Re: Reviewing the Manifesto : I

["Tiwari, Umesh K" <UKTiwari@pcgb.com>]

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http://www.indiapolicy.org/lists/india_policy/2000/Feb/msg00106.html

Dear Sanjeev, 

Inter caste killings do take place in some parts of India (in fact to call
it inter-caste opens it up for a much wider (mis) interpretation then the
extent to which facts go along). Yes the history of Bhagalpur in Bihar where
lower caste people don't have a right to go to temples or draw water from
public well, which is reserved for the so called upper caste, they do get
killed over small things, and sometimes kill in retaliation. Ranvir Sena of
the upper caste Landlords and People's War Group represented by tribal are
the examples people go by while narrating caste based killings.

It is easy to determine that it is not the job reservation (I am sure all of
the locals irrespective of their caste would like to have a job, through
reservation or otherwise), but the deep rooted social backwardness and
perpetuated wrong teachings within that backward society, coupled with
complicated relations of upper caste landowners and traditionally practiced
slavery are the reasons behind what's happening in cases like these. 

To call it a caste problem and pretending to fix it by discriminating on the
basis of castes on government jobs is a proven failed policy on two
accounts:

1. It assumes that all jobs are controlled by the government, and so the
government should have the sole authority to decides who gets employed, not
on the basis of merit and business requirement but on the basis of what
caste the individual belongs to. 
  
	This policy will leave almost everybody unemployed cuz obviously
market reforms don't give much choice to the government to keep expanding
its inefficient machinery at the pace of exploding population growth even
within the so called reserved caste. There are valid arguments against
government imposing caste based discrimination policy on people who refuse
to believe in caste system.

	Also, such a policy has already started complicating the situation
with people who change their religion, get converted to say, Christianity,
and then demand to keep their rights as "Dalit Christians". Disparate people
seem to be stepping over each other to avail some benefits justly or
otherwise, while the issues such policies intend to address, remain
unresolved, or get even worse in places where there were no caste
discrimination earlier, but introduced by the government thanks to its caste
based reservation policy.

2. Such a policy talks loudly with generalities such as caste, terming one
lower or upper, dividing people for petty political gains, while the actual
perpetrators of the heinous crimes such as killings go unpunished by hiding
behind their caste label, and that label packs so many voters together, that
no politician can dare punish such criminals, and the suffering of peace
loving citizens goes on. 

I think discriminatory treatment of citizens, such as one group not allowing
another to visit a place of worship, or draw water from a public well, or
force one individual group to work a sweepers on the basis of caste, or
resort to violence ought to be treated as violation of rights of one group
of citizens by other individuals or group of individuals. This should be
clearly taken as crime against citizens or society and nation, and just as
soon as individual cases name victims and perpetrator of a crime or crimes,
the issue goes out of political arena and becomes manageable. The
government, and law enforcement agencies and judiciary must be provided with
laws that function as tools to handle such issues without forcing the
judiciary to be partial or judgmental about one side or other on the basis
of individual beliefs, caste, religion or anything else. Killers must get no
mercy, and face strongest possible punishment by the law and no explanation
of caste or otherwise should be entertained. Similarly, those who violate
individual's rights to visit places of worship, or stop others from making
proper use of a public utility, must face punishment under the law.

If the law is broken or weak, of the police system is corrupt and
inefficient, or if the judiciary is dysfunctional, then job reservation is a
bad way to fix these problems, we are simply looking at the wrong place.

The only way a reservation is justified, and again, there can be no time
limit on phasing out such a reservation, would be on the basis of
socio-economic conditions, and only improvements of such conditions should
be the reasons to take away the benefits and nothing else, and we can
certainly build incentives for the people to come out of such a government
handout. 

Mentioning caste to fix socio-economic condition of individual families
smacks of caste bias on the part of government, and the very intention of
such a policy is suspect. 

In order to replace the existing reservation policy, I do agree there has to
be a major departure, and phasing out if you will, of this caste based
reservation system. In my opinion, this can be done overnight by not taking
away reservation from those who rightly benefit from the system right now,
but only by changing the definition of the reason why such people qualify
for preferential treatment from the government, and deleting every mention
of the term "caste" from the policy, by an amendment clearly saying use of
such a term was unconstitutional.

The moment you take the term "caste" away from the policy, you start making
real progress. 

Umesh


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