Satire is not a form of humour much understood in India, or we would have noticed that affirmative action in India that is Bharat has acquired a satirical edge. First, we made Dalits (then called Harijans and untouchables) into a special category and told them that because they had been treated like dirt for centuries they deserved to have government jobs and school and college seats reserved for them. Adivasis needed a similar boost because of the primitive conditions in which they lived so we came up with a category called Scheduled Tribes and offered them similar reserved privileges. So far so good. Nobody protested because there was a general sense, when India became independent, that upper-caste attitudes to the lower castes had been shameful and reparations needed to be made.

The trouble began when Vishwanath Pratap Singh as Prime Minister in the early nineties realized that for him to keep his job he needed a vote bank and that an outdated report by a forgotten official by the name of Mandal could provide him with just the support he needed.

Luckily for India his evil plan went awry and he lost his job anyway, but the damage was done. The OBC (other backward castes) genie was out of the bottle and India has never been able to put it back. So we have a uniquely Indian situation in which affirmative action is provided not for some underprivileged group of citizens but for the average Indian.

The other backward castes constitute a vast, nebulous category of Indians that in some states include the most privileged and oppressive castes in Indian society. Anyone who thinks that Yadavs and Jats are oppressed and underprivileged in rural India needs their head examined, and yet they fall into the OBC category.

... contd.