The Affirmative Action Debate in India

Author(s): Dharma Kumar

Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1992), pp. 290-302
Published by: University of California Press
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 THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
DEBATE IN INDIA

Dharma Kumar

Policies of affirmative action-subsidies and scholar-

ships, reservation of government jobs, and special political representa-
tion-for the low castes were instituted by the British in India, Sri Lanka,
Malaysia, and other colonies and have grown enormously since indepen-
dence. India may well have the largest affirmative action program in the
world. The scope of its various policies has been steadily enlarged, some-
times giving rise to violent protests, but the attempt by Prime Minister V.
P. Singh to implement the recommendations of the Mandal Commission
Report' led to an unprecedented degree of violence. More than 100 stu-
dents killed themselves, to use just one indicator.2 It also evoked an active,
even acrimonious debate in the press. Rather than the report itself, it is
this debate and, in particular the attitudes of intellectuals, that is the sub-
ject of this article. Many of the arguments used both for and against the
report naturally resemble those used in other countries pursuing affirma-
tive action-whether or not role models are important, the relevance of
"historical injustice," the effects on efficiency, and so on. But there are

Dharma Kumar is Professor of Economics in the Delhi School of

Economics. The author notes that this article was written during the V. P. Singh regime,
which ended in November 1990. Since then there have been two changes of government, and
the present regime has extended the scope of reservations even further. The policy has been
challenged, and the matter is before the Supreme Court. Since this article is chiefly con-
cerned with Indian intellectual attitudes in which there seems to be little, if any change, the
original text has not been altered. It is striking that the Congress policy has evoked hardly
any protest over extending the reservations, perhaps fulfilling, the author adds, her prophecy
that opposition would abate because reservations were seen as inevitable.

? 1992 by The Regents of the University of California

1. Report of the Backward Classes Commission, vols. 1-2, 1980 (New Delhi: Government
of India Press, 1981). All references in the text are to vol. 1.
2. Supporters of the Mandal Report frequently allege that students were somehow coerced
into "suicide"; certainly political parties were involved in these protests, but it seems very
unlikely that all the "suicides" were involuntary. In my view, the suicides do not constitute
an argument either for or against the report.

290

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 DHARMA KUMAR 291

also specifically Indian features of the debate. These may not contribute
much to the general analysis of affirmative action, but they reveal a great
deal about the social values of Indian intellectuals and their beliefs about
the possibilities of reform in India. Some of these attitudes are deep
seated, perhaps deceptively so; others reflect the political crisis of the last
few years. Three issues are discussed: the quality of policy making, the
modem role of caste, and Indian attitudes to merit.

The Mandal Recommendations

As to the Mandal Report itself, two main points need to be borne in mind.
The report deals with the so-called "Other Backward Castes" (OBCs), i.e.,
those other than the lowest castes (formerly called Depressed Castes or
Untouchables) who feature in a special schedule of the Constitution and
are hence known as Scheduled Castes (SC). Since supporters often try to
evoke sympathy for the OBCs3 by grouping them with the SCs, this dis-
tinction is important. Secondly, the report is mainly about the reservation
of jobs of an extraordinarily wide scope but covers other types of affirma-
tive action, too. The few sentences at the end stating that these are only
short-term measures and what is really needed is a "restructuring of pro-
duction relations" are mainly of use to those with radical pretensions.
The Mandal Commission recommended reservation of jobs in govern-
ment, the public sector, nationalized banks, all universities and affiliated
colleges, and "all private sector undertakings which have received financial
assistance from the government in one form or another"-a large and vi-
tally important segment of the economy. The commission also recom-
mended educational and other concessions and such measures as "a
separate network of financial and technical institutions to foster business
and industrial enterprise among OBCs."
The SCs and Scheduled Tribes (ST) together account for 23.5% of In-
dia's population, and the Mandal Commission has calculated that an addi-
tional 52% of the population, including Muslim and Christian converts,
require special concessions-in all, three-fourths of the total population of
India. But the Supreme Court has ruled that reservations cannot exceed
50% of the jobs, so the commission had reluctantly recommended reserva-
tion of only 27% of jobs for OBCs, "even though their population is al-
most twice this figure" (except where larger quotas were already in force).
Also, the commission has expressly stated that "candidates belonging to
OBCs recruited on the basis of merit in an open competition should not be
adjusted against their reservation quota of 27%." In other words, if the
commission's recommendations are followed, half the posts in the public

