About a month back, a negotiated settlement to the Gurjjar agitation for ST status seemed all but impossible. Now, K.S. Bainsla is thumping his chest about “a historic breakthrough”, as the Rajasthan government assented to 4 per cent reservations “under a special category”. The state has decided not to make any specific recommendations on behalf of the Gurjjars, but will also not stand in the way of a list compiled by the Centre — thus giving the Gurjjars what they want while deftly avoiding a backlash from the Meenas who fear for their turf. We don’t know exactly what constitutional clause has been commandeered to keep existing quotas untouched while making space for Gurjjar aspirations, but it looks like the state might indeed pull off some delicate feat of social engineering to please everyone.

Reservations in 1956 flung open the gates of possibility for Meenas, who comprise 53 per cent of the ST pool and now command immense clout and money. The Gurjjars, meanwhile, have become a seething underclass that considers itself systematically deprived of education and employment opportunities, especially after the relatively prosperous Jats began jostling them on the same OBC platform. The Rajasthan government painted itself into a corner by underestimating the gravity of the Gurjjar agitation, trying to placate them with a few ministerial slots. Instead of acknowledging the valid resentments that drive the Gurjjars, it played shifty politics, trying to please competing constituencies.

Trusting the political process will be that much harder, because one of the regrettable takeaways from this episode is how vandalism has been endorsed (as our columnist today argues) as the only effective means to a desired concession, and the state, by succumbing when faced with violent protest, has unwittingly encouraged this trend. As the Supreme Court noted, the state government allowed the protests to suspend all order, and plunge citizens into a lawless limbo. The reservation categories are in a state of flux, and will continue to be, so long as contests for affirmative action are still meaningful and new communities press for benefits long-denied to them — and it should not be a zero-sum game where one group can progress only by holding back others. But if these demands aren’t identified and substantively addressed, they can lead to the kind of conflagrations that Rajasthan witnessed the last few weeks.