The Hindu : Reaping their quota of votes?

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Sunday, Jun 01, 2003

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Reaping their quota of votes?

With Assembly elections in the offing in Rajasthan, both the Congress and the BJP are wooing every caste group. Sunny Sebastian reports.

IT SOUNDED unrealistic when the Samajik Nyaya Manch or the Social Justice Front, an assorted group of politicians and community leaders of Rajasthan, launched an agitation about three-and-a-half years ago demanding reservation for the forward castes. But with only six months left for the Assembly elections in the State and with both the main political parties, the ruling Congress and the Opposition BJP, vying with each other to garner the support of every caste group, fixing a quota for the forward castes does not seem a preposterous idea any more.

Yet, it is not the elections alone. Dozens of public meetings held in divisional as well as district towns of Rajasthan in the post-Lok Sabha election period provided ample evidence of the resentment of the forward castes over being increasingly marginalised under the new social order. The meetings attracted huge crowds and politicians, cutting across party lines, shared the dais.

If the economic reservation move sounds more convincing now, it is also due to Ashok Gehlot, the Rajasthan Chief Minister. Mr. Gehlot, who belongs to a backward class, took the initiative by passing a resolution in a Cabinet meeting on May 21 proposing 14 per cent reservation for the poor among the castes not covered so far by the policy.

Rajasthan now has 49 per cent reservation, of which the Scheduled Castes get 16 per cent, the Scheduled Tribes, 12 per cent, and the OBCs, 21 per cent. The communities under the OBC together account for 53 per cent of the total population of the State. Interestingly, out of a total of 316 castes in Rajasthan, only 11 have been left out of the ambit of reservation.

Reservation for the deprived among the forward castes is not the lone demand of the SJF. The movement has also sought "protection" for the already reserved from new "entrants" in the list of backward classes. The rationale behind the launch of the movement itself was the granting of OBC status to Jats, a community considered socially, economically and educationally better off than the backward classes mentioned in the Mandal list.

But interestingly, instead of the Gujjars, the Malis and the Rawats who were the worst hit by the entry of Jats into the OBC fold, those who took the initiative for an agitation demanding the bifurcation of the Backward Castes into two or more categories as in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, were the members of the so-called upper castes, particularly Rajputs.

The Rajput initiative stemmed from the community's traditional rivalry with Jats, who, the former feared, would dominate the State with the newly-added teeth of reservation. The issue caused more heartburn when it came to political reservation for the backward classes in the Panchayati Raj institutions.

The real reckoning of the SJF, which draws its strength from individual caste-based associations such as the Kshatriya Mahasabha, the Rajput Arakshan Manch, the Brahmin Mahasabha, the Vaishya Mahasabha and the Mali (Saini) Maha Sabha, came with its intervention in the first fortnight of May at the BJP president, Vasundhara Raje Scindia's road show, "Parivartan Yatra".

The rest is now part of the country's reservation history. When Mr. Gehlot's announcement came, the BJP was caught unawares, it cried foul and termed the move as a "mere stunt". The party's national office bearers' meeting, held in Jaipur four days later in the presence of the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, passed a resolution requesting the Centre to set up a commission for the Economically Backward Classes (EBCs) to look into the issue of reservation for them.

The Jat Mahasabha spearheaded the community's struggle for reservation in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in 1999. The BJP leadership, which outwitted the Congress by announcing reservation for the Jats then, reaped rich benefits in the elections. And this time round, it is the Congress which has stolen the initiative by announcing the new category of reservation.

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