Gehlot's genie is leading us on a merry dance. Having decided that a pitch for a 14 per cent job quota for the economically backward among the upper castes would be the best way to fend off all criticism about his indifferent record of governance, the Rajasthan chief minister has provided an electoral road map for other political entities in search of silver bullet solutions. Not only has the ever-excitable BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, responded to Ashok Gehlot’s challenge by promising a commission to reserve jobs for the poor among upper castes and Muslims, the Union Cabinet has just been convinced about the need to expand the list of Other Backward Castes in order to bring more communities under the Mandal umbrella.We would, of course, have had no quarrel with this show of social concern were it not for the fact that it is so obviously and cynically crafted with an eye on elections. For instance, as political commentators have pointed out, the second largest number of additions to the OBC list is with respect to Delhi, which is going to the polls by the end of this year. In any case, with the general election to follow the year after, the ruling coalition is clearly focused on expanding its vote bank through reservations. Some may argue that there is nothing wrong with this, that in a democracy electoral promises must reflect the social aspirations of diverse communities. But, hold on, is this genuine democratic articulation or just lip service to an ideal? Given the Supreme Court-directed ceiling of 50 per cent reservations, this is about slicing the existing pie into ever finer slivers. We may then end up handing over notional reservation to more and more communities even as its impact in terms of bringing about a decisive transformation in these communities get less and less obvious. There’s the other danger of the criteria governing such entitlements being made irrelevant, which would ultimately result in undermining the very concept of reservations. All we will be left with then are “quotable quotas”, reservations that can be waved about on campaign platforms like a flag.It will be difficult to reverse this reservation trend, seeing the surge of political energy accompanying it. Certainly an editorial like this one is not going to make a great difference. We can only hope that, sooner or later, voters will see through these quick fix games and punish parties who seek to mislead them by making a mockery of important policy measures. Maybe they have already begun this process. Remember how Rajnath Singh, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, came up with reservations for a new category — the most backward castes among the OBCs and scheduled castes— and got an electoral walloping for his pains?
