{"id":8930,"date":"2020-07-10T17:17:54","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T11:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=8930"},"modified":"2020-07-10T17:17:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T11:47:54","slug":"social-injustice-reservation-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/social-injustice-reservation-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Injustice: Reservation system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Relevance: Mains: G.S paper II: Polity: Mechanisms, laws, institutions and Bodies constituted for the protection and betterment of these vulnerable sections & Sociology<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Context:<\/h3>\n

\"Reservation<\/p>\n

\u2022 Reservations have been one of the most effective techniques of positive discrimination in India.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Reservation was never been conceived as a mass employment scheme but as the best way to redress of whole history of oppression.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Gradually, it has created a group of Dalits that validated some criteria of the middle class in terms of education and occupation.<\/p>\n

Data:<\/h3>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\u2022 While quotas were not fulfilled among the \u201cupper classes\u201d of the public sector till the 1980s.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In the Central Administrative Services, SCs (about 16% of India\u2019s population) reached 14% of Class C in 1984, 14.3% of Class B in 2003 and 13.3% of Class A in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In the Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs), their proportion rose from 14.6% in 2004 to 18.1% in 2014.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In parallel, the SCs\u2019 literacy rate jumped from 21.38% in 1981 to 66.1 per cent in 2011.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Similar progress was achieved by the OBCs, a category that started to benefit from reservations many years later, after the Mandal Commission report was implemented by V P Singh.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In 2013, OBCs \u2013 52% of India\u2019s population according to the Mandal report \u2013 represented 8.37% of the Class A in the Central Government Services, 10.01% of Class B and 17.98% of Class C.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Their percentage in the CPSEs jumped from 16.6%in 2004 to 28.5% in 2014.<\/p>\n

\"Reservation<\/p>\n

Privatisation:<\/h3>\n

\u2022 Today, these achievements may be affected by the new programme of privatisation that has been announced by Finance Minister in the framework of structural reforms.<\/p>\n

\u2022 According to the new Public Sector Enterprises Policy (PSEP), a list of strategic sectors will be notified where there will be no more than four public sector enterprises \u2014 the rest would be merged or privatised.<\/p>\n

\u2022 But reservations are already undermined by other developments and policies.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\u2022 While the percentages mentioned above are on the increase, the trend is different if one looks at the number of jobs they represent, as the public sector is shrinking.<\/p>\n

\u2022 First, the number of vacancies has surged, from 5.5 lakh in 2006 to 7.5 lakh in 2014 (no data are available since then) so far as central government employment is concerned. The trend has continued afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u2022 For instance, the number of civil service candidates shortlisted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has dropped by almost 40 percent between 2014 and 2018, from 1,236 to 759.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Second, the total number of employees has dropped so dramatically between 2003 and 2012, from 32.69 lakh to 26.30 lakh in the Central Government Services, that the number of Dalits benefiting from reservations has been reduced by 16 percent from 5.40 lakh to 4.55 lakh.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In the CPSEs, in spite of rising percentages, the number of jobs has decreased from 18.1 lakh in 2011 to 14.86 lakh in 2014.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In contrast, the number of OBCs continued to rise, from 1.38 lakh to 4.55 lakh between 2003 and 2012 in the Central Government Services.<\/p>\n

\u2022 But in the CPSEs, the inverted U curve had started: While the number of OBCs benefiting from reservations had jumped from 14.89 lakh in 2008 to 23.55 lakh in 2012, it has dropped to 23.38 lakh the year after.<\/p>\n

\"Insights<\/p>\n

Lateral entry:<\/h3>\n

\u2022 Reservations have also been undermined by lateral entry in to the bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

\u2022 By the end of his first term, Narendra Modi implemented one of the promises of the 2014 BJP election manifesto \u2014 the creation of lateral entry in the Indian administration.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This reform was intended to \u201cto draw expertise from the industry, academia and society into the services\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In February 2019, 89 applicants were short listed (out of 6,000 candidates from the private sector) for filling 10 posts of Joint Secretary.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This new procedure undermined the reservations system because the quotas did not apply.<\/p>\n

\"Reservation<\/p>\n

Judiciary:<\/h3>\n

\u2022 The judiciary has contributed to the erosion of the reservation system in different ways during the last two years.<\/p>\n

\u2022 In a judgment of the Allahabad High Court, which was later upheld by Supreme Court, the University Grants Commission (UGC) was allowed to issue a notification on March 5, 2018, which sought to shift the unit of provision of reservations from a university as a whole to the departmental level.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Such a shift has reduced the quantum of reserved seats and restricted the entry of lower castes because small departments, where vacancies are few, would be indivisible \u2014 thereby no seats would be reserved.<\/p>\n

\u2022 As a result, as per the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, in the teaching posts advertised by 11 central universities, only 2.5 per cent posts were reserved for SCs, none for STs and 8 per cent for OBCs.<\/p>\n

\u2022 However, the impact of the ordinance and the subsequent Bill passed by the Parliament in March and July 2019, reversing the Supreme Court\u2019s judgment, is yet to be seen.<\/p>\n

Undermining the rights:<\/h3>\n

\u2022 Recently, the Supreme Court made another important decision on February 7.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It ruled that reservation in job promotions was not a fundamental right.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This ruling undermined the effect of an amendment to the Constitution that had been introduced by the Narasimha Rao government in 1995.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Amendment resulted in article 16(4A), a provision that circumvented a facet of the 1992 decision of the Supreme Court to allow reservation for SCs and STs in promotions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Interestingly, this amendment had been further refined under the A B Vajpayee government in 2001 through the 85th amendment.<\/p>\n

\u2022 85th A extended the benefit of reservations in favour of the SCs\/STs in matters of promotion with consequential seniority.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This time, in 2020, the Government of India has decided not to contest the decision of the Supreme Court affecting this amendment.<\/p>\n

\u2022 It remains to be seen whether the government will react to the even more recent questioning of reservations.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Last month, the National Commission for Backward Classes has issued a notice to the health ministry complaining that the post-Mandal 27% quota was not implemented systematically.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Indeed, since 2017, under the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test, OBCs were not provided the 27% quota in the all-India seats which are pooled from state colleges.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This loss represented about 10,000 seats in three years, which have been transferred to the general category.<\/p>\n

Impact:<\/h3>\n

\u2022 SCs and OBCs are not only penalised by the decline of the reservation system. They are also affected by other policies.<\/p>\n

\u2022 For instance, the funds earmarked for Dalit education in the Indian budget were reduced during this government.<\/p>\n

\u2022 While this budget item, within the Special Component Plan (a subcategory of the annual budget), is supposed to be proportional to the demographic weight of the Dalits, 16.6 per cent, it fluctuated between 9 and 6.5 per cent during Modi\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

\u2022 As a result, scholarship funds were cut drastically.<\/p>\n

\u2022 According to S K Thorat, nearly five million Dalit students have been affected by this reduction and delays in payment.<\/p>\n

Conclusion:<\/h3>\n

\u2022 The trajectory of positive discrimination in India suggests that the implementation of this policy is a function of the political clout of Dalits and OBCs.<\/p>\n

\u2022 They gained when parties \u2014 including the BSP, SP and RJD \u2014 were in a position to put pressure on the governments, especially when they were part of ruling coalitions.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Unsurprisingly, the electoral decline of these parties has resulted not only in the comeback of upper castes in the assemblies but in the questioning of policies in favour of the plebeians.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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