Whither Reservations
The basis of justifying reservation in the name of heightened perception to some historical injustice of centuries ago is at least shaky if not totally disingenuous. First of all the caste system didn't exist in the egalitarian society of vedic era and neither during the era of Ashok when Buddhism was the dominant and state sponsored religion. The decline and eventual assimilation of Buddhism and the advent of the so called golden age of Hindu civilization during the period around 500 AD saw the first definitive mention of caste in the scriptures. Even then the extent of the Gupta kingdom was strictly limited to West-central and North India. The political and economic power of the upper caste namely Brahmins and Kshatriyas saw a decline by 900 AD along with political power, Harshvardhan being the last Hindu king of any pan-Indian influence. Then follows the rule of the Afghans and Mughals from 1100 AD to 1700 AD in the North and Central India. In between there were the Shakas, Huns and the powerful Kanishka kingdom (a Buddhist state) jostling for political power, none of which had any good will towards the hindu elite castes they disposed from power. In the southern India the Hindu kingdoms of influence were the Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas during the time of Guptas were followed by the Vijaynagar and Bahamani (Muslim) kingdoms in the 1200 AD. The point of argument being at no point in history the Hindu kingdoms were dominant political powers barring the period from 300-800AD. So in no way was the Hindu elite castes were free to impose their dictat on the rest of the populace by exclusive access to economic or political power centres.
From the Vedic times artisan guilds were never rigidly hereditary, much less subjected to discrimination along those lines. Numerous folklores of social mobility (viz. Parashuram, Valmiki) among the castes based on beliefs and work rather than birth are pointers to the flexible social order. Further there are enough instances of Shudras, Vasishyas and to some extent Brahmins wielding political power at the expese of the Kshatriyas, case in point being the Nanda dynasty (shudras) before the Maurya empire. The key to the power of Brahmins was the emergence of the Temples in the 200 - 1100 AD period as a centre of learning, culture and to certain extent of wealth and power wasbased on the land grants by the Hindu kings. There is no reason to believe that the Afghans, Mughals and British persisted with such generous grants which foster alternate power centres at variance with their religious ideologies. Thus since the decline of state sponsor from 1100 AD the econo-religious significance of the temples and the priestly clans have continuously declined making them economically impoverished than the the land wielding Kshatriyas and trading Vaishyas. Moreover, the supposed elitist discrimination of Brahmins in denying education by restriction of Vedas and Sanskrit was irrelevant from 1100 AD onwards when Parsi, Urdu, Arabic and then English became the official language of bureaucracy and commerce. The warrior classes were restricted to pockets of fiefdom with no pan Indian influence of any note. The official religion of the rulers Buddhism from (300BC to 300 AD), Islam (1100 AD to 1700 AD) or Christianity (1700-1947) was never in favour of perpetuating the dominance of so called Hindu elite castes. Moreover internal religious reforms by the emergence of the Advaita tradition of AdiShankaracharya, the Bhakti movement during the 1000 AD were all aimed at making the religion more egalitarian than hierachical.
By above argument I am no way denying the reality of caste based discrimination but just providing a better historical perspective to the oft repeated argument of reservation apologists about millennia of discrimination and suppression at the hands of the upper castes. The perniciousness of caste is rooted in the feudal system of Zamindaris imposed by the British in their policy of divide and rule. The destruction of rural economy and emergence of subsistence and cash agriculture as the only means of employment during the British Raj made the consolidation of land in the hand of few even more economically disastrous. The traditional artisan guilds started breaking down with the onslaught of free market profiteering by British industries reducing India from a 30% global GDP share to around 1% in a century at which level we are still languishing till today. The drastic reduction in the economy hit the artisans and traders the hardest who happen to be also land less to a greater extent than the erstwhile ruling class of Kshatriyas who became the ubiquitous evil Thakurs of the present Bollywood lore.
