Going beyond reservation

Financial inclusion can be more effective

It is tempting to dismiss the West Bengal government’s decision last week to enforce 10 per cent reservation of jobs for Muslims in the state as vote-bank politics. The Left Front-ruled state has to go for elections next year and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which leads the Front, is facing its biggest electoral challenge ever, after staying in power for well over three decades. Add to this the fact that Muslims account for about one-fourth of West Bengal’s total population and it becomes clear why rival political parties have labelled the decision on job reservation as a move to placate a large and influential chunk of the electorate before the elections.

 

But to see this only as a ploy to garner votes from a religious minority will be oversimplification. Nor is West Bengal the only state that has tried to extend job reservation to socially and economically backward sections among Muslims. In 2007, Andhra Pradesh provided 4 per cent reservation to 15 backward groups belonging to the Muslim community, a move that a Constitution bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court struck down in its order last week. The state government has expectedly decided to move the Supreme Court against the high court order on its move, influenced as it is presumably by other states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which too have enforced job reservation for Muslims in the last few years. In particular, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal have been encouraged by the Ranganath Mishra Commission’s recommendation that backward people among religious minorities also should qualify for reservation, even though the legal tenability of religion-based reservations continues to be in doubt. The West Bengal government has argued that by extending 10 per cent reservation to socially and economically backward Muslims, its overall reservation for other backward castes will go up to only 17 per cent, well below the Supreme Court-mandated quota for this category. It has even introduced the creamy-layer formula according to which Muslims who earn above a certain level of income are to be excluded from the reservation policy.

It would, however, be imprudent for the states to view reservation for religious minorities only as a policy instrument to earn electoral dividends. While it is not easy to tackle this tendency given the preponderance of populist policies pursued mindlessly by almost every political party, there are larger goals of social inclusion that states, along with the Centre, must pursue. Undoubtedly, social and academic backwardness of Muslims has come in the way of their social and economic inclusion. Reservation of jobs and seats in academic institutions for Muslims, therefore, should yield some benefits and care should be taken to ensure that the well-established norms of excluding the creamy layer are followed. The goals of affirmative action, however, are realisable with less difficulty if the states go beyond reservation of jobs and seats in educational institutions for religious minorities. Large numbers of economically and socially backward Muslims, for instance, may benefit as much from financial inclusion as from reservation. Easier access to bank loans can bring about inclusion more effectively than by merely reserving jobs. The way forward is a comprehensive approach to the need for bringing religious minorities into the mainstream where they feel their legitimate needs are being met, and not just through job reservation that might serve only a limited purpose and, worse, may be construed only as a vote-winning strategy.