Reservations

The Gujjar agitation for reservations comes up again, what will Gehlot do..

The politics of reservation has changed the political dynamics of India, and caused huge turmoil. The riches that reservation promises caused even groups that are not really deprived to want these benefits, especially when they can see other groups benefiting. And woe to the politician who does not agree to such demands. So, even castes which do not fall in the backward category will fight for getting such benefits. The situation in Rajasthan is one good example of this. The Meena caste was granted reservation in jobs, and as a result, there are a large number of empowered Meenas in various Government jobs, including the powerful posts such as police, the local bureaucracy. And once they are given such benefits, no group would ever agree to the removal of such benefits even when they really do not need such benefits anymore; and of course, no politician would ever suggest such a course of action.
So it is happening in the case of Rajasthan, where the Gujjar community has seen the benefits that the Meena community has got, and got into the act of demanding these benefits. However, what happens is that the Supreme Court has set a 50% limit on the amount of reservation, and even over-turned the attempts of the politicians to move these benefits into a non-judicial review process through the use of the Ninth Schedule (the Supreme Court declared that there is nothing that is beyond the power of judicial review, and that the 9th schedule is no longer valid). And in Rajasthan, the current amount of reservation was already 49%. So, the political class was unable to do anything much, and could only hope that by delaying the process, and by discussions and other such time delaying stuff, the agitation could lose steam, and even better, the movement can be divided.
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Caste in census: Quick to act, and then slowly starting to realize the full impact of this on their own political future

Caste politics have been taking a major move up in the last few years, with more movements towards caste based reservations (such as adding caste based reservations in educational colleges and the push to add caste based reservations in private colleges and in private companies). As a part of this, it is also politically difficult for any current party to make any kind of opposition to caste based demands or such politics. After all, for parties such as the Congress and the BJP, it is very hard for them to accept caste based politics since they look at getting votes across castes and groups (which is slightly different from the caste based groups which are based on getting acceptance from certain caste groups and increasing the caste based politics); the Congress and BJP cannot easily fight such battles, all the more so since they are national parties and any projection with caste based groups in one state can be taken negatively in another state.
The Supreme Court has set a cap on the total amount of reservations, with a total of 50% reservations allowed. This is a limit that caste based parties are not very happy about, with the their projection being that the total number of downtrodden would be much more than 50% of India’s population. However, since the last caste based census was in the census of 1931, there are no accurate figures, and over the years, the Governments have moved away from doing caste based census since that seems like a very regressive measure, given that the aim of the Government is to move away from caste based development, and the development of a casteless society.
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The Women’s reservation Bill and the various problems that it faces

The Women’s Reservation Bill, a long pending legislation, was finally brought into Parliament for voting, and it produced the anticipated furore. The Government (and the previous BJP Government) had long dithered over getting in the bill to vote, worried about the impact of the Bill on their supporting parties. For example, even though the Government has a majority in the Lok Sabha and in the Rajya Sabha, it is a wafer thin majority and has a comfort level in terms of support from the BSP, the RJD and the SP. All these parties are primarily the parties of the oppressed classes and remain very worried that a Bill which ensures the reservation of seats for women will be primarily cornered by women from the classes that are not part of their supporting bases and which will cut into their possible seats. Hence, they produce a vociferous reaction to the Bill and couch it in terms of asking for a reservation for OBC’s and Muslims in the Bill, and hope that such a demand will make the Bill infeasible. In the past, such protests (along with an implicit push back by male MP’s in the main parties – the Congress and the BJP) have worked to derail attempts to pass the legislation.
It is only in this session that the Congress, inspired (and pushed) by Sonia Gandhi (along with all the political calculations required for the passing of such a controversial bill) has made a push to get the bill passed, and after a initial push in the Rajya Sabha on World Women’s Day (where the expected protests did materialize and derailed the Government’s attempts), the Government pushed to get the Bill passed on the next day; for this purpose and for suppressing the protests, the Government even used Marshals to push out some of the unruly MP’s.

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