The realisation that the root of the social rigidity has a strong economic basis would be the first step towards a lasting solution to the caste conundrum. Even today the brazenness of the way the Western media tries to project the 'historical caste divide of India' and the gullibility of the Indian politicians to lap it up as an avowed truth is sickening to say the least. Why certain sections of the society prospered under certain time periods is difficult to answer and it is stupid to reduce to it to simple caste discriminations. Some pointers in these regard from the history. Why the erstwhile powerful Magadh is the most backward Bihar today?, why the Takshila in the erst while Gandhar featuring the first global university as far back as 200 BC is home to the present day disaster that is Afghanisthan, why are the ancient Chinese, Indian, Egyptian and Mespotamian civilisations are home to world's most impoverished and dominated over by barbaric Anglo-Saxons of yesteryear. Why is that Europeans who didn't have any strong scientific tradition as late as 1500 AD have overtaken Arabs, Indians and Chinese in these very fields so significantly in a matter of centuries? The extent of their rise would be perhaps more clear if we recollect that the crusading armies of Europe in 1100 - 1500 AD learnt the craft of Metallurgy, Personal Hygiene, Medicine, Algebra, War Tactics all from Arabs who in turn had assimilated and developed these from their interactions with civilisations further east. Nobody questions how a small nation as England came to occupy half the inhabited world in a span of two centuries vanquishing nations such as China and India with maritime and martial traditions dating back thousands of years. An honest question to ask would be the basis of such startling rise and fall of societies. In a competitive world such spectacular rises come at the expense of someone or other, but to call these as discrimination and whine about it in endless self pity is no harbinger of growth much less historical redress. Are we not more justified in seeking billions of pounds in reparations and concessions from the British who ravaged our country more recently than squabbling among ourselves for petty quotas for inequities in the 300-100AD period? But of course such suggestions would make us a laughing stock in the world!
The rise and fall of groups, societies, nations has got to do with the choices they make, the technological progress they foster and the enterprising they are in furthering the common good. The reason that certain sections of the society in India are perceived to be better off involves lot of complex socio-economic factors other than caste. In fact the discrimination and asymmetry of resources available is far more critical in the urban-rural divide than the upper caste -lower caste divide. The level of disparity between people from rural areas with no access to hospitals, schools, transportations and communication infrastructure and urban areas is far more discriminatory than among the upper and lower castes in the metropolis and urban centres. Much of this is again rooted in the collapse of the rural economy and the lack of rejuvenation since the independence. The key to greater social equity would be rapid economic growth with an inclusive agenda away from the monetarist and GDP percentage growth driven goals.
The very fact that dictat driven policies with no genuine feedback lead to disasters is evident in the economic arena. Self evident case being the implosion of the Soviet Union founded on the lofty ideals of egalitarian socialism degenerated the same way as the Czars because mere supplanting one flawed system by another no matter how noble the basis would eventually unravel itself. In pursuit of socialist ideals the Soviet leadership supplanted a monarchic dictatorship by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hence overnight by fiat the suppressed became the rulers and eventually collapsed the same way. Are we not doing the same folly by replacing the imagined or real injustice of a hereditary caste system by a similarly rigid hereditary quota system in perpetuity. If the goal is to replace the upper caste elites by a crop of lower caste elites then the quota system is a highly efficient way of achieving that and enough indications are already available about its effectiveness. But hoping that reverse discrimination is supposed to reduce social inequity is akin to living in a utopia of self deceit.
