27 pc quota upheld: Are OBCs India's new rulers?

NEW ORDER? Experts suggest improving the quality of primary education so everyone gets an equal chance.

          

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Keywords: OBC Quota, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a law, which provides for 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in educational institutions supported by the Central government.

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan ruled that the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, does not violate the basic structure of the Constitution. However, the Bench said that if the creamy layer is not excluded then the reservation benefits would not percolate to the needy.

CNN-IBN show, Face The Nation brought up a question: Are OBCs the new rulers of India?

On the panel to try and answer the question were MP, Congress, Convenor, Parliamentary Forum of OBC MPs V Hanumantha Rao, author and economist Gurcharan Das, MP, National Secretary, CPI, D Raja and founder member, Youth for Equality Anirudh Lochan.

Are OBCs really socially backward?

The Congress party had hailed the judgemant as a landmark judgment but had the court actually done what it actually wanted it do? Since all OBCs can avail the quota accept for the rich ones, did it actually bring the OBC vote?

V Hanumantha Rao said that the issue was not about votes. “People are suffering for the last 60 years. Even when the Mandal Commission was implemented in 1991-92 reservations could not be implemented for higher education. The UPA government under the leadership of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, and also Arjun Singh has taken a lot of interest in this affair and the other parties also supported this,” said Rao.

Since it was a big election year and 80 per cent OBC communities in Madhya Pradesh had gone to the polls. The OBCs in Chattisgarh had also gone to the polls so there was no question of the Congress not being interested in the OBCs.

So could the OBCs as a category be seen as socially backward?

Reckoning the thought as questionable, Gurcharan Das said that successful societies looked to the future and not to the past.

“Our aim in India should be to create a middle class society created by high growth, a kind of growth that we are having. But quotas will always lower standards in every society and also lower the chance for the society to become successful,” said Das.

Since D Raja also hailed the OBC quota as relevant, but 90 per cent of the children would be left out, so wasn’t there a need of setting up primary education?

D Raja did agree that there was crisis in the field of education not only in the primary level but also in the secondary level.

“If you go to our higher level there is more crisis. At primary level you get students from scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and OBC. But once they move to secondary level they get dropped out,” said Raja.

So why was there no stop in opposing of privatisation of education?

Raja in his defence said that, “The students are denied access to education in educational institutions,” said Raja.

He further said, “In the post independence India there have been efforts to give them access to education in educational institutions that is why we welcome the judgement as a positive judgement,” said Raja.

According to Raja the quota had upheld the Parliament’s right to amend the Constitution to ensure social justice.

So as a vanguard of revolting against reservations, did Anirudh Lochan feel betrayed by the Apex Court?

Anirudh Lochan who had always conveyed his pessimism from the very beginning regarding “the Court’s ability to deliver a strong judgement” said, “The very premise in which the stir was started was that we were opposed to the government’s equation that social justice and equality can be brought about by reservation and that has not been addressed.

Un-dividing the society

Lochan was given a chance to put a question across to Rao in the show.

He asked, “All of them keep talking about the fact that OBCs need to be given reservation and they have to develop, but 24 per cent of the seats in government organisations are already filled up by the OBCs. There a 200 OBC MPs in the Parliament already and if they themselves cannot do anything for the upliftment of their communities then how will the additional three per cent seats going to help the community with?”

Secondly he asked, “The biggest issue that the Mandal Commission raised was land reforms so why is the government silent on the issue?”

Rao in response said that Lochan was talking about merit that was not anybody’s individual property.

Giving an example of a boy named Muthiala Naidu who belonged to a fisherman community and came from a remote village in Andhra Pradesh but was a topper in IAS, Rao said, “Merit is not an individual property but everybody’s right.”

In times of social cleavage where there were haves and have nots and globalisation was creating a lot of culture so people were feeling resentful and left out, wasn’t it important to create stakeholders and people who equally own education?

Das agreed that such a set up was a requirement but that couldn’t be achieved by dividing society but by uniting society.

“The real issue in India is the issue of the supply of the high quality education. The answer to affirmative action is to adopt a scholarship scheme for all the different sections of children in the society,” said Das.

Was there plain politics involved in quota? Instead of playing with the futures of young people why wasn’t the government pressurised to actually rescue the crisis of elementary education?

Raja said that nobody was dividing the society but the society was already divided.

“Politics is not a bad thing. It is used for the benefit of the people and the overall growth of the society. We are asking for common school system and taking all the affirmative actions so the socially deprived sections get their due place in nation building as they create wealth. It is the people from OBC who create the wealth,” said Raja.

The labels of SC, ST ad OBC have become political. The identification of castes have become political and not really an indicator of a group anymore.

Rao then said that politics was everywhere.

Seventeen per cent of the people of the upper caste have monopolised institutions for a very long time, wasn’t it time that social justice became a real imperative which the judges were actually arguing for?

Lochan put a point across saying that the government’s approach was that reservation was the only means of achieving social economy and justice.

So who would come to IITs and IIMs from the OBCs when they wouldn’t even get through school.

Citing Muthiala Nadu’s example again Rao said the capacities of the OBCs were not to be questioned.

If someone who has not had access to English language gets a 50 per cent marks someone who had spoken English for generations gets 80 per cent, were they to be considered equal?

Das ended the discussion by saying that the main aim of the society was to create such a environment therefore our legislators’ aim should be to improve the quality of our primary education so that every body would get a chance.

Final SMS poll results: Are OBCs the new rulers of India?

Yes – 65 per cent

No – 35 per cent

Editorial view

Politicians may call the 27% OBC quota a landmark bill but the fact is that India has the largest number of illiterates in the world. Less than 10 per cent of the college age population attends college. Less than 20 per cent of India's children finish school. The overwhelming majority of India's children will not even reach these institutes to take advantage of these quotas. To urgently increase the supply of quality education, primary education must be urgently invested in and even perhaps handed to the private sector.