Article 14 of the Constitution of India provides for the right to equality; in other words, it ensures equal protection of law to every citizen of the nation. However, this doesn't refer to equality in literal terms; as this provision has been interpreted by the judiciary, it means to treat equals equally and unequals differently. For instance, a boy of 15 years can never demand voting rights as his brother of 20 years, citing the right to equality as his fundamental right. Thus, even though the right to equality is a fundamental right in the constitution, it is not absolute and can be classified. The classification of the right to equality can be easily justified with the argument that not everyone can be treated equally simply because everybody is not equal; if a disabled (or differently abled) person is being treated on absolutely equal terms with a healthy person, it will be to the disadvantage of the former. Hence, the classification of equality is very significant for a just society and to create a society where we could ensure equal opportunity for every member to develop themselves to their full potential.
On the eve of independence, Indian society was massively fragmented in both social and economic terms. There were divisions in the society in the name of castes; a major part of the society was highly downtrodden and alienated from the mainstream. Caste divisions were so deeply entrenched in the veins of the society of that time that they were the biggest hurdle in the social development of the nation after independence. The framers of the constitution were not unaware of these hurdles; in fact, this was the major concern of leaders like Dr. BR Ambedkar. They knew that if India has to grow and thrive in the future, the first task that has to be done is to fill the gap in the society and remove discrimination from the society. Impliedly, Article 15 was added to the constitution, which prohibits the state from discriminating against any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. However, even after ensuring all the measures to stop discrimination, it was still important to ensure equality of opportunity among all the classes of the society. All the members of the constituent assembly put in their opinions on this aspect, and after many debates and discussions, it was finally decided that ‘reservation’ is the way forward to foster equity and balance in the society.
Reservation, in socio-political terms, refers to a form of affirmative action policy where a specific percentage of seats or positions are set aside in government jobs, educational institutions, and legislative bodies for historically disadvantaged groups. It was thought that as the society is highly unequal, the members of the historically disadvantaged groups might not get enough opportunity to come out of their depravity in a free and absolutely equal system. So, it was necessary to provide them a ladder or the crutch in the form of reservation to create a level-playing field in the society. Hence, the constituent assembly added several provisions ensuring the implementation of this system. Nevertheless, at that time the reservation was only to be given to the scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs), as they were considered the most impacted section of historic injustice. Also, at the start of the constitution, this reservation was enforced for a period of 10 years from the commencement of the constitution (i.e., from January 26, 1950, until January 26, 1960), but this 10-year restriction did not apply to reservations in educational institutions or government jobs; it was only applicable to the reservation of seats in the legislature. Later on, this 10-year time period was kept on extending through amendments every 10 years with a justification that the society is yet to be equal.
Reservation has never been reduced since the commencement of the constitution; it has only been increased. After the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, a survey was conducted, and it was found that there is a big community in the middle of two upper and lower groups, which was named as other backward castes (OBCs). They were also provided reservations under the same provisions, citing the same reasons. Just a few years back, the government introduced one more amendment regarding reservation, where they invented a new category named economically backward sections (EWS) and extended reservation to them as well with the contention that it is income-based, not caste-based.
Therefore, this was the story so far with the reservation, but now here is the catch: at the start of this discussion, we discussed that the motive of the reservation was to provide a ladder to the disadvantaged people so that they could climb up and compete with other members of the society in an equal field, which was absolutely fair, but the question to be asked here is, how many of them have climbed the ladder so far?
If we look around us in our society, we could easily see the change. The gap between communities has been filled significantly since the outset of the constitution. Many communities that were very poor and exploited 80 years back are living a dignified life now, and the credit for this change should definitely go to the policies of the governments, especially reservation. Albeit this is the change that we see with our eyes, on paper apparently there is no change; in fact, as we discussed, the reservation has only increased. The logic that we are trying to build here is that even if 40% or 50% of the members (being very conservative) of those reserved communities have come out of the depravity, climbed that ladder, and are ready to compete on a level playing field, they should be celebrated and happily put out of the reserved slab, but nothing like this has been done. Reservation as a policy has been so politicized and used as a weapon by all of the major political outfits that it is almost impossible to win any election after talking about modifying reservation policy. And it is very obvious that in competitive electoral democracy no party would take the risk to even touch any policy that would hurt them in elections, no matter how significant that action is for the society.
Leaders and political parties that are centered around these communities spread a fear among the members of those communities that their political rivals would scrap reservation, and they should choose them if they want to save reservation. This is very common rhetoric of every election. But what these communities need to understand here is that the unchanged or unmodified reservation policy is hurting them more than unreserved. As in the eighty years of reservation, these communities have also been divided into many shades; a significant population of these communities are no more downtrodden, but still, they enjoy the same reservation as the actual downtrodden of the community today. In fact, they do not just enjoy equal reservation in reality; only they enjoy all the reservation because the actually exploited members of the community are not able enough to avail themselves of those benefits. Data suggests that within the SC category, certain sub-castes (like the Jatavs in UP or Mahars in Maharashtra) have historically accessed education earlier and now hold a disproportionate share of reserved seats compared to more marginalized groups like Balmikis or Musahars. According to various socio-economic studies, the average annual income of the "upper tier" of the SC community is significantly higher than the "bottom tier," yet both compete for the same 15% quota. And this is the story of just one reserved community; we can sense the disparity among others. The Supreme Court in its recent ruling in a case has explicitly suggested the sub-classification and identifying “a class within a class” to make the reservation policy more precise and dedicated to pulling the members of the society who are truly at a disadvantage. Although, the government has not put much heed to these suggestions due to the reasons we discussed above.
Whenever a community raises its voice against the reservation, the government provides some reservation to them as well, and they never talk about it again; this has been the story so far. Reservation, as a policy, was a brilliant idea and necessary for equity in the society, and undoubtedly, it is still required, as the society is not equal enough even today, but the form and the target of it need to be studied, researched, and changed to make it really work for social justice. The members of the reserved communities need to be enlightened and educated about it, and perhaps a social movement should be run to promote the giving-up of reservation by themselves if they have climbed up and are at level-playing field in the society so that the actual needy could be provided the ladder.
— Saurabh Srivastava