Of course there are social reasons and dynamics which makes it enjoy the near political consensus which eludes in far important problems. The most important being the emergence of a powerful and political back ward caste. Starting from the Mulayams, Mayadevis in the the north to Karunanidhis and Jayalalithas in the South these so called groups are the dominant groups wielding disproportionate political power thanks to the flaws in the first past the post model of democracy. The flaw in the current model lies in the blatant copying of the European models and force fitting it to work in the Indian case. European nation states like France, Britain, Germany are highly homogeneous societies where vested interests and political groups find it hard to hijack the mandate. But with the collapse of the Congress as a party representing the broadest social combination the collapse of the Westminster model in India is all evident. Parties with as little as 20% of votes polled could get their candidates elected, hence the need to cultivate strong and politically active groups. This is the genesis of the Mandalisation since the 1990s in the Indian polity and the basis of political power of the OBCs, SCs and STs. The near political consensus is a reflection of the political power of the groups whom no party could afford to alienate. The end result being democracy degenerating to the rule of the mobs. The vested interests being the political parties themselves, have no incentive to reform the current system to include a second run off between the top 2 candidates or have a representational system with parties winning a certain seats based on their national vote percentage.
The lasting solution to the above problem would of course be to constitute a thorough political reform making the democratic system more representational. The trend of over legislation and under implementation making the Indian constitution the longest and most amended (94 amendments in 55 year history compared to 27 or so amendments in 230 year history of US) needs to be replaced by more voluntary and rewards driven implementation of social and economic reforms. A stronger commitment to rural growth and energising the manufacturing sector which could off set the loss of employment from the decline in agriculture. Merely relying on IT and ITES service industry as a harbinger of economic growth would make the economy significantly top heavy for a developing country. Every country progresses through the evolution from a agricultural to manufacturing to service society. The attempts to leapfrog from a rudimentary agrarian society to a developed service based society as practical as building castles in the air. The strong foundation of a manufacturing base is essential to employ millions of displaced land less labourers who can simply not all become high tech professionals. This is essential to heal the urban-rural as well as the caste divide. The myopia of the business and political class is evident in the gloating over a cyclical growth pattern in services as the panacea for all round economic growth and super power status. The irony of the matter is the two people (Dr Manmohan Singh and Mr Chidambaram) responsible for such reforms in the economic arena are culprit of complicity in the shackling of the social arena. The essential dichotomy in their policy prescription for the economic sector in reducing govt. dictat, removing quota and permit driven export and production and the current policy of increasing quotas and govt. Interventions in the education sector is highly deplorable. What is needed is a strong stewardship of the economic sector in fostering growth in the moribund rural economy which would do much more to reduce discriminations caste based or otherwise than distraction and regressive policies of placatory gestures to vote banks. These people may be tied down by compulsions of electoral politics and cynical manipulation by irrelevant politicians in their own party, but to call these as excuses for shackling regressive legislation which no future govt. Could correct is sure sign of lack of political imagination and management both from Mr. Prime Minister and the Congress leadership which has plunged the country into needless divisive chaos.
From the Vedic times artisan guilds were never rigidly hereditary, much less subjected to discrimination along those lines. Numerous folklores of social mobility (viz. Parashuram, Valmiki) among the castes based on beliefs and work rather than birth are pointers to the flexible social order. Further there are enough instances of Shudras, Vasishyas and to some extent Brahmins wielding political power at the expese of the Kshatriyas, case in point being the Nanda dynasty (shudras) before the Maurya empire. The key to the power of Brahmins was the emergence of the Temples in the 200 - 1100 AD period as a centre of learning, culture and to certain extent of wealth and power wasbased on the land grants by the Hindu kings. There is no reason to believe that the Afghans, Mughals and British persisted with such generous grants which foster alternate power centres at variance with their religious ideologies. Thus since the decline of state sponsor from 1100 AD the econo-religious significance of the temples and the priestly clans have continuously declined making them economically impoverished than the the land wielding Kshatriyas and trading Vaishyas. Moreover, the supposed elitist discrimination of Brahmins in denying education by restriction of Vedas and Sanskrit was irrelevant from 1100 AD onwards when Parsi, Urdu, Arabic and then English became the official language of bureaucracy and commerce. The warrior classes were restricted to pockets of fiefdom with no pan Indian influence of any note. The official religion of the rulers Buddhism from (300BC to 300 AD), Islam (1100 AD to 1700 AD) or Christianity (1700-1947) was never in favour of perpetuating the dominance of so called Hindu elite castes. Moreover internal religious reforms by the emergence of the Advaita tradition of AdiShankaracharya, the Bhakti movement during the 1000 AD were all aimed at making the religion more egalitarian than hierachical.
