Defeating the purpose - caste based reservations

Note: This is an old article i didn't  publish. But seeing the relevance of the debate I'm publishing it without modifications.

Last I heard UPA government has included Jats in the central OBC lists, in other places such as Uttar Pradesh many OBC castes are trying to enlist themselves as SC, many SCs are trying to get into ST. Indeed there is a premium on backwardness, everyone is trying to prove how terribly backward they are. And for all these there exists a robust intellectual support,  reservations and quotas are variously described as tools for social justice, egalitarian society, caste-less society ad nauseam. Opposing such policies on grounds of merit, efficiency, fairness immediately casts you as upper caste stooge and a reactionary manuvadi.  The question is from when all these started? What are the justifications advanced and the issues with them? The story predates independence and has roots in 19^th century reform movements. In this article it’s my aim to show hollowness of the whole theory of caste reservations. On the face of it the issue is eminently common sensical to anyone why shouldn’t there be caste based reservations but it’s instructive to see how elaborate constructions and topsy-turvy logic was employed to justify communal reservations. There are various steps in the whole saga, and the elaborate web is established in the end.

Ethnicisation of caste 

Jyotirao Phule (late 19^th century) was the pioneer of the process, and subsequent caste movement leaders have accepted one or the other form of the ethinicised notion of caste. Its origins lie further afar, in British historiography. The Britons gave a theory of Aryan invasion, the theory was advanced that there are two races in India one invader Aryans and other native Dravidians. Some 4000 years ago Aryans invaded India from northwest. This pushed the peace loving native Dravidians into peninsular India. Britishers advanced this history to justify their invasion. But in the hands of Jyotirao Phule (the pioneer of lower caste movement) the theory was leveraged to serve another purpose, it was held that the Aryans are upper caste/Brahmins and the Dravidians and natives were lower castes, that Aryans invaded the natives and enslaved them. In south India this theory was used to foster a full fledge anti-Bramhin movement in the beginning of the 20^th century. The result of this process was that caste was given an ethnic identity like a race or like a linguistic group. This ethnicisation surved its purpose quite well, it united lower castes against upper castes, it gave them pride and confidence in their original superiority.

How this helped justify caste-based quotas? Well, in USA for example blacks are an ethnic group and they were given affirmative action based on their race…the similarity logic dictates that since caste too is an ethnic group like a race, affirmative action in India too should be given on basis of castes. There are grave issues with this. One, the Aryan invasion theory has been totally discarded now and sociologists don’t consider any racial difference between upper and lower castes, there is so much of interbreeding that it’s almost useless to talk of race and ethnicity so far as castes are concerned. Two, unlike race caste is a chosen identity that is one can’t choose to become white or black but one can choose what caste he wants. This is a crucial difference which we will explore in the next section of sanskritisation. 

Sanskritisation

Secular status(economic status) of a caste is one thing and ritual status(place of caste in the varna hierarchy) is another. Of course inevitably there is a convergence between secular rank and ritual rank of a caste, which means the caste having higher power/wealth will be higher in varna hierarchy or vice versa.

The sanskritization means whenever opportunity is afforded(i.e. economic wealth) lower caste will claim higher varna status and might eventually get one. The Indian Varna system is characterized by this fluidity of sanskritization throughout the history, castes moved up and down through the hierarchy. Take for example the Gupta dynasty- the Guptas were vaishyas when the dynasty was founded but once having acquired power they bestowed grants to the Brahmin priests and the priests in turn bestowed Kshatriya status to Guptas. Or when a person used to be punished and made an outcaste he would likely land up as an untouchable. This understanding makes the whole conception of caste rigidity a hollow claim, the rigid and unchanging caste system was a colonial conception and to a great extent colonial product, the subsequent scholarship has proven it wrong. Our reservation thinking depended much on this outdated conception of rigidity of caste system, we assumed that a depressed caste must be depressed for thousands of years and on that basis demand affirmative action to correct a perceived historical wrong. But no such claim to historical deprivation can be made, we don’t know where the particular caste were some hundred years ago.
This process of sanskritization has a crucial significance for the whole debate, it means that the primary determinant for social deprivation is economical/secular not ritual. The lower ritual status might limit the opportunities available for the deprived caste in a short term and a vicious cycle may begin wherein lower ritual status gives lower economic status and which in turn perpetuates lower ritual status. But when it comes to break the chain, the secular status is most important as it’s the genesis of ritual status of a caste.  That means if you generate economic opportunities for the lower castes (through affirmative action or whatever), the caste will eventually rise in the varna hierarchy. There are evidence from history that the whole vaishya varna was created this way during later vedic period. The texts belonging to early vedic period has negligible mention of vaishyas, but the later vedic texts mentions vaishyas profusely.  Sanskritization applies to individual as well as caste, that means whole caste goes up in the hierarchy through collective action and lobbying. What happened 4000 years ago, has continued to happen till the 19^th century. And since the independence the whole process has freezed, the caste structure has become as rigid as we currently believe. The reason is simple, caste based reservations. The caste-quotas have effectively stopped the process of sanskritization because it creates a disincentive for going up in the verna hierarchy. No dalit caste would want to become Bramhin because that would deprive them of the state entitlements. Social stigma for dalits remain because that’s how Hinduism has evolved in last 4k years, you can’t change a religion that way no matter how strong the religious reform movement is. Hinduism is institutionally fluid enough that it can accept a rich dalit as a Bramhin, but not so fluid to respect dalit as a dalit.  This problem is compounded by the fact that quota lowers the eligibility standards, so if a rich dalit becomes a doctor even if he gets fewer marks the perception among upper caste remains that dalits are intellectually inferior and therefore can’t compete with open category even if materially well-off. 

