The Hindu Business Line : Limits of reservations

The West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's view that the country has to look beyond reservations to broader comprehensive socio-economic reforms has set an altogether different tone to the ongoing, and at times even divisive, debate on the horizontal and vertical expansion of the scope of quotas in jobs and for seats at centres of higher education.

For too long the political discourse has so centred on a somewhat dogmatic, puritanical even, view of reservation that it is as though the nation has forgotten a basic fact that quotas are the means to an end: Society's gesture to address the deprivation that vast sections of the population suffer from as a result of a lack of educational and employment opportunities. This is not altogether surprising. Political parties have all along operated on the premise that any comment that challenges the current contours of the debate on `reservation' could potentially rule them out of contention for popular support. In the best traditions of rational behaviour they have refrained from emphasising inclusiveness through all-round economic growth, acutely alive to the fact that any promise on that count would raise public expectations that cannot be met.

In contrast, promising to expand the scope of reservations in all manner possible ensures that the focus of performance remains on what is relatively easier to achieve. Yet it is easy to be cynical of such calculations of political parties. The present political structure did not create this society's diverse social identities. It is a legacy of a distant past. If people are not willing to rise above narrow sectarian identities, one cannot blame the political parties for using that in their electoral calculations so as to stay relevant.

Of course, Mr Bhattacharjee's comment does not quite amount to a criticism of the national policy on reservation of jobs in the organised sector or seats in centres of higher education. It is nevertheless in the nature of holding a mirror to the folly of the nation's political ways. In a situation where the organised sector accounts for less than 10 per cent of total employment and where growth in such opportunities fall well short of population growth, merely enhancing the horizontal and vertical scope of reservation can only address the deprivation at the fringe. In a manner of speaking, the tail has over the years been wagging the dog. In the event, Mr Bhattacharjee's timely reminder would, one hopes, steer the focus back to what it should have been all along.