Opinion Blackmail justice

The Gurjjar agitation in Rajasthan is a microcosm of the absurdities of the Indian state. The state has been,for years,wishing this crisis away. But the agitation keeps recurring with dependable regularity. The simple explanation for the crisis is as a predictable product of the fatal conjunction of identity politics and distributive justice that the Indian state has been promoting. This politics is premised on the fact that caste remains the salient mechanism through which concessions are extracted from the state. The ability of groups to extract such mechanisms no longer rests on claims of justice,but on the sheer flexing of muscle power. It is on this basis that Jats got reservations. And the only legitimate lesson for the Gurjjars to draw was that,for the state to take them seriously,they had to compensate for their lack of political power with a politics of violent disruption. Powerful groups like the Jats and the Meenas,who already have a stranglehold on state power,are loath to share it with other more marginalised groups. A raw assertion of community power is wearing the mask of justice,and violence is the result. But there are even deeper absurdities that we refuse to recognise. Just think of the various formulas that have been used to placate the Gurjjars. One was offering them five per cent reservation,which under existing law puts the total reservation in Rajasthan over 50 per cent. This was struck down by the high court. Rajasthan’s politics is typically weak-kneed: it has not yet exhibited the brazenness of Tamil Nadu,by using the Ninth Schedule as a cover for exceeding 50 per cent. The Supreme Court,in turn,by not staying Tamil Nadu’s reservation policy has raised the expectations on the ground that the 50 per cent reservation limit is about to be relaxed,opening new demands for reservation. This is a new frontier we will have to contend with.The story gets even more absurd. Rajasthan proposes a bizarre scheme that is neither fish nor fowl. Fourteen per cent reservation will be done on so-called economic criteria,ostensibly so that upper castes can also be brought under the banner of reservation. The rest of the quota would be divided amongst a number of caste communities based on backwardness,again muddying the objectives of reservation. Another possible proposal was to give Gurjjars a sub-quota within existing quotas,but Jats will not tolerate this for OBCs and Meenas for STs. So,finally,this community — that,ironically,at the turn of the century had campaigned for Kshatriya status — is given a one per cent quota; the one per cent being all the space left under the 50 per cent ceiling. This is not the arithmetic of justice. It is arbitrariness. Meanwhile,the broader political acceptance of the caste census has legitimised two ideas: that caste remains an identity in perpetuity,and that state jobs should be distributed along the caste arithmetic. The blunt truth is there is no solution to the Gurjjar problem within the current framework of reservations; and more cases like this will come up.But the story gets even more bizarre. The state government will not hesitate to promise anything,no matter how absurd and unimplementable. The Gurjjars in turn,with each successive negotiation,come to trust the state even less. The current agitation has been given new life by the fact that there is going to be a massive expansion in state recruitment in Rajasthan. This should be a wake-up call to those who had naïvely assumed that state jobs no longer matter for our politics. Even the momentum behind the Telangana movement comes,in part,from a desire to a greater share of state jobs. But the Gurjjars are finding that even the one per cent quota they have been promised is being variously interpreted and implemented. What is the unit of analysis within which this one per cent is to be implemented? The categories and sub-categories of jobs have been spliced up in ways that have sown suspicion amongst them about exactly what this one per cent would entail. Meanwhile,the larger political vacuum continues. At an ideological level,Rajasthan has had the misfortune of being caught between two forms of politics. The Vasundhara Raje regime was brazen and perceived to be corrupt; the Ashok Gehlot regime insipid and lacking any form of dynamism. Rajasthan has not had a new political discourse for decades. In the past its politics was sustained by leaders,both amongst Rajputs and Jats,whose sense of civility and confidence in their own political base allowed them to act as pacifiers of conflict with some degree of authority. The next generation has combined the narcissism of caste with leaders who cannot think beyond their noses. The result is a politics of monu-mental pettiness. But this moral vacuum is symptomatic of a larger national crisis. The central question for the coming decade is going to be this. Which states are going to be able to unleash a politics of aspiration? And which are going to remain trapped in a politics of raw community power? In Rajasthan,both the Congress and the BJP wilfully decimated the politics of aspiration. There is no greater proof of that than their systematic destruction of higher education in the state. They turned a potential knowledge hub into an exemplar of what happens when your public universities are in ruin. The cadre of young people coming out have nothing to look forward to but fight over the crumbs the state has to offer.The Gurjjar leadership,for their part,have perfected a political technique. If you blockade rail lines and roads and hold the country to ransom,the state has no response. Last time,such acts provoked firing,in which dozens were killed. This time the state seems to want to avoid confrontation. But the net result is simply that the Gurjjars have proved how easy it is to bring transport to a standstill. Their technique of causing disruption makes the Naxal strategy look convoluted and silly. It is frighteningly easy to disrupt the state. The second lesson they have learnt is that you have to have nuisance value to wrest concessions from the state. Last time round they managed to extract some concessions in the form of scholarships and largesse for Bainsla’s extended kin. The community recognises that their leadership is as compromised as the state against which they are protesting. But it is the tragedy of modern Indian politics that the grammar of justice is now irrevocably tied to the grammar of anarchy and blackmail.

The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi

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