By above argument I am no way denying the reality of caste based discrimination but just providing a better historical perspective to the oft repeated argument of reservation apologists about millennia of discrimination and suppression at the hands of the upper castes. The perniciousness of caste is rooted in the feudal system of Zamindaris imposed by the British in their policy of divide and rule. The destruction of rural economy and emergence of subsistence and cash agriculture as the only means of employment during the British Raj made the consolidation of land in the hand of few even more economically disastrous. The traditional artisan guilds started breaking down with the onslaught of free market profiteering by British industries reducing India from a 30% global GDP share to around 1% in a century at which level we are still languishing till today. The drastic reduction in the economy hit the artisans and traders the hardest who happen to be also land less to a greater extent than the erstwhile ruling class of Kshatriyas who became the ubiquitous evil Thakurs of the present Bollywood lore.
The realisation that the root of the social rigidity has a strong economic basis would be the first step towards a lasting solution to the caste conundrum. Even today the brazenness of the way the Western media tries to project the 'historical caste divide of India' and the gullibility of the Indian politicians to lap it up as an avowed truth is sickening to say the least. Why certain sections of the society prospered under certain time periods is difficult to answer and it is stupid to reduce to it to simple caste discriminations. Some pointers in these regard from the history. Why the erstwhile powerful Magadh is the most backward Bihar today?, why the Takshila in the erst while Gandhar featuring the first global university as far back as 200 BC is home to the present day disaster that is Afghanisthan, why are the ancient Chinese, Indian, Egyptian and Mespotamian civilisations are home to world's most impoverished and dominated over by barbaric Anglo-Saxons of yesteryear. Why is that Europeans who didn't have any strong scientific tradition as late as 1500 AD have overtaken Arabs, Indians and Chinese in these very fields so significantly in a matter of centuries? The extent of their rise would be perhaps more clear if we recollect that the crusading armies of Europe in 1100 - 1500 AD learnt the craft of Metallurgy, Personal Hygiene, Medicine, Algebra, War Tactics all from Arabs who in turn had assimilated and developed these from their interactions with civilisations further east. Nobody questions how a small nation as England came to occupy half the inhabited world in a span of two centuries vanquishing nations such as China and India with maritime and martial traditions dating back thousands of years. An honest question to ask would be the basis of such startling rise and fall of societies. In a competitive world such spectacular rises come at the expense of someone or other, but to call these as discrimination and whine about it in endless self pity is no harbinger of growth much less historical redress. Are we not more justified in seeking billions of pounds in reparations and concessions from the British who ravaged our country more recently than squabbling among ourselves for petty quotas for inequities in the 300-100AD period? But of course such suggestions would make us a laughing stock in the world!
The rise and fall of groups, societies, nations has got to do with the choices they make, the technological progress they foster and the enterprising they are in furthering the common good. The reason that certain sections of the society in India are perceived to be better off involves lot of complex socio-economic factors other than caste. In fact the discrimination and asymmetry of resources available is far more critical in the urban-rural divide than the upper caste -lower caste divide. The level of disparity between people from rural areas with no access to hospitals, schools, transportations and communication infrastructure and urban areas is far more discriminatory than among the upper and lower castes in the metropolis and urban centres. Much of this is again rooted in the collapse of the rural economy and the lack of rejuvenation since the independence. The key to greater social equity would be rapid economic growth with an inclusive agenda away from the monetarist and GDP percentage growth driven goals.