3. We have also coined the term "Mandalists" for supporters of the report.

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 292 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXII, NO. 3, MARCH 1992

sector and universities will be filled by people who could not get in on
merit, providing they belong to the right castes.
In recent years, there has been a marked deterioration in the quality of
government reports, ministerial pronouncements, and parliamentary de-
bate; the official discourse on Mandal is a particularly egregious example.
The report itself is extremely shoddy. Its potted version of Indian history
is highly slanted,4 stressing the sufferings of "the historically suppressed
and backward classes," and supporting the view that the caste system is
not losing "its traditional divisive role," a view disputed by many of the
leading social scientists of India. The report identifies "backward castes"
with "backward classes," necessary because the Constitution only refers to
"special provisions for the advancement of any socially and educationally
backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes." There is, needless to say, much turgid writing on whether or
when castes become classes; the issue has occupied Marxists, sociologists,
and lawyers.5 But we will ignore this distinction and the legal issues.
The report's argument rests on two premises: first, that OBCs form a
very large proportion (52%) of the population, and second, that they hold
less than 5% of higher level positions in the central government. They
also form a small proportion of professionals or business executives. Since
the 1931 census was the last to collect data on caste-and even it does not
provide data on the caste composition of different occupations, let alone
senior bureaucrats or university professors-the commission had to collect
the necessary information itself. It first calculated the percentage of back-
ward castes among the Hindus, commissioning sample surveys of two vil-
lages and one urban block in each district and identifying "backwardness"
by eleven social and economic criteria. The commission also asked the
state governments to provide lists of OBCs. And finally, it made judge-
ments based on "personal knowledge gained through extensive touring of
the country and receipt of voluminous public evidences." On the basis of

4. Much space is given to the Mahabharata story of how the Brahmin teacher, Drona-
charya, made the tribal boy, Ekalavya, cut off his right thumb because he dared to claim he
was Drona's pupil. This story was repeated by politicians in the recent debate as if it were a
historical fact.
5. The history of the term is discussed in Marc Galanter, Competing Equalities (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1984). The legal literature appears to be particularly rich and
strange; the term "class" is sometimes used in its logical sense and sometimes as a sociologi-
cal term (I am indebted to Andre Beteille for pointing this out). Thus, in 1960 the Supreme
Court decided that roadside station masters belonged to a wholly distinct and separate cate-
gory from guards, and so there could be no question of equality of opportunity in matters of
promotion between the two; whereas in 1973 it decided that small cultivators were not a
class. People's Union for Democratic Rights, Disputed Passages: A Report on Law Reserva-
tions and Agitations (Delhi: 1990).

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 DHARMA KUMAR 293

"information" collected thus, it calculated that backward castes formed

52% of the Hindu community and simply assumed that backward classes
would form the same proportion of the non-Hindu population. The errors
of these procedures have been widely commented upon, significantly, by
the three eminent sociologists that the commission had appointed as advis-
ers but who had in fact little effect on its deliberations.6 The criteria were
often self-contradictory, and in any case the commission made arbitrary
judgements on the status of particular castes with ludicrous results-
Brahmins and SCs were included in certain states while highly prosperous
merchant castes were in others.7 The evidence suggests that the commis-
sion wished to make a strong case for OBC reservations, so it is likely that
its estimate of the OBC population was inflated. However, since there are
no recent caste figures, this must remain a guess.
The procedure followed for the calculation of the proportion of OBCs in
central government employment was even worse. The commission's secre-
tary wrote to central government offices asking them to state the number
of OBCs employed, using two criteria. First, the employee, if Hindu,
should not be a Brahmin, Kshatriya, or Vaishya (the three upper castes,
broadly defined). Secondly-and this is crucial-the employee's father or
grandfather should not have studied beyond the primary level.8 Roy Bur-
man pointed out the logical flaw in this procedure rather mildly: he could
have made the point that if the second criterion had been applied to the
"forward castes" there would have been hardly any in the government. In
his reply, the commission's secretary entirely failed to meet this objections
and practically none of the Mandal opponents have seen its significance.
It may well be the case that there are many castes not included in the
SC/ST list that are poor and socially backward and do not contain many
central government officials. But this is beside the point, which is that the
commission very probably overestimated the proportion of OBCs in the
population and certainly underestimated the proportion of OBCs in cen-
tral government employment. And yet the commission makes great play
with these extremely dubious figures. For instance, in asserting that every
citizen has the "right" to be represented in the bureaucracy, it argues that

6. B. R. Roy Burman, M. N. Srinivas, and Yoginder Singh.

7. See in particular, B. K. Roy Burman, "Mandal's Faulty Data Interpretation," Times of
India, October 18, 1990; A. M. Shah, "Double Talk on Castes," Hindustan Times, September
7, 1990.
8. Mandal Report, p. 91. Non-Hindus were included if they belonged to a backward caste,
defined by the first criterion, which had converted from Hinduism or if the parental income
was below a certain level. This information had to be provided within a month; there has
been no discussion at all of the quality of the information collected with such speed, though
no one conversant with the Indian bureaucracy would give this data much value.
9. S. S. Gill, "Sins Mandal Did Not Commit," Times of India, October 30, 1990.

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 294 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXII, NO. 3, MARCH 1992

"any situation which results in a near-denial of this right to nearly 52% of

the country's population needs to be urgently rectified." This statement is
constantly repeated.
Pronouncements from V. P. Singh and some of his cabinet ministers
continued this process of obfuscation. When addressing OBC voters, the
officials thundered about the "social revolution" that Mandal would bring
about, failing to mention that only a minute percentage of the OBCs can
qualify for the better official jobs.10 But when they faced critics, the fi-
nance minister and others would point out how tiny a proportion of total
employment in the country was involved-overlooking the fallacy of di-
viding total employment in the country by the number of reserved jobs in
the central government. Again, the discussion of exactly which of the
Mandal recommendations the government meant to implement was kept
vague. For instance, the prime minister's response to the students' agita-
tion, if read carefully, only implied that OBC reservations would not apply
to university admissions, and many people did not realize that no assur-
ance had been given regarding university posts. Some of the Mandal rec-
ommendations, indeed, have already been put into effect; some managers
of public sector undertakings, though apparently not all, have been told to
reserve posts and promotions for OBCs.
The 1990 debate in Parliament on the Mandal Report matched the qual-
ity of the report itself. It lasted only a few hours and was marked by
acrimony, personal abuse, slogan-shouting, and table-thumping. And
since no political party was prepared to oppose reservations, only one or
two MPs dared to speak honestly. Finally, the government's reluctance to
provide full information to the public can be seen in the case now before
the Supreme Court where a number of petitioners have challenged the con-
stitutionality of the Mandal recommendations.

Reservations in South India

South India is especially important, if only because Mandalists hold it up
as proof of the advantages of reservations, but there are other reasons too.
Caste distinctions have been the most bitter in South India, particularly in
Kerala; the levels of education have long been above the very low Indian
average, and caste entered political life earlier than in the North-perhaps
because the nationalist movement and the Congress were weaker in the

10. K. Sundaram of the Delhi School of Economics has pointed out in an unpublished
note that matriculation is the minimum qualification for any public sector job and a graduate
degree for the better jobs. Only 2% of SCs and STs were matriculates in 1981, and only
0.25% had passed the B.A. or B.Sc. There are no figures for the OBCs, but his guess is that
not more than 1% would be graduates.

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 DHARMA KUMAR 295

South. Everywhere in the North and Bengal, certain non-Brahmin castes

were also educationally advanced. Indeed, in some parts of North India,
Brahmins are often found in menial jobs. In the South, Brahmins, while a
smaller proportion of the population than in the North, cornered the lion's
share of the bureaucracy and also of the professions.
It was in the South, too, that reservations of various types were first
introduced on a wide scale. The princely state of Mysore was in fact the
leader in the matter of the OBCs. A committee11 was set up in 1919 "to
consider steps necessary for the adequate representation of backward com-
munities in public service" and recommended extensive reservations. In
1921, modifying the committee's recommendations somewhat, the Mysore
government ordered that half of all government posts should be given to
non-Brahmins. 12
Mandalists refer to South Indian experience as proof that reservations
need not lead to social disharmony. They also argue that South Indian
states are among the best administered in the country, proof that reserva-
tions need not affect efficiency. These are contentious points, but there is
one unarguable lesson to be learned from South India. Thomas Sowell has
pointed out that international experience shows, first, that reservations are
almost impossible to remove, however temporary they were meant to be
initially, and second, the communities covered by reservations will inexo-
rably increase.13 Both of these observations have been borne out in the
South. There is no indication that either the groups already entitled to
reservations or those that hope to become entitled will ever give up the
system. Karnataka still leads with over 75% of the population entitled to
reservations. Their scope steadily widens: 11 castes were classified as
"backward classes" in 1883 in the Madras presidency, including what are
now SCs and STs; the list of OBCs alone in Tamil Nadu included 323 in
1988.14 And apart from this inflation of castes, ever finer distinctions have
to be drawn within the OBC group to accommodate conflicting claims.
Thus, some southern states have already subdivided the OBCs, the "most
backward" ones getting higher priority than the other groups. There is no
reason why this process of subdivision should ever end.
The Mandalists commit a logical fallacy when they now compare South
with North Indian states in respect to communal harmony or efficiency.

11. Generally known as the Miller Committee after the English judge who chaired it.
12. S. Chandrasekhar, Dimensions of Socio-Political Change in Mysore, 1918-40, (New
Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1985), p. 56.
13. Thomas Sowell, Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (New Haven,
Conn.: William Morrow and Co., 1990).
14. V. Venkatesan, "Mandal's Impact Already in Tamil Nadu," Times of India, August 5,
1990.

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 296 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXII, NO. 3, MARCH 1992

The meaningful comparison is between the pre- and post-reservation situa-

tions, state by state. Such comparisons are very difficult to make because
reservations are only one out of many factors operating over the last 70 or
more years. Even if one could decide what a measure of "efficiency" was,
data would be extremely hard to come by. That, however, is no reason for
making inferences from invalid comparisons.
Moreover, it needs to be stressed that even recent experience does not
necessarily point to the superiority of high reservation states. The Centre
for Monitoring the Economy has compared the relative ranking of states in
1970-73 and 1982-85 and found that Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka
declined relative to other states. But so did some nonreservation states,
such as U.P., Bihar, and Orissa while Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Haryana
moved up. Reservations may well have been less important than other
factors, and Brahmananda rightly stresses that "we should be careful in
interpreting such data. But clearly it is not possible to state categorically
that high-reservation states have tended to grow faster than low-reserva-
tion states." Brahmananda makes the further significant point that high
reservation states have also not done better in the eradication of poverty. 15
One reason may be that among the OBCs, it is the better off-those who
can afford college education-who take advantage of reservations.16
The question of South Indian universities is equally contentious. Judg-
ing by my own experience as a university teacher and editor of a learned
journal and by the views of several scholars, Indian and foreign whom I
have spoken to, the standards of most South Indian universities are pain-
fully low, whether compared to the better universities elsewhere in India
or their own past. A distinguished economist who returned from Austra-
lia to work in Madras has shown how this deterioration affects the OBCs
themselves, whether as teachers or students. "Even an OBC teacher can-
not rely on the quality of his work for promotion but on the help of his
caste power base, and an excellent OBC candidate could not get the post
he deserved because it was reserved for a candidate from a Most Backward
Caste."17 On the other hand, members of the Madras Institute of Devel-
opment Studies state that their experience gives them "no reason for con-
cluding that reservations have adversely affected academic standards,
whatever be the other factors." They do not state how they separated the
influence of other factors and appear to me to be clearly wrong in asserting
that "the southern universities even today can claim better standards than

