Independence from gender caste and ethnic biases
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India just celebrated its 74th independence day.
The debate on the reservation or quota system in India is never-ending. The Supreme Court of India recently said that “reservation is not a fundamental right”.
India’s so-called upper castes have forever been against reservation because it not only affects their claim to government jobs but also hurts their innate caste-based superiority. Therefore, they want the reservation system to be reviewed. Although, they invoke arguments such as reservation on economic grounds and as justice to the poor, etc., but their larger motive is to see the end of this constitutional practice in India.
But over the past few years, the demand for a review of the reservation system has also started coming from some castes of the reserved category as well, whose complaint is that they are not getting the benefits of quota. So, theoretically, these castes are the beneficiary of the reservation system, by virtue of their inclusion in the list of OBCs and SCs, but practically they aren’t. These are the deprived castes — extreme/most backward castes (E/MBCs) under the OBCs and Mahadalit under the SCs. The members of these castes support the continuation of the caste-based reservation but want some improvement in it too.
There are four measures that have been suggested to improve the existing reservation system: (1) influential castes should be removed from the reserved list, (2) reserved lists should be restructured, (3) the reserved groups should be divided, and (4) creamy layer principle should be applied.
M.K. Gandhi said it in his ‘Talisman’: “Whenever you are in doubt… apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her].”
Long before that, thinker John Ruskin had written about the upliftment of the last person in the society in his book of essays Unto This Last, which inspired Gandhi’s ‘Sarvodaya through Antyodaya’ (inclusive development) as well as Deendayal Upadhyaya’s ‘Integral Humanism’. B.R. Ambedkar had spoken of backward caste members who benefit from the reservation system ‘paying back to the society’, which also needs to be seen as advocacy for uplifting the weakest.