The Hindu Business Line : <I>Reservation conflagration</I>

The reservations issue is a genie: When it is in the bottle it does not stir and can, in fact spawn a complacency which is totally misleading. People tend to forget that it is an issue at all.

But when, for some reason or the other, the bottle is uncorked and the genie gets out, recent history has shown that it invariably causes social havoc before it is forced into the bottle once again.

In fact, this is precisely what is happening now, and there is reason to apprehend that things will not die down before more disruption is caused in Indian society.

This is an observed fact as also the phenomenon that the act of uncorking the bottle is more often than not done by politicians who have narrow, momentary political interests in mind.

It will, of course, be argued that the observation is faulty per se because it negates any sincere attempt by politicians and political parties to improve the social status of the backward and historically depressed constituents of Indian society, which is not something that can be supported by any responsible citizen of the republic.

The larger question

As a narrow argument the point is justified, but the larger question is: Would a responsible politician ever venture to raise the issue in public with a strident demand to increase quotas for the historically depressed and backward sections of society when he or she knows well enough that the consequences for the nation could be traumatic before the fire ignited by the demand subsides?

Seen differently, would a conscientious politician visit a riot-prone area and deliberately provoke one section knowing full well what the social consequences would be?

This, in fact, is precisely what has happened in the present case, the politician in question being a senior Minister in the UPA Government who, it is widely surmised, has used the quota weapon to camouflage an attempt to settle a personal score within his own party. Not surprisingly, after letting the genie out of the bottle — leading to law and order problems across the country — he now insists that the matter is out of his hands and is in those of the Cabinet and the Prime Minister.

There is no doubt at all that such behaviour on the part of Ministers — and a senior one at that — smacks of a sense of political and social irresponsibility which should have no place in an India which is all set to challenge the world on the economic battlefield.

There is nothing wrong with a sensible reservations policy, but to try to implement one without the help of circumspection and political maturity would tantamount to deliberately taking a burning match-stick close to a tinderbox waiting to set the nation on fire.

Ranabir ray Choudhury

More Stories on : Politics | Education | View Point | Social Welfare

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Beware the volatility

Telecom: A revolution in progress

Of farmer suicides and wheat situation

Blood-curdling

Reservation conflagration

Education reform, a better bet than quotas

Is some more test of metal due?

Leveraging the human capital

Youth power

Equity market