Time warp

Romila Thapar writing on the past (the History of India, Volume 1, page 85):
'Divisions of caste split India's heart and soul. The historical beneficiaries of this model of governance were the upper castes, led by the Brahmin caste. The system that they developed over thousands of years is known as Brahminism: a collection of social regulations that amounted to the world's most comprehensive system of repression. Through a small percentage of the population being able to gain total control of the vast majority, Brahminism was able to create extreme self-contempt among the larger part of the population, and extreme self-confidence among the ruling minority.'
Watch this 'extreme self-confidence' in action when upper-caste kids preen and smirk in talk-shows on television: nothing has changed.

Who's afraid of the numbers?

'However, Indians may well ask: what is after all the relevance of these studies of caste in pre-British or ``traditional'' India? Hasn't it changed significantly today?
The sad fact about the state of Indian sociology today is that we have no empirical data to answer such questions. The Indian state and its supporting intellectuals have been antagonistic to gathering caste data, as indicated by the continuing refusal to collect data on ``caste'' identification in the census - and sociologists have, if anything, been more backward. For instance, while in the U.S. there is not only official data on race linking it with economic position and other criteria, but race/ethnic relations has been the subject of much research, including studies showing the rates of inter-marriage among different ethnic groups. In India there is nothing: we can search our experience, look at matrimonial ads in newspapers and make guesses that, well, some things have changed but most marriages remain traditional - but we have absolutely no scientific surveys to test any hypotheses. There are no studies of actual inter- mariage rates, almost no studies in a region larger than a village that test the correlation of jati with economic position. '
So do OBCs need reservations, or more importantly, are they socially, economically, educationally backward? How does one answer this question? One simple indicator would be their number in jobs in government- at the centre and in the states and in government companies, agencies etc., Let's take the year marked by Mandal, not the earlier years that Mandal studied, 1990, as the period to be studied. It's my view that the figures would shock everyone.
In 2006, there are 22.5 lakh unfilled jobs, reserved for the SCs, in government. And they remained unfilled mostly because ..the elite isn't in any hurry to fill them and not just because there aren't enough qualified applicants to fill them.
And the OBCs who managed to secure reservations in the Central Government around ten years ago?

Defining consideration,... for them.

'Untouchables have also become a strong and organized political force who refer to themselves as Dalits. In a recent interview with Emily Guntheinz, Arundhati Roy was asked to comment on the caste system. Her reply follows: It's the defining consideration in all Indian politics, in all Indian marriages...The lines are blurring. India exists in several centuries simultaneously. So there are those of us like me, or people that I know for instance, to whom it means nothing...It's a very strange situation where there's sort of a gap between...sometimes it's urban and rural, but it's really a time warp.'
Noticed the above paragraph in the website of a western university commenting on caste in India. For 'people like us' caste is good literature.. but how does it affect us?

Caught in a matrimonial column

V.M.Tarkunde too agrees endogamy is an essential characteristic of caste. So if you 'think' you are above such narrow considerations as caste, it doesn't mean that you don't belong to one. Or that you are breaking down the caste system.
'Caste is an extension of a joint Hindu family. However, while the family remains a laudable social institution, the caste system is undoubtedly harmful. It is harmful for two reasons. In the first place, there are social gradations in the caste system, some castes being higher and superior in status to those below. The higher castes had till recent times the monopoly of education as also of economic resources. The lower castes remained educationally, economically and socially backward. There was, and there still exists to a large extent, a definite social hierarchy between all castes, from the Brahmins at the top to the Scheduled Castes at the bottom. The second defect of the caste system, which really sustains the first, is that every caste continues to be endogamic. Marriages are confined almost always to couples belonging to the same caste. The caste system is stabilised by endogamy as well as by social gradation. It is a harmful social institution but its harmfulness is increasingly greater as we go down in the social gradation and reach the level of the Scheduled Castes.'

Classes that became castes

First, there were four classes.' Particular attention has to be paid to the fact that this was essentially a class system, in which individuals, when qualified, could change their class, and therefore classes did change their personnel. At some time in the history of the Hindus, the priestly class socially detached itself from the rest of the body of people and through a closed-door policy became a caste by itself . The other classes being subject to the law of social division of labour underwent differentiation, some into large, others into very minute groups. The Vaishya and Shudra classes were the original inchoate plasm, which formed the sources of the numerous castes of today. As the military occupation does not very easily lend itself to very minute sub-division, the Kshatriya class could have differentiated into soldiers and administrators.
This sub-division of a society is quite natural. But the unnatural thing about these sub-divisions is that they have lost the open-door character of the class system and have become self-enclosed units called castes. The question is: were they compelled to close their doors and become endogamous, or did they close them of their own accord ? I submit that there is a double line of answer: Some closed the door : Others found it closed against them.'
An explanation of how classes turned into castes.

