Can’t reserve change

Congress in its 2024 election manifesto has promised a constitutional amendment to push aside the 50% ceiling on collective reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs. It’s a position all major political parties subscribe to even if it’s articulated differently. It’s presented as a social justice measure even though recent reservation agitations have their roots in India’s jobs crisis. Reservations are not just the wrong response to this crisis, but they also run the risk of triggering unintended consequences.

Maharashtra’s repeat performance | In Feb, Maharashtra passed a law to provide a standalone 10% quota for Marathas, taking the state’s overall reservation to 72%. For a decade, political parties have repeatedly tried to introduce a Maratha quota even after each attempt has run into a judicial roadblock.

Not social but economic | A commission to generate data to provide a legal basis for the Maratha quota cites some factors that are fundamentally economic in nature such as suicides by farmers. More reservations cannot solve these problems because Marathas already get benefits under EWS quota. An analysis in TOI showed that Maratha students got more than 75% of EWS seats in the state’s common entrance test in both 2022 and 2023.

Knock-on effect | The example of Marathas is similar to other recent reservation movements where relatively well-placed social groups such as Jats are now seeking reservations in some states.

Structural failure | All these movements are a symptom of an underlying economic failure. Since 1980s, India’s economy has grown at a brisk pace by global standards. Yet four straight decades of good growth have not done enough to bring about the most important structural change, which is to move most of the workforce out of agriculture into manufacturing and services.

Getting left behind | GOI data showed that just before the pandemic 42.5% of the workforce was engaged in agriculture in 2018-19. By 2022-23, the proportion had increased to 45.8% even though India emerged from the pandemic as the fastest growing major economy.
Political parties are using reservations as a shortcut to deal with this challenge. It’s bound to fail. But what’s really risky is that it can trigger social strife as more powerful groups use their clout to ask for standalone quotas. The solution lies in reforms that quicken the labour movement out of agriculture, not further slicing and dicing of social groups.

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