In the view of the above discussion it’s not difficult to guess what will happen if affirmative action is solely based on economic criteria, slowly lower castes settle themselves into vaishya varna. The untouchable castes will become defunct because the traditional occupations allocated to them will no more be relevant in a modern, industrial world(for example manual scavenging will vanish and with it the caste too will vanish).  This path to social justice will undoubtedly sound appalling to many who wants caste as a unit of entitlements.  Why? Here the concept of ethnicization of caste we discussed above will play spoil sport. The ethnicization movement has instilled a sense of pride among lower castes qua lower castes, the term ‘dalit’ is proudly proclaimed. But as I discussed above this ethnicity-centred concept of caste is completely spurious,  caste is not natural but cultural.
Just as people doing manual labour would move out of manual labour on first opportunity without thinking about glory of manual labour, caste too behaves similarly.  Besides this sense of pride in dalithood is mostly a fashion among dalit elite only, the dalit masses who faces discrimination on a day to day basis will escape the stigma at first opportunity provided.  I personally know instances where people feel ashamed of identifying themselves as dalits. You will see lots of ex-untouchables adopting upper caste surname, this people except for the benefit of reservation would easily change their caste forever.

In the above discussion I tried to show why the caste qutas fail to achieve its desired goal of a society without a horizontal caste structure without hierarchies. But I would also show that caste quotas are not only ineffective but positively pernicious and in the remaining part of the article I would try to demonstrate that.
Impossibility of a caste-less society :- 

Even if we assume that caste-quotas will eventually prove effective tools to social justice, it will at best achieve a society with horizontal caste structure (i.e. castes without hierarchies), NOT a caste-less society. Under the current model the caste-less society is an impossibility. Since benefits are bestowed on caste basis the caste identities has strengthened instead of weakened. The only difference between old structure and new structure will be that while older castes were dominated by ritual rules, new ones will be political ones. That would be like jumping from a well into an abyss albeit a shallower one.  SC, ST, OBC labels have already become synonymous with caste labels. On the other hand quotas on secular criterion will very soon achieve casteless society, take the example of castes within general category(or for that matter SC category) the discrimination and animosity among various castes that constitute general category has diminished greatly. In fact within this four broad political categories the caste has become virtually absent except in case of marriage.

Moral of the story. caste has lost its ritual sheen and has become political. SC,ST,OBC etc are political labels. within these labels caste system is breaking already. Except for the perverse incentives set by our reservation system, these new found casteism too would vanish.

The creamy layer hawks

Within each reservation category there exist a creamy layer consisting of most resourceful people. This creamy layer eats up all the benefits meant for the poor among them. The entitlements never reach those for whom the reservations are there in the first place. The creamy layer is quite conscious of its hegemonic interests, on one hand they mobilize people in the name of caste and demand benefits and on the other hand steadfastly oppose any attempt to exclude the creamy layers in order to secure their interests. This creates a perverse structure such that no matter how much resources you give for affirmative action the overall situations of the targeted group as a whole is bound to remain poor. And this has been the unfortunate case so far in India.

Democracy at stake

The caste politics has given us a democratic landscape dotted by power brokers. People vote en-masse on caste lines, elect leaders from their own caste only. The medieval ties of caste loyalties are exploited by this power brokers. This is quite unlike say a labour union, voting collectively to advance their interest, the union is built with a rational participation by the individual based on the past experience of benefits/harms in acting as a labour bloc. Caste is different, there is no rationality behind caste loyalty except a medieval outlook, the costs of doing this are higher and benefits are flimsy.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that democracy has thrived in India not despite caste-system but because of it, the caste system has co-opted the whole idea of a liberal democracy diluting its quality in the process. 
Sapping social harmony and nation building

Caste-conflicts have acquired all the characteristics of a religious conflicts.  Riots, politics, mutual animosity etc. The society is divided and that makes collective effort difficult.
Retarded industrialisation/urbanisation

Indisputably urbanization and industrialisation are two powerful forces that can flatten even the most rigid of the feudal structures. Urbanization in particular is the solvent of castes. It doesn’t require genius to notice caste system is considerably weekend in urban area than in rural areas.

But this processes are retarded by caste politics over reservations. Private universities are resisted because private sector has no quotas. Privatisation of loss making PSUs are fiercely resisted because PSUs have reservations and private entities don’t. It is also true that the power broker elite is more comfortable with rural masses than urban ones because its rural society where this brokers can have a sound grip, naturally its in their long term interest to retard urbanisation.