While the judiciary’s interventionist approach can be debated and there is much in the present ruling of the Court that invites critical scrutiny, the SC stay gives the nation an opportunity to discard the worn out debate on a public policy on social justice. When the ministry of human resources and development made its intention clear on this matter a year ago, there was an action replay of the Mandal debate, showing that as a nation and as an academic community we had really not moved much since 1990. The latest ruling of the SC, though unfortunate as a precedent, invites us to rethink the issues involved.

Broadly speaking, we can visualise three sets of openings from the intellectual impasse. In the first place, a decade and more has passed since the reservation policy for OBCs came into operation in central government establishments and many states have had this policy for longer durations. It should not be difficult therefore, to initiate large-scale studies on how the reservation policy is being executed, what is its effectiveness in terms of change in the share of OBCs in government positions and educational institutions etc. and also on the overall condition of OBCs. Public discourse relies much too happily on impressionistic accounts and piecemeal snapshots rather than systematic sociological investigation.

Three issues are involved: One, the reservation policy is not implemented properly and hence does not benefit the needy social groups. Two, OBCs are not a homogenous social class and therefore policy must tune itself to the ground reality of backwardness, Three, inclusion in the OBC category is a political matter and communities (or sections of communities, a la creamy layer) need to be excluded from social justice policies. These three issues can be handled only with the help of a body of serious and systematic inquiry.

Secondly, it is time to rethink the strategies of implementing social justice. We must adopt a composite Equal Opportunity Index (EOI) that takes into account various systemic or socially grounded mechanisms of inequality and addresses them in an integrated manner. Most supporters of social justice would agree that while caste continues to be the most important marker of backwardness, there is a pressing need to integrate in our social justice policy some other markers of backwardness. Along with caste, gender, poverty, and the urban-rural divide are the three other factors that have an adverse effect on the opportunity structures available to groups or individuals.

In fact, the debate on Mandal has expanded the overall understanding of the democratic responsibilities of a society: We have moved away from the language of caste alone, and we are talking now about social justice. It is imperative that we follow the logic of this language of social justice and expand the policy horizons. A related dimension would be the mechanisms whereby social justice can be meted out.

The reservation debate so far has steadfastly refused to move out of the set parameters of quotas. The supporter would not have anything less than that and the opponent will have none of it. Can’t we experiment with something more complex? Last year, in the course of the quota debate, Yogendra Yadav and Satish Deshpande proposed a scheme (EPW, June 18, 2006) of developing a composite index for assessing the non-access to equal opportunity and the means for offsetting the lack of fair access. This writer was a signatory to that proposal. It was drowned in the enthusiasm of the quota supporters and the wrath of the quota opponents. It is necessary to debate the need for a composite EOI and for an integrated policy option.

Finally, the last one year has showed up our collective confusion on matters related to social identity. While the debates about caste and caste-based policies continue, the Sachar committee report pointed out the other side of the issue, namely, the hollowness of our claim to be a nation of diversities.

Both the OBC debate and the Sachar report have shown that our diversity does not get reflected in the social composition of the elites. At the same time, the Sachar committee is itself another instance of a piecemeal and ad hoc approach to the issue. The government took the soft option of appointing a committee only for investigation into the status of the Muslim community. Predictably, now the Minorities Commission is taking the cue and planning to investigate the condition of ‘other minorities’. It is necessary that the government shifts the paradigm of the debate from the ‘condition of minorities’ to the issue of diversity.

The best course of action would be to put in place a permanent machinery that could be a watchdog-cum-recommendatory body on matters related to India’s diversity. Such a Diversity Commission could be asked to undertake serious investigations into the social profile not only of our state institutions, but other institutions in public life. It could also be entrusted with the task of debating and proposing policies for making our public life truly reflective of diversity. The caste question, apart from being one of social justice, is a question of diversity.

The writer teaches political science at the University of Pune