FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
Exasperating Justice
I
n the current political dispensation in India, both the central and
state governments have been on a spree to expand the social
basis of the quota system, making it more inclusive by inflating
and even encroaching on the original list of Scheduled Caste (SC)
and Scheduled Tribe (ST) reservation beneficiaries. These govern-
ments have provided economic backwardness as the justificatory
reason in support of their decision for such expansion. Arguably,
this reason is inadequate inasmuch as the economic backwardness
criterion adopted by these governments leaves out social groups
that are much more economically backward from their quota con-
sideration. The question that has to be raised is: Why does the lexi-
cal difference principle stop at the 10% and 13% castes? This princi-
ple would expect the government to start from the most economi-
cally backward social groups across the social spectrum. The an-
swer to this question possibly could be found in the politics of the
new quota system. According to this politics, the minorities may not
be the key to the electoral success of the party currently in power.
In addition to this, the new quota policy has another rough
edge to its angularity. The quota for new reservationists tends to
deviate from the “progressive” principle that was visualised by
the Constitution makers. In the original constitutional frame-
work, the quota system was introduced with the purpose of keep-
ing in control the particularly upper-caste bias that was thought
to be a hindrance in appointing qualified candidates from the
scheduled categories. It is for this reason that India unlike the
United States (US) adopted the reservation quota rather than
affirmative action, which is only an initial enabling condition
that is expected to ultimately realise the outcome or actual place-
ment in the service. Put differently, affirmative action, does not
guarantee the outcome. The new quota policy that would be soon
underway may neutralise the element of caste-based bias on the
ground, that both the selector as well as the competitors, by
and large, would share the same dominant social background.
The question then would be whether the selectors will adopt a
more abstract criterion of recruitment, or the more biased crite-
rion such as sub-caste within the upper castes.
Both the beneficiaries of the new quota as well as the govern-
ment conferring these quotas on them often fail to realise that
such provisions are limited only to the government sector. This,
by implication, is also an indirect admission that the members
of these castes find the market and the private sectors to be bar-
ricades of exclusion. This kind of policy seeks to insulate the
private sector from interrogation by these reservationists, who
are forced to excessively rely on government jobs.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JUly 20, 2019 vol lIV no 29
However, in a particular caste context, theoretically speaking,
there is an advantage to the expansive nature of the quota system.
The cognitive reason behind such a policy could be seen to be pro-
ceeding ahead by providing alternatives to the upper-caste, non-
Dalit, non-Other Backward Classes group, particularly in govern-
ment jobs. However, such faculty of reasoning that necessarily
scaffolds the quota system, by its very logic, becomes germane to
both internal and external exclusion. Reservation, if practised
with the spirit and dynamics of competition through opportunity
structures, would lead to internal differentiation, as it has hap-
pened in the case of the SCs/STs to some degree in a limited sphere.
The conservative argument may favour such internal differentia-
tion on the ground that it will motivate a person to dissociate
themselves from caste consciousness and would help them even-
tually become an individual; an individual who could exist purely
on their calibre rather than caste. The quota could provide an ena-
bling condition to step out of caste consciousness to the extent that
it will demolish the social morality based on caste, as one member
would compete with another on a modern basis. However, this
would not happen automatically; the individual is likely to fall
back on caste resources in terms of individual crisis emerging
from the failure to cope with the challenges thrown up by moder-
nity. This could be called the “conceit of modernity” which cannot
be controlled by an individual’s success through reservation.
At another level, the expansive nature of justice is supposed to
eliminate stigma that came to be attached to the very concepts
through overlap with the sociological identity of the beneficiary of
the quota. The upper caste, then, did use the social justice and
Dalit terms quite interchangeably. Thus, before the new quota
system, one could find the anti-reservationist assigning derogatory
meaning to the principle of social justice, which made this term
synonymous with Dalits and vice versa. One is hoping that the
new quota system would prevail on its beneficiaries to adopt
an egalitarian attitude towards the principle of social justice by
restoring the universally normative meaning to this principle.
Social justice as a concept will begin to enjoy universal respect
as a result. We will not see in the future the tragedy that sought
to reduce social justice as an abstract principle to its immediate
sociological entity, such as Dalits and Adivasis. An egalitarian
attitude will bring epistemic relief to the concept and some ease
to the estranged social relations.
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