The very fact that dictat driven policies with no genuine feedback lead to disasters is evident in the economic arena. Self evident case being the implosion of the Soviet Union founded on the lofty ideals of egalitarian socialism degenerated the same way as the Czars because mere supplanting one flawed system by another no matter how noble the basis would eventually unravel itself. In pursuit of socialist ideals the Soviet leadership supplanted a monarchic dictatorship by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hence overnight by fiat the suppressed became the rulers and eventually collapsed the same way. Are we not doing the same folly by replacing the imagined or real injustice of a hereditary caste system by a similarly rigid hereditary quota system in perpetuity. If the goal is to replace the upper caste elites by a crop of lower caste elites then the quota system is a highly efficient way of achieving that and enough indications are already available about its effectiveness. But hoping that reverse discrimination is supposed to reduce social inequity is akin to living in a utopia of self deceit.
Of course there are social reasons and dynamics which makes it enjoy the near political consensus which eludes in far important problems. The most important being the emergence of a powerful and political back ward caste. Starting from the Mulayams, Mayadevis in the the north to Karunanidhis and Jayalalithas in the South these so called groups are the dominant groups wielding disproportionate political power thanks to the flaws in the first past the post model of democracy. The flaw in the current model lies in the blatant copying of the European models and force fitting it to work in the Indian case. European nation states like France, Britain, Germany are highly homogeneous societies where vested interests and political groups find it hard to hijack the mandate. But with the collapse of the Congress as a party representing the broadest social combination the collapse of the Westminster model in India is all evident. Parties with as little as 20% of votes polled could get their candidates elected, hence the need to cultivate strong and politically active groups. This is the genesis of the Mandalisation since the 1990s in the Indian polity and the basis of political power of the OBCs, SCs and STs. The near political consensus is a reflection of the political power of the groups whom no party could afford to alienate. The end result being democracy degenerating to the rule of the mobs. The vested interests being the political parties themselves, have no incentive to reform the current system to include a second run off between the top 2 candidates or have a representational system with parties winning a certain seats based on their national vote percentage.
The lasting solution to the above problem would of course be to constitute a thorough political reform making the democratic system more representational. The trend of over legislation and under implementation making the Indian constitution the longest and most amended (94 amendments in 55 year history compared to 27 or so amendments in 230 year history of US) needs to be replaced by more voluntary and rewards driven implementation of social and economic reforms. A stronger commitment to rural growth and energising the manufacturing sector which could off set the loss of employment from the decline in agriculture. Merely relying on IT and ITES service industry as a harbinger of economic growth would make the economy significantly top heavy for a developing country. Every country progresses through the evolution from a agricultural to manufacturing to service society. The attempts to leapfrog from a rudimentary agrarian society to a developed service based society as practical as building castles in the air. The strong foundation of a manufacturing base is essential to employ millions of displaced land less labourers who can simply not all become high tech professionals. This is essential to heal the urban-rural as well as the caste divide. The myopia of the business and political class is evident in the gloating over a cyclical growth pattern in services as the panacea for all round economic growth and super power status. The irony of the matter is the two people (Dr Manmohan Singh and Mr Chidambaram) responsible for such reforms in the economic arena are culprit of complicity in the shackling of the social arena. The essential dichotomy in their policy prescription for the economic sector in reducing govt. dictat, removing quota and permit driven export and production and the current policy of increasing quotas and govt. Interventions in the education sector is highly deplorable. What is needed is a strong stewardship of the economic sector in fostering growth in the moribund rural economy which would do much more to reduce discriminations caste based or otherwise than distraction and regressive policies of placatory gestures to vote banks. These people may be tied down by compulsions of electoral politics and cynical manipulation by irrelevant politicians in their own party, but to call these as excuses for shackling regressive legislation which no future govt. Could correct is sure sign of lack of political imagination and management both from Mr. Prime Minister and the Congress leadership which has plunged the country into needless divisive chaos.
posted by abecedarian @ 9:00 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Thanks for the comment but that would be akin to propagting Apartheid and Segregation which are abhorrent principles in themselves. If we are to progress as a nation we need to take the hard choices of building ground up infrastructure in education and healthcare which is sorely lacking.
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