Now, under Dr Manmohan Singh’s dispensation we are considering affirmative action on behalf of other underprivileged minorities like women and Muslims, and Sikhs are also beginning to make noisy demands, so we could soon have reservations apply to every category of Indian other than upper caste Hindu men. High satire or not?

Yet, on a daily basis the Prime Minister allows his ministers to appear on television to defend his government’s satirical approach to affirmative action although they now like to call it by other names. Last week, Minority Affairs Minister, A.R. Antulay told NDTV that he did not like the word ‘aarakshan’ and preferred to use ‘insaaf’ when it came to reservations for Muslims in the private sector.

The word justice (insaaf) appeals to me because that is exactly what this debate is not about. It is about the failure of government to provide every category of Indian with their most basic needs. If development policies had worked better we would have a country in which every one of every caste and creed had access to schools, jobs, affordable homes and a 21st century standard of living.

It is because these have not been made available that we talk about reservations at all. The Prime Minister as an eminent economist understands this better than anyone and yet inexplicably wastes the country’s time and money on sops.

Why has there been no attempt to examine the failure of more than 90 per cent of our rural development schemes? The Planning Commission has been aware for some time now that the thousands of crores of rupees we pour into educational and social welfare schemes is mostly money down the drain. Some years ago it pointed out in one of its internal reports that it would be better to send everyone below the poverty line an annual money order for Rs 8,000 than to continue pouring money into grandiose schemes that achieved next to nothing.

... contd.