Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: November 20, 2006
Ever since Human Resource Development Minister
Arjun Singh decided that brazenness was the only road to relevance, quotas
and reservations have come to dominate the social agenda of the Congress Party
and, by implication, the UPA Government.
Having lost out in the initial rounds of the
war, fought more than a decade ago, for the allegiance of the `backward classes'-
the euphemism for Other Backward Castes-the Congress appears to have concluded
that it doesn't pay to persist with a single-minded projection of itself as
a pan- Indian force that is above sectarianism.
The shift to identity politics was not merely
occasioned by the churning which followed Vishwanath Pratap Singh's decision
to re-define the terms of engagement.
The decimation of the Congress' traditional
support among Dalits in Uttar Pradesh by the Bahujan Samaj Party and the inroads
into its tribal vote by the Bharatiya Janata Party forced the party to recognise
that the dynastic appeal of the Nehru-Gandhi family had to be complemented
by solid caste and community-based support.
In the 1970s and early- 1980s, Indira Gandhi
had tried to create alternative identity-based networks in Gujarat, Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra but some of these had become a casualty
of Rajiv Gandhi's noble but unsuccessful bid to transform the Congress into
a modern, corporatised party.
Rajiv's inability to handle the caste-based
assaults of regional parties and the Hindu mobilisation of the BJP wasn't
because he lacked the political touch. That would be too facile an explanation.
Rajiv over-estimated the autonomous appeal of the modernist impulse.
Since India was changing at a bewildering
pace, it was naturally assumed that the mindset of voters would keep pace
with the shifts. In retrospect, Rajiv's miscalculation mirrored the BJP's
2004 folly of assuming that India's growing economic clout would automatically
generate satisfaction for the incumbent.
On reflection, the Congress probably knows
it is extremely lucky to be back in power at the Centre. There is little evidence
to suggest that its emergence as the largest party in the 14th Lok Sabha was
due to its success in building up a viable social coalition.
Indeed, had it not been for the BJP's strategic
miscalculation of India Shining, fierce anti-incumbency in two southern states,
a Muslim consolidation triggered by the Gujarat riots and some deft alliances
in the states, the Congress may still have been languishing in the Opposition
benches.
The Congress didn't win the 2004 general election;
the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance lost it. With time, the recognition
that the 2004 outcome was produced by the follies of its opponents has disappeared
from the collective thinking of the Congress. With the BJP preoccupied with
finding its inner soul, the belief that the Congress is there for a long haul
has resurfaced.
The deification of Sonia Gandhi and the perceived
"good man" image of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have simultaneously
bred complacency and adventurism. The crisis of statecraft that produced the
spectacular crisis in Delhi over "sealing" and the Government's
singular inability faith in its ability to tackle jihadi terrorism are just
some examples of incompetence bred by complacency.
It took the Prime Minister nearly a whole
year to appoint a new External Affairs Minister to succeed the discredited
K. Natwar Singh and more than two years of blundering incompetence hasn't
proved sufficient to secure Shivraj Patil's departure from the Home Ministry.
Unable to successfully negotiate the trip-wires
of day-to-day governance, the Congress has fallen back on populism and adventurism.
For the past six months or so, not a day has passed without the Congress or
its allies floating one scheme after another to extend the gamut of quotas
and reservations.
First, there was Arjun Singh's successful
bulldozing of the scheme to reserve 49 per cent of all seats in higher education.
Then, sundry ministers chipped in with a threat of legislation to extend quotas
to the private sector. The scheme, which has been opposed by the private sector
in unison, has been shelved till the middle of 2007 when, presumably, it will
be packaged as a poll issue.
Thirdly, the Women's Reservation Bill, seeking
to reserve one-third of all legislatures for women, is understood to be taken
up for deliberation in the winter session of Parliament- a debate calculated
to widen the fissures in the ruling coalition.
And finally, the coming days will witness
the discussions on the Rajinder Sachar committee report on the status of minorities.
The report will show that the socio-economic
plight of Muslims has fallen below that of Dalits and that there is an urgent
need to initiate some form of affirmative action to ensure that India's largest
minority is not left behind in the rat race.
The Sachar report may or may not suggest reservations
for Muslims in education and government jobs-there is still the ticklish issue
of dealing with a sceptical Supreme Court-but there is no doubt that the indices
of backwardness will be seized upon by Muslim organisations to press for communal
quotas.
There is a belief in the Congress that the
entire debate on reservations will assist the party politically. Apart from
triggering a forwards- versus-the-rest polarisation which was witnessed last
summer across the campuses, the Congress expects all the potential beneficiaries
to see the party as its natural saviour. With a clutch of extremely ambitious
welfare schemes, notably the Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, under its
belt the Congress hopes to recreate a variant of the populist constituency
that gave Indira Gandhi her great victory in 1971.
There is of course one crucial difference:
the Congress today hopes to persuade a vibrant private sector to be a co-partner
in this social engineering exercise. It's a too-clever-by-half approach. While
it is extremely unlikely that the Congress will be able to push forward its
agenda of Muslim reservation and quotas in the private sector, its initiatives
are certain to generate a counter-mobilisation of the aggrieved.
Experience suggests that while beneficiaries
of affirmative action don't necessarily rise up in solidarity- V.P. Singh
found this to his cost in the 1991 election-those who nurture grievances act
with silent determination. Not being a cadre party, unlike the CPI(M) which
consolidated the beneficiaries of land reforms in West Bengal, the Congress
will not be in a position to offset the impression that its reckless populism
brought a measure of chaos and slowed down India's dream run to prosperity.
The likes of Arjun Singh believe that the
problem can be overcome by doling out generous sops to Muslims and redefining
the very basis of the post-1947 consensus against communal quotas. Having
Muslims on its side helps the Congress build an assured base and puts the
BJP at an initial disadvantage in some 150 Lok Sabha constituencies. However,
as the recent municipal polls in Uttar Pradesh showed, it is not a guarantee
against a silent consolidation of the majority community.
If reservations fuel visible discontent, the
ire will not be directed against either Dalits or OBCs. Muslims will become
the inevitable cannon fodder in an atmosphere where terrorism is an equally
pressing concern. BJP President Rajnath Singh's blunt assertion that Muslim
reservation will inevitably be at the cost of Dalits and tribal communities
is an early indication that a grand alliance of the dispossessed could be
a pipedream.
A similar backlash is also inevitable if all
Muslims are expediently lumped together with OBCs. In proceeding on the assumption
that an indiscriminate extension of reservations is the palliative against
poor governance, the Congress is taking a calculated risk. It may find that
it has bitten off more than it can chew.