Meet Krishna- caste's brand ambassador

"It is better to engage in one's own occupation, even though one may perform it imperfectly, than to accept another's occupation and perform it perfectly. Duties prescribed according to one's nature are never affected by sinful reactions." (From Bhagavad-gita 18th chapter).
Mind your own business, you tailor/weaver/carpenter/stonecutter/ratcatcher... don't ever think of your superiors' occupations.

Foulmouth

A psychoanalyst looks at caste:
"It is the persistent, obsessive fear that the top, clean mouth might be contaminated or defiled from the bottom," he said, "that underlies and permeates the entire caste system. This explains why a higher caste cannot accept food from the hands of a lower caste -- for fear of contamination. Feet...are dirty because they are in contact with the outside ground where feces might lurk."
Replace mouth with merit in the above paragraph and you'll understand why the elite opposes reservations.

US and them

Gail Omvedt looks at affirmative action in India and the U.S.,:
'Caste is also being raised as a factor of discrimination in the U.S. A Bengali professor in engineering at the University of Michigan has gone to court on the issue, claiming that he was discriminated against by the former head of his department, a Brahman. And, following the international Dalit conference at Vancouver, a team of U.S.-based Dalits led by Dr. K.P. Singh joined Jesse Jackson's "Rainbow Push Coalition" in Chicago June 21-25 to discuss hiring practices with American corporations. Thus the issue of caste discrimination has been brought to the head offices of some of the important multinationals. Some of them- for instance, MacDonald's - have promised to look into the issue of their employment in India.'
Here comes the part relevant to the current OBC issue:
'What is important, here, though, are the different underlying assumptions in the two countries. In the U.S. it is now assumed by most that that there is an equal distribution of capacity among all social groups, that apparent differences are social and not biological - and that the very existence of diverse social groups means that the businesses which seek to provide commodities for their markets have to have representation. Thus U.S. companies supported the affirmative action case not out of altruism, not out of some perceived recompense for past oppression, but out of their own perceived self-interest.'
Perceived self-interest? The Indian elite doesn't seem so very perceptive - it would have started being nicer to the OBCs ages ago if it had been that smart.
Omvedt concludes:
'Terms like "merit" are insulting - and erroneous. They allow the reality of ongoing processes of exclusion and discrimination in the society based on social identity to be shoved aside, ignored. In fact, the processes of caste discrimination begin from birth, both from poverty and lack of opportunity and from the real prejudice faced by Dalit and (to a lesser degree) OBC students in schools. In hiring for jobs, and in making judgements about "merit" and "qualification," caste and kinship links and identities are rampant, a fact everyone knows. That they continue even when Indians move abroad is shown by the current University of Michigan case. The discourse on "merit" itself is highly questionable. It is only when this is recognized and all-around remedial steps began to be taken - at the level of providing for all the poor and discriminated against by measures such as truly universalizing education, and at the level of affirmative action designed speed the attainment of diversity -that Indian society will truly universalize itself, and Indian industry will achieve goals of true competitiveness and efficiency.'

Caste and unmanageable technology

Anil Saari Arora poses some relevant questions in this article:
'For instance, about ten years ago, in his voluble and forcefully argued essays and pamphlets against the OBC reservations proposed by the Mandal Commission - Arun Shourie, one of the more widely respected intellectuals of the modern Indian elite, asked his readers whether we should accept doctors, engineers, etc, who were not qualified to perform the critical professional assignments that their new status would grant them if the Mandal Commission’s recommendations were implemented?For Arun Shourie’s target audience, his question assumed the force of a rallying point : Indian society had to be “saved” from the incompetence and the professional maladies which the Mandal Commission’s recommendations would unleash upon India. Of course, both Shourie and his intellectual disciples ignored the empirical data in this regard – that is, the number of recorded engineering and construction scams (including the poor quality of earthquake-ruptured apartment houses in Ahmedabad and Bhuj, in January 2001) and several well-known medical blunders that owed their origin to the doings and misdoings of educated, upper class, upper caste Indians. Arun Shourie’s populist argument was thereafter to prompt us to wear blinkers regarding the increasing deterioration of professional competence among upper class Indians. Not simply the OBC, the Scheduled Caste or Muslim professional and entrepreneur alone.Now that Arun Shourie has become one of the intellectuals-in-administration (a minister in the NDA government) perhaps he could do a good turn to society at large by undertaking an empirical collation of data regarding the managements of the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) that he has to “privatize’ as the Union Minister of Disinvestment.It would be helpful to the understanding of the equation between Caste Identity and Management-Technical Skills, if we had the data listing the caste-wise identification of all the heads and departmental heads of the “sick” Public Sector Undertakings, over the years. To more fully understand the validity of Arun Shourie’s caste-linked theories about vocational skills, a caste-wise listing of Public Sector chairpersons, managers and senior technocrats should also be collated as essential data.Only after this empirical data is collected and analyzed can we arrive at an honest evaluation of four important questions: (i) How competent and capable are professional and technological standards prevailing in the country? (ii) Is there a relevance for a Caste-based qualification in the contemporary era, regarding senior-level appointments? (iii) What is the caste-wise division of those senior managers and technocrats of the Public Sector Undertakings who have not worked in the public and the national interest, because they have been guilty of financial mismanagement, misappropriation and misguidance, which has made the numerous public sector units financially unviable, sick, industrial units? (iv) Whether there is a justification in believing that the principle of hereditary caste identity, ipso facto, imbues those born into certain castes with an intrinsic “superiority” and those born into certain other castes with an intrinsic “inferiority”, as far as human intelligence, competencies and skills are concerned?'

Significant Contribution

'The IITs in the past have made a significant contribution to development of technology in India to the level that outsourcing is becoming a serious concern for the developed world.' That's a former IITian's opinion. So there you have it: outsourcing is probably the only significant contribution that even an IITian can think of when evaluating the performance of the IITs.
He goes on: 'They can now relax. This process is being brought to a quick end soon. The excellence at the IITs was in any case an anomaly for a nation where so much else does not work quite as it should. It was a pleasant romance while it lasted. Indians have been used to poor quality for a long time, they will adjust to it again without a whimper. The worst sufferers will be the OBCs who with hopes raised will end up with something that is worthless.'
Yes, the Americans had better start looking for codeslaves elsewhere.

Classes, not individuals

Interesting point of view on classes, backwardness, castes and individuals: 'What is, however, argued is that it is not the `upper' castes or the social groups, but the poor individuals in the groups who should be entitled to reservation. As has been pointed out earlier, reservation has been provided in the Constitution for `classes', not individuals. If the individuals have to be provided with reservation on the economic criterion, then those satisfying the said criterion and belonging to any caste and social group, irrespective of any distinction will be entitled to it, including the individuals belonging to the backward classes and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. For, such reservation will fall in the general category and all will be entitled to it whether there is reservation on other grounds or not. A backward class person may choose to apply for reservation on economic criterion, instead of the reservation made for his class, or if he does not get a seat on the basis of class reservation, he may claim a seat on economic grounds and if he is qualified for it, he cannot be denied the same. On the other hand, he may qualify for it better if the poorer are entitled to it. Since economic criteria, whatever these may be, will run common through all the social groups, it will be contrary to the right to equality and therefore unconstitutional to keep them confined to any particular social group or groups.'

Principle on the bench

I find it amazing how some people, successful professionals, can be so very ignorant. Especially, people who flaunt bylines with neat surnames, smirk from syndicated columns and express 'opinion' supposedly derived from much knowledge and experience. I refer again to Barkha Dutt.
'Life has turned full circle, and I’m finally stepping out from the shadow of political correctness, to think, maybe we weren’t so wrong back then; our reasons may have been uninformed and uneducated, our motives questionable, but we had batted on the right side, even if by accident.'
Why does she think she had batted on the right side? (Such an ironical choice of words- you were batting for your side, how can you decide it was the right one? There are no right sides in cricket, only two sides).
' It’s a tough nut to crack but my own view is that quotas would probably be most effective at the school level, but here too there should be an economic benchmark.'
So she subscribes to a principle. But then what she was doing all these 10 years or so she was with NDTV., and what were her fellow champions of the anti-reservations movement doing all these years when reservations were being implemented in most states in the country without taking into account the economic benchmark? Simple, they were either a. unaware of it b. the principle should be applied to only central universities and institutions or c. she has just formulated the principle.
Actually the principle isn't new. There have been anti-reservation stirs in the country in the seventies, the eighties and on the threshold of the nineties. States which could see quite plainly the underrepresentation of the OBCs in the government and in educational institutions had to take measures to bridge the gap, at least partially. And of course political advantages to be gained from bringing in reservations were part of the motives. And the anti-reservationists brought up the economic principle everytime this was done.
In 1989 Ms.Dutt was too young to actually check the figures -how grossly underrepresented the OBCs were in the Central Government. And in the States. Why can't she check those figures now ? Find out for herself whether it's simple economics or something much more complex that's blocking the OBCs entry into the higher echelons of education? The figures she quotes are, to say the least, meaningless. She refers to vacant reserved seats in vocational institutions and engineering colleges. What kind of vacant seats and where? Dalit or OBC seats? In the States or in institutions run by the Centre? When were the figures collected?
And why bring up the figures now, and why not earlier if she (or other like-minded folks) was/were ever serious about persuading people about the economic principle? The principle is brought up everytime there is a renewed threat to the hegemony of the elite. It's flaunted along with a wide plethora of theories, emotions, theory-emotions, theatrics etc., to block, stall and dilute attempts to broaden opportunities for the OBCs. And it's forgotten as soon as the moment passes . The elite doesn't ever take the reservationists seriously- a fatal error of judgment, in my view. Because the reservationists have shown more character, resilience and strength than the elite who oppose reservations. So everytime the issue grabs the attention of the media, the elite makes the mistake of thinking it's yet another freak catastrophe- it'll pass. And doesn't see the need to develop a coherent, informed response to the issue.
Such a shoddy, haphazard, uninformed approach to a serious issue. And this from people who value competence over everything else.

