The recent ruling of the Supreme Court allowing states to sub-classify SCs and STs for the purpose of preferential treatment in reservation has produced two pronounced responses: Political parties are trying to duck the issue by not committing themselves while most proponents of the reservation policy are upset about and critical of the ruling. Both the silence and the criticism represent the unease with the post-Mandal moment. The ruling itself, and the various judgments, are characteristic of the concerns and confusions of the post-Mandal moment.
Mandal — understood as caste politics — has had two connected but separate trajectories: One pre-Mandal and the other occasioned by the Mandal Commission Report. The former is a historically anchored life of democratisation, involving long-term struggles against caste. In this sense, the life of Mandal had its origin in the writings and work of Jyotiba Phule and Periyar. This pre-Mandal life of the idea of Mandal was made possible by BR Ambedkar. Subsequently, and as a consequence, the question about the pichchadas (backward castes) drew attention since 1967 in the universe of electoral politics.
The other life of Mandal revolved around the question of reservation — this was one that shaped post-1967 politics in the north. This second life of Mandal culminated in a complicated mix. Having hit the headlines in the 1990s, by the turn of the century, Mandal politics in the electoral arena had run its course.
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But by then, a noisy consensus was shaped among parties and political elites that competitive and aggressive fortification of the reservation regime was the only and sufficient flag-bearer of the social justice policy. The absorption of Mandal politics by various parties, notably the BJP, and after a quarter century, now by Congress, has been accompanied by the reductionist approach that numerical representation is an adequate response to a more complicated social reality of injustice.
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In the pre-life of Mandal, questions of government policy were intrinsically based on the larger goal of “anti-caste” politics – that is, on the goal of doing away with caste-based injustice and unfairness. This was the most valuable contribution of Ambedkar to the discourse of social justice and democracy. By the turn of the century, that umbilical cord with more fundamental issues got severed. This development meant that rather than Mandal 3.0, we entered into a post-Mandal moment where the anti-caste context got lost and concern with reservation got distorted.
Mandal as an idea represented three sets of contradictory and yet complementary elements. One, it set off a critical examination of our public sphere in terms of mirror representation and also gave rise to the substantive question of a fair share in power. Though connected, these are distinct sides of the same issue: One looks at easy solutions and the other warns us about the monumental challenge. This made us aware of the narrow social base of our elites and at the same time, moving farther from crude enumeration of everyone’s caste background, this element drew attention to the asymmetry of power.
Two, the Mandal moment emphasised the need to fortify the reservation regime — by moving beyond SCs and STs, by addressing questions of reservation in promotion and by rejecting the reservation/merit binary. At the same time, the Mandal moment also sensitised policy discourse to the need to permeate actual policy choices with a concern for social justice in the broader sense. The emphasis on reservation often led to easy escapes for policymakers. The question of policy based on social justice was easily eclipsed in the shadow of the bureaucratisation of the reservation regime and consequent endless recourse to the judiciary.
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Three, in the realm of mobilisation, the Mandal moment strengthened the politics of building social blocs. This could enrich democracy and also enable the backward communities to engage in politics beyond localised vote banks. But simultaneously, the Mandal moment also underscored the aspirations of individual castes leading to single caste identities as the bases of formation of perpetually competing political groupings. In the case of each of these three elements, thus, the possible gains were often neutralised by short-term and cosmetic tactical advantages.
Much of the disappointment with the SC ruling emanates from a comfortable security in continuing to recognise caste blocs that made sense half a century ago. It is believed that various legal fortifications and expansions to the existing reservation regime are adequate state responses to pacify the Mandal energy without having to destabilise the social equilibrium of power. By opening up the possibility of regrouping of caste blocs and by asking (perhaps as obiter dicta, and even juridically unnecessarily) uncomfortable questions about who benefits from reservation and by employing the clumsy concept of creamy layer, the ruling has thrown up crucial questions.
Whether the Court had ruled this way or not, the post-Mandal moment was already here and needed a response from academia, policymakers and social activists to three issues. First, if the reservation policy represented an urgent need to intervene in caste-related asymmetry, how do we tweak that policy from time to time in order to ensure that it redresses the more disprivileged from among the intended beneficiaries? Two, as Indian society moves away from an easily comprehensible overlap of caste, class and power, how do we address the new labyrinths of power asymmetry? Reservation for EWS was a smart way to avoid this question. But the question is bound to re-surface. Three, do we expect the SC, ST and OBC to be seen as permanent blocs? Democratic politics will inevitably bring internal political divisions in these administratively approved blocs. Is our politics ready to imagine and shape new social blocs that will attend to both socio-economic and democratic compulsions that lead to disintegration of the existing blocs?
The responses are bound to be tentative, pragmatic and even crude. But responses will surely be needed. Consider the existing challenges. Among many castes from SCs and tribes from STs, there is a long-standing and deep concern over their condition. This results in distrust and competition within the SC/ST population. Most states have already grouped OBCs into sub-categories in order to allay the fears of “more backward”. A number of politically strong agrarian castes are waging struggles for reservation in response to their deteriorating condition in the material sphere.
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These and similar challenges suggest that issues will have some continuities but many discontinuities from the Mandal moment and, similarly, the frameworks to define the issues and analyse them will have to be freshly worked out. While the language from the Mandal era may still appear attractive, a post-Mandal moment has arrived — requiring a different language and a different politics.
The writer, based in Pune, taught political science
