With colonial rule came the linking of education and political clout. Earlier land ownership or the bearing of arms determined who was powerful. Under Pax Britannica those who had degrees and who spoke English climbed the ladders of power and influence. Clever Indians noticed this right away. When Jagannath Shankersett and Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy persuaded Bombay Governor Elphinstone to start a modern school in Bombay, several leaders of the upper caste Prabhu community wanted to exclude lower caste children (presumably the ancestors of today’s OBCs) from the school. The excluded lower castes were not any less clever. In Madras, some far-sighted Brahmin had managed to include proficiency in Sanskrit as a pre-requisite to admission in medical colleges, presumably to help his jaat-waalas along. Again it required an agitation to drop Sanskrit from medical college entrance requirements.

After Independence the progressive government of free India insisted on a large and compulsory weightage for a viva-voce interview in the selection of IAS, IFS and IPS officers. The beneficiaries were well-connected (usually upper caste) candidates. After years of representations this requirement was dropped to the relief of the newly emerging OBC candidates for senior government jobs.

Higher education remained possibly the last bastion. Admissions to institutions of higher education, heavily subsidised by the Indian tax-payer, represent the portal that opens up wealth and power. To expect that there would not be a political movement on this front is naïve.

The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes of India are an oppressed minority similar to African-Americans in the United States. Quotas for them have been seen as a moral imperative to correct past injustices and redress present deprivation. Their numbers are not large, and for years on end their assigned quotas have remained unfilled. The OBCs represent something quite different altogether. If not the majority, they represent a plurality bordering on the majority in contemporary India. This situation has gotten exacerbated as upper classes have gone in for lower fertility rates in keeping with the universally observed phenomenon of the relationship between prosperity and demographic sluggishness. The OBCs are asking for power — and if power which earlier came through government jobs now comes through higher education (leading to private sector and entrepreneurial vocations), then that is what they will ask for. Appeals to merit, to economic criteria for reservations, to the exclusions of the creamy layer, etc, while having some impact, will not override the politics of the issue. In other words, reservations are a vote-winner.

... contd.