15. P. R. Brahmananda, "Mandalism Has Not Cut Backwardness," Times of India, Octo-
ber 25, 1990.
16. On Mysore see Lelah Dushkin, "Backward Class Benefits and Social Class in India,
1920-1970," Economic and Political Weekly, 14 (1979), pp. 661-67.
17. S. Ambirajan, "What 'Reservation' Has Achieved," Indian Express, October 2, 1990.

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 DHARMA KUMAR 297

universities in the north where reservations do not operate."18 They are

undoubtedly correct in pointing to various other reasons why Indian uni-
versities have declined, but no one has denied them. Moreover, it may be
that some of these reasons too, like reservations, are consequences of the
general philosophy that "social justice" is a more important consideration
in making university appointments than such things as knowledge of the
subject to be taught.
The argument that South India shows that reservations need not lead to
social unrest, either to inter-caste or communal disputes, is equally dubi-
ous. The argument that upper castes will not in fact offer a great deal of
resistance to reservations overlooks the very different caste demography of
India's different regions. In the South it is very largely Brahmins who
were threatened by reservations, and they form a minute share of the pop-
ulation. Moreover, while Brahmins were once considerable landowners,
they have been moving since the nineteenth century out of the rural areas
to take up bureaucratic and professional jobs in the cities. And since they
are relatively highly educated, they have migrated in large numbers to
other parts of India and abroad. But the North Indian upper castes
threatened by reservations form a much larger percentage of the popula-
tion, perhaps 30-35% in some states; many of them are still landowners
living in villages, and they are not as highly educated as Tamil Brahmins.
They are better equipped physically and emotionally to fight at home and
less so to migrate; in any case, as reservations spread, avenues for middle-
class migration within India will shrink. Thus, it is not in the least surpris-
ing that reservations evoked much greater violence in the North than in
the South. Nor should it be forgotten that while Brahmins have not pro-
tested violently, using exit rather than voice, there have been caste riots in
Tamil Nadu over the division of reservations. On the other hand, it is very
likely that the initial volume of hostility to Mandal will abate, as generally
happens, not because reservations are seen as "fair" but because they are
seen as inevitable. Avenues of escape will be opened up, the simplest being
to obtain a false certificate of one's caste; this is already widely done.
Another "lesson" sometimes drawn from South Indian history, if only
implicitly, is that caste disputes preclude communal (i.e., religious) ones.
But again, this is an illegitimate inference. If there have been fewer and
less violent communal riots in South India than in the North this is not
because caste disputes have taken the place of communal ones, as if the
sum of riots must be constant in India. The South differed form the North
long before caste reservations, and recent developments, including parti-

18. S. Guhan et al., "South India and Reservations: A Reply to Andre Beteille," Hindu,
October 27, 1990.

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 298 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXII, NO. 3, MARCH 1992

tion and unrest in the border states, have added to communal tensions in
the North.

