Reservation (Proportional Rep) Is Not Just an Ethics Issue! It Is a System Design Issue
Once up on a time, in a forest, lived a stork and a fox.
The fox was a trickster. The stork may have been migratory, but it did make the lake on the east side of the forest its seasonal home. Perhaps, this may even be the stork who had saved the fox from a painful death by removing a fishbone stuck in its throat. The fox had been less than satisfactory in showing its gratitude, so it decided to make up for that lapse, and if possible, salvage its reputation, by inviting the stork to its home for a drink.
The stork accepted.
The fox, delighted, made all the preparations. The stork arrived, anticipating a fine night of drink and games. Its host welcomed it with joy. The drink was served. Prepared with the finest ingredients gathered from the remotest parts of the forest. Some even, it was said, came from lands far away that the stork had visited in its flights, but the fox had only heard of.
There was only one problem.
The drink was served in a shallow basin. With its long beak, the stork could not partake of the drink.
Was this a joke?
Maybe. The fox did have a reputation, after all.
Or maybe, the fox just did not know how to serve the stork. Even the ingredients of the drink, itself praised so much, may, for all the stork knew, could have been dangerous to it.
Whatever the reason, the stork was left with a parched throat as the fox sat by and drank to its heart’s content, humming with pleasure at the delight that was the drink.
If only the stork had had a say in how the fox prepared and served the drink. It could have told the fox in advance that it could not drink from a shallow basin.
If only…
That makes sense even in a human context, doesn’t it? People with different abilities, needs, and cultures would not be able to cater to those of people unlike them in backgrounds and bodily needs. They would not have the requisite knowledge. If that ignorance is combined with prejudice, as in the case of fox with the stork, then what is systemic could also be deliberate. In such conditions, how do you ensure an equitable distribution of power and resources? Isn’t it only reasonable that the fox and the stork should make decisions together?
Yet, whenever the question of reserving proportional seats in the levers of government (at least) and enterprise (reasonable but resisted) comes up, the spectre of merit is raised. The decision should be made based only on merit people say; mostly, not always, people of dominant castes, religions, colours, regions, sexualities, gender expressions, and cultures.
Why is that?
Have you heard of the Ilbert Bill?
It was introduced in colonial India in 1883 and allowed native officials of the countryside (country mofussils) to judge cases involving white Europeans.
The rural Anglo Indians (white English who were settled in the subcontinent) did not like it. How could they? The privileges that they had considered exclusive to them were being eroded. They campaigned against it and the Viceroy who supported it, Lord Ripon. There were cartoons and polemics printed in local English newspapers. The ladies (the English ones, lest there be any doubt) boycotted any social event that Ripon and government servants who supported the bill participated in. Fears were raised of a high-born English lady, a gentle born English woman, being subject to the uncultured questioning of an ill-mannered native.
The bill was diluted, and Ripon returned to England in ignominy.1
This, despite the merit of the natives who would have been affected: who had had the wherewithal to get a Western education, sit for the civil service examination in London (unlike the lesser endowed and lesser born who couldn’t afford to make the trip), and all before the ripe old age of nineteen.
Or perhaps, they did not have it. Merit. They were, after all, not English. The English civil servants were majestically capable of hearing cases despite not understanding the language the petitioners spoke in. While not having an iota of knowledge of the law. Natives were hardly that meritorious.2
Whatever the English concept of merit, the natives disagreed with the idea that they did not have it.
You know the story (I hope). Indian National Congress was set up in 1885 by English educated Indians under the aegis of A.O Hume who had supported the Ilbert Bill. They used various means to agitate and advocate for better representation for the natives in the management of their own affairs. They asked to have the maximum age for ICS increased and to have the exams held in India (Consider the gall. To ask for special concessions instead of striving on an equal footing like a wellborn Englishman). Some like Gopal Krishna Gokhale had the temerity to protest when Lord Curzon the Viceroy created a commission to study the problems in University education, filled it with non-native members (why in heaven’s name would you look at the nationality of the commission members? Would not someone think of merit?), and then proceeded to create an Act (the 1904 Universities Act) out of it.3 Simon’s commission was protested too; for not including any natives (among other things). Simon was asked to go back.
Imagine! Asking for reservation in as varied places as exploratory commissions, legislature, and other governance structures! Instead of rightly letting the meritorious English govern in the proper manner. Asking for universal education!
