Why the hurry? What’s the logic? What’s the scientific basis behind the figure? The Supreme Court’s pointed questions today to the Government of India on its proposed Bill for 27% OBC quotas echo the concerns that the late Rajiv Gandhi raised in his speech on the Mandal Commission in the Lok Sabha on September 6, 1990.

Rajiv, then Leader of the Opposition, described then Prime Minister V P Singh’s hurried announcement of job reservations for OBCs, “not very different from what the Britishers were doing.”

“Today it is the Raja Sahib, sitting there, who is trying to divide our country on caste and religion,” Rajiv said, calling for a “comprehensive action plan, an affirmative action plan for backward communities.”

The thrust of Rajiv’s speech was, “Within a class when you want to give some assistance, it should go to the poorest...We would like that to be targeted to the poorest and weakest in the socially and educationally backward classes...We have problems if the weakest among the classes are not helped and if the weakest among the minority religions are not helped.”

Sixteen years after he made that speech, while his party Congress is pushing ahead with the line that caste is the sole marker of backwardness in the country, it ignores sevaral questions Rajiv had asked V P Singh.

Pointing out that the Mandal Commission failed in its responsibility of “specification of the socially backward classes”—the category article 15(4) of the Constitution makes eligible for special treatment, Rajiv asked: “What sort of information is this report based on? What is the substance of this?”

... contd.