V.P.Singh, messiah of the twice-born

Kancha Ilaiah was dismissed with condescending laughter when he said on "the Big Fight' on NDTV, last Saturday, that V.P.Singh had actually saved the upper castes when he brought in Mandal in '89. Would you find a dumber elite anywhere else in the world? If VP Singh hadn't brought in Mandal the resentment and disaffection among the OBCs would have developed into something much more concrete- and destructive than it is now. Mandal tokenism assuaged OBC feelings - for a while. That's the cold truth India's elite doesn't have the common sense to recognize.

The ground rule

Blogger Falstaff has certain objections. They give me an opportunity to reassert certain ground truths.
For instance, he says :'At any rate, the whole point is that the IIMs / IITs are the few institutes that have truly meritocratic admissions - to the best of my knowledge no one's ever argued for nepotism / favouritism in the selection of candidates.' Maybe. But crudely put , the government owns them. And they were started with the objective of providing quality education to the people of India. Certain sections of the people were not represented- so they're claiming their share now. Their share, please note. You can't dispute the merit of this claim.
"Why should we assume that those who benefit from quota admissions, say, will all automatically be poor students?"If that's not true they don't need reservations do they? You can't have it both ways - either they aren't good enough and need state assistance to get in - in which case you're destroying value - or they are good enough in which case there's no case for reservations at all. '
I think this point is irrelevant given the logic of the first point I made.

Baqwas Dutt

What's Barkha Dutt's idea of rebellion? Protesting Mandal recommendations in 1989. Standing up for the status quo is rebellion? And where did she learn her first lessons in rebellion? Under a 'bodhi tree' at St.Stephen's, Delhi. What's St.Stephen's? A place so exclusive it's reserved only for those who have 'been' the establishment for at least more than a couple of generations. Carpenters's sons like Jesus would never find a place there.
'Reservations have become a joke. We all know the statistics. More than 80 per cent of Dalit students never make it past Class X; more than 80 per cent of the reserved seats in vocational institutes remain unused; and in engineering colleges it’s even worse — more than 90 per cent of seats in the reserved category just lie empty.'
She's reeling out some handpicked stats used by the FICCI Secretary General on her programme oh-so-rebelliously titled 'We The People' on NDTV last Sunday. All numbers, you'll notice, are rounded off - gives you an idea about the kind of strictly cordoned off world she lives in. The stats? What does 'more than 90 percent of seats in the reserved category lie empty' mean?. She means reserved seats in engineering colleges. Where did Amit Mitra get this dubious figure? And I remember he wasn't talking of dalits alone when he quoted this figure. So much for the figures.
' What does this say? Two things. First, what’s the point of all these reservations if there aren’t enough qualified people to make use of them? But second, and more importantly, who should take responsibility for this gap between promise and possibility? Surely, this is the failure of governance, the failure of the State?'
That's exactly what some 'sane' objecting people like Ms.Dutt used to say in 1989. And were quite happy that the recommendations were stalled from implementation in the Central Services until 1994. And the prescription for the educational institutions was delayed until now. The State was okay in the last fifteen years, i guess. Of course they didn't speak about expanding the reach of schools in this period of 'sanity'. Nor about all the seats and jobs that the OBCs were excluded from. In the period between 1989 and now. Between 1947 and now.
'Left behind in the audience were mostly those who had opposed the quotas to begin with. It seemed to me that those who had walked out had displayed a siege mentality, a heightened sense of victimhood and bias, a feeling of not being heard even when everyone was listening to them on a readymade platform.'
This about the OBc students who left her programme midway. Ms.Dutt, the students left not because they felt besieged , but because they realized the moderator was taking sides. People who had obviously never given the idea of reservations any thought in their lives until then, were allowed to pontificate on how the hungry must be served 'dal, roti' and not 'caviar'. Kids who spouted illogical stuff about reservations creating caste were cheered on and the dissenters were abruptly cut off with a curt 'you've made your point'. If the programme were to be telecast again most viewers would notice how much time was given to people who opposed reservations. Chandrabhan Prasad's limited objections to blanket reservations for OBCs were interpreted as disagreement.
Ms.Dutt asks' Are we sure this is the India we want?'
You didn't find much wrong with it until yesterday- you mean you don't want an India in which OBCs occupy even token positions in the bastions of the elite?