After that what? Self-governance?
This when the British had already been kind enough to let some natives serve in the administration, as long as they remained committed to good British values.4
In any case, those upstarts did not listen to reason; and between protests and activism, British overextension, the imperial ambitions of other European nations, and the ultimate collision of such forces in WWII, the natives did manage to wrangle self-governance for themselves. The British left with dire predictions for the future of this country.
But that was not the worst of it.
There were people a few rungs down the hierarchy demanding even more.
There were Jotirao Phule and his wife Savitribai Phule in Maharashtra educating girls and fighting for anti-castiest reform in Hindu religion despite deep condemnation from the much more meritorious and knowledgeable upper castes.5
There were people like Ayyankali6 and many more protesting against the discriminatory right of way provisions in Kerala where people of the oppressed castes could not use roads in front of temples, or walk abreast with upper castes (if a brahmin or nair—who were below brahmins in the scheme of things—comes along, they have to walk back, sometimes for half a mile or more, until they find a place to step aside; or they have to step into water or mud, at all times maintaining a few feet distance from the dominant caste person). There were women refusing to pay taxes (called mulakaccha karam) for having the chutzpa to wear blouses. There were Sri Narayana Guru and others establishing temples that declared that there was only one caste.
In the twentieth century Maharashtra, there was Dr. B R Ambedkar who was working for the upliftment of Dalits (including their right to drink from a communal well).7 Rationalist Periyar was leading similar fights in Tamil Nadu.
Just like the English and white Europeans knew that they had their god given (and later, nature given) right to govern the uncouth natives, so did the brahmins and other dvija (and at times, savarna) castes across South Asia know that they were cleaner, purer, and more meritorious than the oppressed castes, and thus, the only people who should be allowed to draw water from communal village wells or go into sacred temples. Or get an education and work in government services.
Unlike the Swaraj won by the ‘natives’, there seems to be no Swaraj won by the non-Dvijas (in many regions), non-Savarnas (in almost all regions), and the non-Hindus (most regions). Instead of an equal representation of the population in the institutional framework that holds up this society, we find a minority majority system. In, legislature, executive, judiciary (at the federal, state and district level), in government at the level of cities, towns, and panchayats, in law enforcement, educational institutions (not just in the student body but the faculty and administration as well), among hospitals and medical staff (including administration and ownership), business community, and of course among the people who do the least wanted of the jobs—keeping our public places clean (and not just public)—where do we find the Avarnas, the Shudras, the Muslims, especially the poorest among them (the non-Ashrafs), and the Dvija women?
Let us look at some of these areas, shall we?
The Parliament and the Cabinet of Ministers: What percentage of it is men? How many of them are SC men? How many STs? How many SC and ST women are represented? How many OBC women? How many Muslims? Sikhs? Other religions?8
The Supreme Court: What percentage of it is men? How many are women? How are the various castes and religions represented? The various regions?9
How about the people who do the cleaning up? Karmacharis? Sweepers? Asha workers?
Who are among the construction workers? “Informal” sector?10
Who are the prisoners including under trials?11
Who has the wealth and who doesn’t? (Don’t look at anecdata.12 Look at the percentage).13
Who is in the mainstream media?14 Education?15 Who lives where?16
What about the civil service and law enforcement? IAS17 and IPS?18 And state administration and police services?
Now, tell me. Who is ruling and who is the ruled?
If there is no data available, who does that benefit? Who does it benefit not to record the caste or religion of people who benefit most from the society?19
Perhaps the stork’s story is too simplistic and a cautionary tale for children. But is the reality of our society so different?
Consider the many Adivasis who find their livelihoods and their abodes trashed for mining, cultivation, and deforestation, leading to both humanitarian and environmental disasters.
Consider the Dalit and OBC students who had to listen to their teacher at IIT Kharagpur calling them bloody bastards for not standing up for the national anthem played during a zoom meeting (who plays national anthem during classes?).20
Consider certain castes and tribes who ware regularly hurt during festivals such as Holi or Diwali because of their antagonistic relationship to the stories celebrated (or because they have been ill-treated during these festivals).
Consider the stories—both legendary and historical—that we tell each other. What makes the caste Hindus think that it is only their stories of Durga or Mahisha or Holika that matter and not the legends and stories told by the people who think of Ravana as their tribal leader, Mahisha as a long-lost king, or Hiranyakashipu21 as a clan chief? (Yes, there are such stories. As Malayalees have stories of their long lost king Mahabali; though many people including Amit Shah insist that it is not Mahabali who we must celebrate but Vamana.)