Mandal and the Caste System

Mandalists make the paradoxical argument that caste reservations are
needed to destroy the caste system: in fact, some go so far as to assert that
this is the only way to destroy the caste system. This argument can be
traced to Ram Manohar Lohia, well known to be the guru not only of
Mandal himself but also of many politicians in the Janata Dal. The argu-
ment can be set out in the following propositions:

The caste system is the "largest single cause of the present material and spiritual
degeneration of the country."19
Caste is inextricably linked with occupation, and the hierarchy of caste corre-
sponds to the hierarchy of occupations. There may have been some weakening
of the connection between caste and occupation in the colonial period, but it
was mainly the upper castes with their monopoly of education who were able to
take up the new jobs, especially in the bureaucracy. Therefore, the caste system
will only disappear when the link between caste and occupation is cut.
And, finally, the only feasible way of breaking the connection is for govern-
ment to allocate jobs to the lower castes, and in particular those jobs tradition-
ally the preserve of the upper castes.20 Reservations are necessary because the
lower castes cannot compete on their own, perhaps for generations. "In matters
of trade, government services of superior grade, [and] political and military
leadership, the Dwijas [the "twice born" or upper castes] have acquired heredi-
tary abilities."21 (It is ironic that pro-Mandalists often accuse their opponents
of asserting that the upper castes are genetically superior, a statement found
currently only in their own texts.22)

This dialectical view of caste has been adopted by others too. Thus,
Rajni Kothari states: "If you want to bring caste to an end, provide more
reservations for the backwards." Moreover, Kothari extends this argu-
ment by asserting that Mandalism is part of "a great secular upsurge"; the
OBC group brings together not only all the lower castes but also the poor

19. Statement of Third National Conference of the Socialist Party, 1959, in Rammanohar
Lohia, The Caste System (Hyderabad: Nava Hind, 1964), p. 134.
20. In all fairness, one must add that the Lohiaites had other proposals for ending the
caste system. The 1961 End Caste Conference held in Patna declared that "the caste system
can only be destroyed when intercaste marriages become common." This also required gov-
ernment intervention-the conference demanded that "government jobs should be given only
to those who marry out of their caste," ibid., p. 139.
21. Ibid., pp. 134-35.
22. Thus, a Dalit paper supporting the claim of Jats, or the peasants of North India, to be
OBCs, states that Jats are Greeks and hence anti-Brahmin. Dalit Voice, cited in Business and
Political Observer, December 6, 1990.

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 DHARMA KUMAR 299

or "backward" of other religions, while at the same time it prevents

Hindus from acting as a solid bloc. "Caste, indeed, is the great seculariser
in a society being pulled apart by convoluted religions bent upon tearing
apart the social fabric."23 But caste conflicts may well be more divisive
than communal ones since there are far more Hindus than Muslims.
Kothari goes on to argue that the OBC movement is in fact a class conflict
in "India's indigenous context," with the implicit assumption that class
conflict is desirable. Three leading sociologists have characterized
Kothari's argument as "at best a partial truth and at worst an illusion. An
individual is a Maratha or a Koli in one context and a Hindu in an-
other."24 Thus, the same OBCs who fight for reservations and other offi-
cial benefits may well also fight Muslims over religious issues.25
The evidence so far is that caste consciousness is on the increase, and
new caste associations have been formed to demand reservations. Nor
does one need to cite "historical injustice"; one can also claim a reward for
historical services. A Union minister recently stated that the Wanjari
caste should be rewarded for its faithful service to the eighteenth-century
leader Shivaji.26
But perhaps the strangest contortions are those of the orthodox left.
Their position has long been that caste reservations will strengthen ethnic
interests and hence weaken class mobilization. This was why the Commu-
nist Party of India opposed OBC reservations earlier.27 The reasons given
for its change of line are half-hearted. Thus, Indrajit Gupta, while ex-
tending the party's "whole-hearted support" to the 27% reservations for
OBCs, added that "reservation by itself is not going to cure anything." He
did not consider whether it would make matters worse, except by implying
that they were pretty bad already: "I do not think that our administration

