Jat reservation: A demand justified or unjustified!!
The makers of our constitution with the utmost faith in their foresight had decided to provide the constitutional provisions for reservation in educational institutions and jobs for the Schedule Caste, Schedule Tribes and other backward classes. It was decided to keep the reservation for ten years and after that the condition was to be reconsidered to take it further or not. It’s been almost seventy years since independence, the caste based reservation is still continued in India. It has become a political issue for various political parties and no single party is led with the courage to end reservation or to analyze it thoroughly. Everyday, we seem to get demands from various sections of society to declare them as reserved categories. The recent addition to the list is the Jat row in Haryana. The Jat andolan under the leadership of Yash Malik has been intensified in whole of the Haryana. A Committee has been formed by the Government to look into the issue and negotiate with the party.
Such demands keep coming, but the question arises as to who actually needs reservation? At first, the idea of providing reservation based on castes seems somewhat unjustified. While we may see one rich individual in some caste who does not need any reservation, there may be some poor individual in the same caste who needs some kind of reservation. And for this, declaring the whole caste as reserved would be unjustified.
A noteworthy fact is that at present 7.5%, 15% and 27% for OBCs (except for the north eastern states where schedule tribe population is very high). It accounts to 50 % of the seats everywhere reserved for these categories. Though from time to time, the demands of certain castes have come forward to classify them in reserved categories. It reduces the general quota to only 50 % of the total seats which is a major cause of discontent among the general category.
Raising the percentage of reservation to another higher level with every single protest in society would reduce the general category to extinction. Another issue being the creamy layer criteria, the idea of creamy layer seems a magical one to solve the problem of reservation but it’s implementation in actual sense is somewhat difficult. Once a reserved category candidate becomes a doctor, engineer, teacher, professor, the upliftment of such a family takes place as they come at par with any normal individual who earns a decent salary and a requisite social status. Now, should their children be treated as reserved category since the family now has a decent standard of living.
Reservation must not be given in the fields where mental acumen cannot be compromised like in case of doctors.
Caste based politics in India is spoiling the actual essence and the aims of constitution makers behind the subject of reservation. People should not be mobilized for protesting and asking for reservation just to collect votes in elections by political parties in the larger interest of the nation. We must think to reconsider the reservation criteria. The government must think about setting up reservation system based on economic criteria. This will help the deserving section of the society to come forward to avail the benefits of the government schemes and the nation will progress as a whole without being misled by the disturbing factors like communalism which are a threat to the integrity of the nation.
