Wednesday, March 25, 2015

New BC commission needed to fix loopholes

(Published in Times of India, 24 Mar 2015)


New BC commission needed to fix loopholes

By Badri Seshadri

CHENNAI: The judgment by the Supreme Court of India on inclusion of jats in the Central OBC list (Ram Singh & Ors vs Union of India) is a landmark one.

Seen along with Indra Sawhney case judgment, the court has called for a complete overhaul of the reservation system in the country. The most important change will have to happen in Tamil Nadu, the forerunner of the social justice movement in India.

Tamil Nadu is the only state which is in perpetual violation of the Indra Sawhney judgment given by a nine-judge bench.

The judgment says that reservation should be capped at 50% and the creamy layer of any caste group should be excluded from reservation. But Tamil Nadu has 69% reservation and no creamy layer exclusion.

Every year, the state government is challenged in court and every year the government is forced to create additional seats to compensate all those who lose out because of its flawed policies.

The Ram Singh judgment establishes that governments cannot act in an arbitrary manner and should go by data. It restricts governments from rejecting sound advice given to them by commissions set up by them unless there are strong reasons for the same.

Tamil Nadu formed the first Backward Classes Commission under Sattanathan in 1970, which suggested 17% reservation for BCs and 16% for MBCs along with criteria for the removal of creamy layer. The DMK government headed by Karunanidhi clubbed BC and MBC together and offered 31% in total and did away with creamy layer.

A subsequent AIADMK government headed by M G Ramachandran introduced the creamy layer but, after an election defeat in 1980, removed the creamy layer and randomly increased BC reservation to 50%.

In 1982, the second Backward Classes Commission under Ambasankar recommended that reservation for BCs be brought down to 32%, 17 communities moved from FC to BC and 34 communities moved from BC to FC.

The report was not tabled in the assembly and the suggestions were not implemented. Instead of removing any community from the BC list, more and more communities were added.

It took a serious agitation from Ramadoss's Vanniar Sangam to split the 50% BC reservation into 30% for BC and 20% for MBC with vanniars included.

Many other caste groups that do not have the numbers or the political might of vanniars are therefore at a disadvantage. Now, with the Ram Singh judgment, a time has come to challenge the state government's reservation policy. From this judgment, we can glean some directions. First is the need for accurate and current statistics on social, educational and economic backwardness. Second is the need for regular updating of the BC, MBC list with removals and inclusions, as determined by thorough studies that can stand critical scrutiny. Third is, considering not just caste but other social groupings such as, for example, transgenders for the definition of backward classes. I can think of women as a non-caste group that deserves support.

Fourth, an earlier wrong inclusion of a group cannot be used to justify inclusion of a new group on the same principles. This would only mean that wrongly included groups will have to be removed at the earliest.

We need a new Backward Classes Commission in Tamil Nadu to determine which castes and groups should be considered for inclusion or removal from BC and MBC lists. This commission will also have to decide the total quantum of reservation for BC and MBC so as to be in alignment with the Indra Sawhney judgement. This may mean that scheduled caste quota may also have to come down proportionately.

Many castes which are today included under BC may have to be moved to FC and some castes in MBC may have to move to BC. At least some castes in BC may have to move to MBC. This will bring much needed relief to many castes currently squeezed out by dominant castes within their groups.

If the government will not initiate this move, one may have to go knocking on the doors of the Supreme Court soon.

(A co-founder of cricinfo.com, the author is managing director of New Horizon Media Private Limited)

3 comments:

  1. A very sane sober and fair view. But given the circumstances of Tamil Nadu where it who says is more important than what is said, you should only be gear up to face more abuses..

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  2. Badri, can you write an article on why Tamil Brahmins Have left the Congress, inspite of them being one of the early co-founders of it and once ardent followers.
    Thank you and Regards.

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  3. You had forgot to write about reservation created for Christians and Muslims of backward caste denominations to the extent of 3.5 percent each in existing 30% BC quota in 2007.

    This was done purely on vote bank politics without going through socio-economic statistics of Muslims and Christians.

    ReplyDelete