The Weaker Half Of The Other Half

Sharad Yadav may express himself abrasively but he has a point. And it is important for anyone interested in the integrated progress of this nation to listen to what hes saying. If he is using his thunderous rhetoric to cleverly stymie the reservation of seats for women in Parliament and state assemblies, he has laid a trap for himself. All one has to do is to accept the plea for sub-quotas for women from the backward castes.

As for Banatwala, Owaisi and the other Muslim MPs who want sub-quotas for women from the minorities, they are once again paving the narrow path to the political marginalisation of their community. They will only open the way for a separate electorate and make themselves as irrelevant to politics as the minorities are in Pakistan.

 

There is a significant difference between the argument for providing sub-quotas for the scheduled and other backward castes and for the minorities. Positive discrimination for the socially and economically deprived caste groups is essential if the promise of equal opportunity is to be made real. Each minority community, on the other hand, includes a socio-economic spectrum ranging up to the erstwhile Nawabs. These would be the classes among the minorities that would benefit from reservations. After all, todays leading Muslim politicians are from relatively privileged families, whether it is Najma Heptullah or the Begum of Rampur, Salman Khurshid or Sikandar Bakht.

The problem that Sharad Yadav has posed to the backers of positive discrimination for women is to ask whether steps to ensure gender equality can precede or supercede steps, albeit symbolic, to remove the inequalities of class and caste. In the vast stretches of rural India, caste is class and, though some of the scheduled castes have gained from positive discrimination of the past half-century, many other backward classes want a bit of a boost too.

Of course, Yadavs, Gujjars and a few others of the more upwardly mobile castes that are currently listed as other backward castes need to be dropped from the list, so that those that actually face a major disadvantage in the opportunities get the benefits. That may stop Sharad Yadav and many others of the current lot of OBC MPs from pushing their anti-womens bill agenda so aggressively. But the point Yadav has made would become more relevant.

In Europe and many other parts of the world, equality across classes generally preceded gender equality. Civil wars were waged in France and elsewhere two centuries ago to liberate serfs and other classes deprived of land and other means of production. It was only in this century that the rights of women were taken up aggressively. Until the 1980s, there were parts of Europe where women did not have the right to vote.

That is not an argument for India to necessarily go the same way as Europe. It is an argument for India to be simultaneously cautious about the need to end class/caste inequality, which can cause civil war. Some steps have been taken to redress economic imbalances in independent India, but they have been inadequate. Three major rounds of land reforms have been half-baked in legislation and half-hearted in implementation. And as more and more Indians have taken to jobs in government or industry, the upper castes have cornered almost all the jobs, even comparatively low-paid ones. So, while India could and should leapfrog over the European process for achieving gender equality, it must ensure that class/caste equality is pushed in tandem.

It isnt just a question of social priorities, there is actually a danger that the positive discrimination provided for women in general will mainly benefit women from the upper classes and castes. One may call Yadav rude, or crass, or boorish, but he has a point when he talks of short-haired women cornering the reserved seats. Women in repressive societies have generally been forced to conform to male-ordered stereotypes, such as wearing a certain sort of dress or not cutting their hair. Short hair or coiffeurs of various sorts are at one level a manifestation of liberation. While Yadavs contempt for such women may be condemnable, he has a point when he says that positive discrimination should be provided for the women in the fields and kitchens across this country who need to be liberated from the double oppression of economic want and male exploitation. And it is a fact that most women who are already liberated enough and have the money and time to get their hair coiffeured are relatively well-off urban

women, most of whom have no idea about how the other half live or need by way of a liberating or protective legislation.

That is all that more women in Parliament could hope to achieve. As a leveller of centuries of discrimination and exploitation, the reservation of seats in legislatures is no magical panacea. It would surely have even less of an impact on the situation of most women in the country than the elevation of a woman to the post of prime minister for 15 years had. If the move is indeed largely symbolic, it is even more important that the argument for sub-quotas for women from other backward castes be addressed. For ignoring the demand, once it has been raised so vocally, could open a Pandoras box of inter-caste resentment.

Of course, the logical corollary of granting the demand would be to reserve a similar proportion of general seats for the other backward castes. Perhaps it is time that was done but only after the list of other backward castes is drastically pruned. There can be little argument for retaining Yadavs in UP, Banias in Bihar, Vokkaligas in Karnataka and Reddys or Khammas in Andhra among caste groups that need positive discrimination. These and other such castes have gained tremendously from the abolition of zamindari and other land reform acts of the last half-century. They have come to dominate politics in their states. Through education and the social mobility that political power and money have given them, they now have access to lucrative jobs.

In a state like Uttar Pradesh, for instance, the number of those in the list of other backward castes could be halved (the list now includes 52 per cent of the population) if such groups as the Yadavs, Kurmis, Gujjars and Lodh Rajputs were dropped from the list. Since the other backward castes have never suffered untouchability and are relatively better off, socially and economically, than the scheduled castes, the proportion of seats or jobs, or anything else reserved for them could surely be smaller than their proportion in the population. The aim, after all, should be to give those sections that need a boost enough of a boost to help them become competitive. So, if about a quarter of the total population of UP was to remain in the list of other backward castes, perhaps 15 per cent of seats or jobs could be reserved for them. Along with the 22 per cent already reserved for the scheduled castes and tribes, that would still block only about 37 per cent of the total, much less than the 49.5 per cent of government jobs that are now blocked.