23. Rajni Kothari, "Caste and Politics: The Great Secular Upsurge," Times of India, Sep-
tember 28, 1990.
24. M. N. Srinivas, A. M. Shah, and B. S. Baviskar, "Kothari's Illusion of Secular Up-
surge," Times of India, October 17, 1990.
25. One "left" writer, M. S. S. Pandian, points out that "what is significant about the
Hindu Munnani [Hindu party] is that several of its local leaders and a large section of its
followers are drawn from powerful backward castes such as Thevars and Nadars." But his
conclusion is that the ruling party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, instead of "compro-
mising," must return to its former virulent anti-Brahminism, M. S. S. Pandian, "From Exclu-
sion to Inclusion: Brahminism's New Face in Tamil Nadu," Economic and Political Weekly,
August 1, 1990, pp. 1,938-39.
26. Times of India, December 19, 1990.
27. The CP of India did not support the Mandal Commission report when it first ap-
peared, arguing that reservations should be subject to ceilings on income "so that the affluent
sections do not grab the benefits of reservations." The West Bengal government, formed by
the CPI(M), has resisted caste-based reservations.

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 300 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXII, NO. 3, MARCH 1992

which is dominated by upper class people is a great model of honesty,

integrity, and all that."28

Cynicism About Merit and Reform

Perhaps the argument that infuriates Mandalists most is that reservations
militate against merit. Some of their objections are very similar to those
put forward elsewhere-for instance, that the "underprivileged" cannot
compete on equal terms. But there are two peculiarly Indian aspects to
this view. One, which we have already discussed, is the connection with
caste. The other-a very widespread view-is that systems of recruitment
and promotion are rotten anyway, so that Mandal recommendations will
have little or no effect on merit while they will aid social integration.
The view that selecting by merit is inegalitarian because the backward
cannot compete is standard radical discourse: "A Left position certainly
needs to recognise . . . that merit and efficiency are largely socially deter-
mined and therefore any consideration on merit alone works inherently
against the underprivileged."29 This statement, in fact, can apply to two
separate positions. The first is the question of moral desert- the "merito-
rious" do not deserve to be doctors, professors, or senior bureaucrats be-
cause they did not deserve their education or other advantages which gave
them "merit." The other position is that what is termed "merit" or "ineffi-
ciency" is an upper-class device for screening out the underprivileged, and
in fact, the qualities the latter has to offer are more conducive to any cor-
rect measure of merit. For example, it is frequently argued in India that
bureaucrats should be sympathetic to the needs of the rural poor, and
OBCs will "naturally" understand their needs better than Brahmins. V. P.
Singh, when prime minister, expressed this picturesquely: the present ex-
aminations tested only qualities of the head, not the heart. But he added
that not much merit was needed anyway since civil servants only had to
carry out orders.30 Elsewhere he has said the opposite-that the bureau-
cracy had to be representative because it rather than elected ministers
wielded real power.
A particularly Indian view is that the existing procedures of selection
and promotion are so corrupt or nepotistic that merit is irrelevant. If one
asks why better systems cannot be devised, one is told that the fact that

28. Lok Sabha debate, September 6, 1990. These are quotations from a preliminary synop-
sis for MPs. I attended the debate and heard Gupta say that as a communist he did not
believe in caste but had to recognize that "it was there." This statement, which does not
appear in the summary, is frequently made by leftists.
29. Aditya Nigam, "Mandal Commission and the Left," Economic and Political Weekly,
December 14, 1990, pp. 2,652-53.
30. Interviews in Times of India, September 29 and October 1, 1990.