How much do our school textbooks, histories as well as stories, give credence to the tales of the marginalized? Where are the achievements of the marginalized celebrated?22
You say that people should be judged on their merit and not on their caste, gender, class or religion. Is that possible in a society that already judges everyone based on their caste, gender, class, religion, region, sexuality, or a combination of some or all of these characteristics? In which the stories we hear in school and out of it are only those of the dominant cultures, regions, sexualities, genders, and castes?
Would it be easy for folks marginalized because of any of these, or many of these characteristics, having to contend with the iniquities and prejudices in the system and culture (and most often, their economic status) to gain a position that would make a difference?
Leave all that. Reflect on the following question. Say whenever people talk of reserving proportional seats for marginalised in government (all levels and levers not just elected folks who do have to cater to people) and enterprise, your reaction is “what about merit?” Are you saying that there are no people of merit among the marginalized? Not even the small numbers to form part of the government? Why do you think that? When you see that IITs and IIMs do not have proportional representation and that even the reserved seats for faculty and students are not filled and your assumption is that there were no applicants of merit: Are you saying that SC/ST/OBC (of any religion) do not have even a few thousand people of merit, education, and interest among them? From among millions and tens or hundreds of millions of people?
Eh. Throw out the question. You are actually saying that.
Please reflect then. After 74 years of mostly dominant caste and religion rule, where have we gone wrong that the oppressed castes, religions (especially Muslims in many places), and genders are still worse off in the social hierarchy (that there is a hierarchy at all)? That in the past seven years, in fact, their condition has worsened.23
What meritorious conduct is this?
A meritorious service that serves only the dominant?
You, dear person, have a very strange idea of merit.
Or the system is designed as such.
Perhaps, reservation, proportional representation, applied effectively, is a necessary (not sufficient) condition for a reconstruction on more equitable lines.24
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Notes:
Chaudhuri, Nupur. Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.04617. EPUB.
Metcalf, Barbara D., and Thomas R. Metcalf. “Revolt, the Modern State, and Colonized Subjects, 1848–1885.” Chapter. In A Concise History of Modern India, 3rd ed., 92–122. Cambridge Concise Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139207805.008.
Metcalf and Metcalf. “Civil Society, Colonial Constraints, 1885–1919.” In A Concise History…, 3rd ed., 123–66.
See above. Read the whole book. I do have some disagreements with it but on the whole it gives you a, well, concise history of Modern India. :)
Pawar, Urmila, and Meenakshi Moon. 2008. We Also Made History. New Delhi: Zubaan.
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/diversity-in-india-s-ministries-from-nehru-to-modi-1559721774887.html Note: Diverse in terms of caste (most number of SC/ST represented) but not in terms of religion, region, or gender. The Upper Caste representation has gone up. Per Capita wealth also, interestingly, has gone up. Given that UC rep is more than their incidence in the population (55%), I am assuming OBC and Shudras whose data is not available, took a hit. As did Muslims and other religions.
I got this word from Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s twitter. I would recommend reading her book Disordered Cosmos for Physics (esp.) with a glimpse into systemic injustice in physics.
Fonseca, António Filipe, Sohhom Bandyopadhyay, Jorge Louçã, and Jaison Manjaly. 2019. “Caste in the News: A Computational Analysis of Indian Newspapers.” Social Media + Society. URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305119896057
https://theprint.in/india/governance/of-89-secretaries-in-modi-govt-there-are-just-3-sts-1-dalit-and-no-obcs/271543/ See also: https://www.edexlive.com/news/2020/aug/04/upsc-2019-results-of-829-selected-94-ews-28-obc-156-sc-and-8-st-13663.html For Muslims, this. Only 5% compared to 14% population. And how does that work for promotions in a prejudiced system? If you are wondering about women, see here and here.
https://livewire.thewire.in/campus/iit-kharagpur-professor-abuse-student-caste/ See this article as well on caste discrimination in IITS.
https://www.kractivist.org/why-do-we-say-no-to-holi-a-guide-to-challenge-casteism/ On Vamana, Mahabali, and Amit Shah, see here. And for tribes and people who worship Ravana, see here. Mahisha, here.