasingly complex ways. Certainly, the lack of
asset ownership among Dalit and other deprived communities
is critical in determining other forms of discrimination.
And deprivation in terms of early access to quality
education is increasingly becoming the most crucial
determinant of subsequent life achievement for many
socially and economically marginalised groups.
So
the debate on reservation in the private sector must
be seen within a broader perspective, as being a policy
that would definitely not affect ''efficiency'' of private
sector functioning, but still would go only a small
part of the way in correcting historically entrenched
and still pervasive social discrimination. |
