Reservations about quotas

They can be self-defeating in the new economic paradigm

The Supreme Court decision to review its landmark 1992 judgment on job quotas, known as the Indra Sawhney case, could be a key opportunity to revisit the assumptions on which reservations are based. This review is to be part of a challenge to a Maharashtra law providing quotas for the Marathas in jobs and admissions to educational institutions. The quotas will breach the 50 per cent ceiling originally set by the Supreme Court. This is an important review because it will determine whether the states have the powers to determine socially and economically backward castes — the Constitution vests the powers to notify backward classes in the president — for job reservations and whether the 50 per cent quota can be breached.

The Indra Sawhney judgment had, among other things, not only reiterated the 50 per cent quota but also stipulated that for a group to qualify for reservations, it had to be “socially and economically backward”. In other words, neither caste, nor economic backwardness alone could determine reservations. The Constitution Bench that is reviewing the Maharashtra law has implications for other such legislation in Tamil Nadu and Haryana, which have sought to get around these restrictions for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Backward Classes in the case of the former and for the Jats in the case of the latter. Both cases are sub-judice.

Although the Supreme Court will re-examine the constitutionality of the issue, it may be pertinent for the Bench to examine the job quotas against the wider structural changes occurring in the Indian economy. There is no doubt that some form of affirmative action is necessary in a country where social discrimination remains rife. Nor can it be denied that the quota system in jobs and education has helped. When he became president of India, Ram Nath Kovind, from the Koli Scheduled Caste community, alluded to the opportunities embedded in the system that allowed him to pursue a flourishing career in law. The ten-fold increase in the proportion of the Dalits in the upper levels of the civil services between the sixties and the mid-noughties is also testimony to the success of the policy.

But questions urgently need to be asked now on whether raising quotas is the only meaningful way of achieving social equity in the third decade of the 21st century. First, for two decades, it has been the private sector rather than the government sector that has taken the lead in creating jobs, which means higher reservation quotas will be competing for a shrinking share of the jobs pie. And in an economy in which the stated plan is to expand the role of the private sector via a massive strategic disinvestment programme, higher quotas in government jobs are unlikely to hold much meaning beyond vote bank politics (of the kind that prompted the unsuccessful demand in Gujarat for reservations for the Patidars). Besides, employment elasticity in manufacturing, already low in India, is likely to shrink further as large private sector manufacturers increasingly opt for robotics and information technology. Ultimately, indiscriminately increasing job quotas based on caste may address the issue of social equity but given the realities of India today, they will undermine trust in the system and defeat the purpose for which the policy existed in the first place.