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 DHARMA KUMAR 301

they have not been reformed so far is proof that they cannot be. This is
reinforced by the view that everything in India must inexorably deterio-
rate, a view apparently impervious to all evidence. Between 1968 and
1981, three separate technical committees were set up by the railways, two
to investigate the causes of railway accidents and a third to look into the
general working of the railways. All three found that the SC and ST reser-
vations, particularly in promotions, had a serious effect on staff morale;
one committee specifically attributed a large part of railway accidents to
low staff morale.31 There has been no serious discussion of these argu-
ments.
These positions have in my view little intellectual content, but they are
interesting indicators of the state of mind of Indian intellectuals today, a
dangerous combination of cynicism and impatience. For instance, all evi-
dence that things have improved for the lowest castes is brushed aside by
reciting the undeniable injustices that still exist. As recently as 1930, an
official commission that included the notable SC leader, B. R. Ambedkar,
while admitting that "there has been a great improvement in the treatment
of the Depressed Classes by Government officers in recent years and com-
plaints that they are kept out of law courts or Katcheris are rare," wanted
to add to the Government Servants Conduct Rules that "a Government
Officer is not permitted to refuse to take a paper from the hands of a per-
son or to hand it to him on the grounds that he belongs to a Depressed
Caste.32 Can one imagine an official daring to behave like this anywhere in
India today? But to point out that improvements have occurred is fre-
quently regarded as reactionary.
Cynicism also accounts for the view that all communities should be rep-
resented in the government, universities, and other institutions. This is
argued everywhere by those who believe in the importance of role models
but has special force in India for other reasons. If one points out that the
bureaucracy, universities, and hospitals are not meant to be representative
bodies but have other functions, Mandalists retort that whatever the the-
ory, the practice is quite different. If government subsidies or services are
to reach the OBCs, they must themselves be senior bureaucrats. Admit-
tedly, somewhat similar statements are occasionally made elsewhere-by
African Americans in the United States for example-but my contention is
that they are made with much greater force and frequency in India and are
not confined to the group seeking reservations.

31. "Job Reservation in Railways and Accidents," Indian Express, September 19, 1990.
32. Government of Bombay, Report of the Depressed Classes and Aboriginal Tribes Com-
mittee (Bombay Presidency: Bombay Government Press, 1930), pp. 56-57. This report is
considerably more intelligent than the Mandal Report, further evidence of the deterioration
of official discourse.

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 302 ASIAN SURVEY, VOL. XXXII, NO. 3, MARCH 1992

In conclusion, reservations for "backward" castes and other groups-

"freedom fighters," ex-servicemen, the "differently abled"-will undoubt-
edly spread. In the current political confusion, reservations seem to be one
safe way of getting votes. Moreover, many intellectuals, especially those
who would describe themselves as "progressive," support caste reserva-
tions with or without qualifications. This support has many elements-
long-standing belief in social engineering, cynicism about the quality of
administration and the possibilities of reforming it, and mysticism about
caste. But at least one element in this strange compound is already in the
process of breakdown-support for government intervention. Apart from
the worldwide loss of faith in dirigisme, the current financial crisis will
restrict the scope for expanding government employment.33 But that re-
stricts the attractions of reservations, and as more groups qualify for reser-
vations, diminishing political returns will set in anyway.
Moreover, reservations will be evaded: applicants for jobs and univer-
sity admissions will produce fake certificates of caste;34 students will go to
institutions without reservations (and people will set up institutions that
do not depend on government finance), or they will appear for non-col-
legiate examinations, as is already happening in South India. Indian soci-
ety has a high tolerance for evasion and humbug, but it can also change
more rapidly than intellectuals predict.

33. Employment in government bodies is higher in the four southern states where OBC
reservations have existed for a long time than in other states, I. Z. Bhatty, "Implications for
Government," Seminar, November 1990. Several official committees have pointed out that
overmanning is one of the chief reasons for the public sector's enormous losses.
34. The desire to get benefits that one is not entitled to also leads people to identify them-
selves wrongly to census enumerators, Sharad Kulkarni, "Distortion of Census Data on
Scheduled Tribes," Economic and Political Weekly, February 2, 1991, pp. 205-208. It will be
interesting to see the effects on the 1991 census.

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