The point is not so much that within the women’s quota there should be an OBC quota. What the recent elections, both in the states late last year and the general election this year, show is that identity politics has reached its limits. People of all classes want delivery but also that most often the OBC and SC/ST leadership has been too self-serving and only looked after the creamy layer, mostly its own relatives. We now need to get class issues back into the Mandal debate. Poor people of whatever caste, but in fact, mostly OBC and SC/ST, who have been left behind due to the failure of primary and secondary education provisions, need a helping hand. Their children need immediate attention so that India does not get into a cycle of deprivation.

At the time of Independence, the Congress went for universal adult franchise and a statist economic policy but it sadly neglected social reform. North India was left to the Congress Brahmins to dominate and oppress. The economic development programme was elitist, like the Soviet Union model it had copied. A military industrial machine was created for an aristocracy of public sector workers with crumbs for the remaining 90 per cent. This deficit of 40 years erupted in the Mandal agitations. Now, 20 years on, we know the limitations of Mandal. There is enough public revenue to improve matters if we can divorce public delivery from political patronage. Rahul Gandhi should inculcate such ideas into the Congress machinery at state levels wherever the Congress is in power or even aspires to be in the near future.

... contd.