Opinion No more reservations

In this column two weeks ago,I pointed out that reserving 190 seats for women in the Lok Sabha would weaken Parliament. I am happy to see from your letters that most of you agree with me but,unfortunately,we can do nothing because there are not enough people who are willing to stand up and be counted. Then,there is the problem of appearing to be on the same side as Mulayam in his new avatar as aged Roadside Romeo and Lalu whose only contribution to women’s empowerment has been to impose Rabri Devi on the people of Bihar. Sonia Gandhi has done serious harm to India’s polity by lending her substantial might to this foolish Bill,but she looks better than her ex-best friends. Messrs Yadav.

Is there nobody around Madame who has the courage to tell her that reservations as a form of affirmative action have not worked? If they had,then in 60 years of reservations for Scheduled Castes and Tribes,we should have at the very least seen a critical mass in these communities who were educated enough to bring real change. Dalits continue to be mostly poor and illiterate and they continue to live in ghettoes on the edge of villages across India in a form of unspoken apartheid. The situation of the Adivasis has not improved through reservations either. It is so bad that the Government of India felt the need to pass a law not long ago giving them ownership of land in what is left of our forests.

If instead of reservations we had given these traditionally deprived communities schools,hospitals,roads and job opportunities,I have not the slightest doubt that they would today be competing with the most exalted of Brahmins. As someone who is an outcaste by the rules of the Indian caste system (and proudly so),I often wonder if reservations are not a high form of casteism. Why else would we deny deprived and underprivileged Indians what they really need,which is an equal chance? If there are to be special measures,then they should come in the form of urgent investment in districts where there are high levels of deprivation.

Not only do reservations not work,they make people believe that they are entitled to special privileges just because they are poor and illiterate. It is a terrible legacy from our socialist era and if our political leaders bothered to travel in their constituencies instead of whizzing in and out at election time,they would find just how bad a legacy it has been. On my travels in rural parts I have met people who think a school three kilometres outside their village is too far for their children to go. I have been in villages where people admit that they stopped repairing the village pond and ended the ancient practice of harvesting rainwater because they believed that the ‘sarkar’ owed them free piped water in their homes. Not long ago in a court house in Haryana,when I complained about litter scattered everywhere,a court employee said,‘The government should clean it up. It’s their job.’

This distorted mindset,I believe,comes from the idea born of Nehruvian socialism that the Government would take care of everyone’s needs even if nobody lifted a finger to pick up a piece of waste paper. Unless this mindset changes,we can reserve till the word merit disappears completely and it will only make things worse and worse still. Reservations do not work. Period.

If Muslims believe that the community has fallen behind,then its leaders should demand schools,hospitals and jobs. These are the real tools of empowerment,not reserved seats in Parliament and educational institutions,because in those reserved seats will sit only those who already have access to powerful people. That is how it has always worked,that is how it always will.

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleens