Netas big Tikaits of reservation

After the courts cracked the whip, the Jat after blocking trains and traffic in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh for nearly a month squirmed. However, the indomitable community, which is filled with colours of nationalistic fervour was swayed by small time Tikaits, who are bound to bounce back ...


Picture of a village in Western Uttar Pradesh is that of prosperity and wealth. Jats have slogged it out, bargaining hard for the sugarcane crops and making it big. Today a tractor in a house in Chaprauli or Kasana village in Uttar Pradesh does not sound out of place. In fact, it fits in the rural environ in the cow belt but not in a village in Andhra Pradesh or Assam. Normally, a Jat farmer is affluent and also powerful in his village.
Would he require reservation in a Central Government job? The bigger question is should we be doing away with this whole bogey of reservation, which is dividing the society rather than bridging the gap? Has reservation outlived its purpose? Has the Constitution overdone it? We need honest answers to these questions, not poodle faking responses.
President Pratibha Patil says the Constitution has served its purpose and fulfilled the aspirations of the people as desired by the founding fathers. With no offence meant to the first lady, I beg to state here that Patil's assertions are far from reality. And it's not without reason. The truth is that the Constitution has served the purpose of politicians and ruling elite and certainly not fulfilled the aspirations of the people in general as the President wants us believe. The founding fathers had themselves made it a point that certain provisions need a time-bound honest review. Perhaps, the statute book did the trick for the first ten years or so.
But an honest review has never happened. Reservation is one of the sore point that has been allowed to fester for far too long. It’s time we take worthwhile steps and resolve the vexed issue which is aggravating by the day and instilling resentment and bitterness among different communities.
Dalits, Backwards, (scheduled) castes and tribes… all have got some sort of surety with reservation in place. Education, jobs and even legislature, reservation breeds differences between communities. The other day, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh sought reservation for Muslims in Parliament and state assemblies. Quota is here to stay from 27 percent in education to 50 percent in jobs. The so-called suppressed people have now become privileged class as they are reserved for some reason or the other. Even though the Supreme Court has capped the upper limit at 50 percent, states like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are under litigation where caste-based reservation fraction stands at 69 percent.
So a Dalit, who has been suppressed for hundreds and hundreds of years, after Independence, got a job in the Central services. Fine, so far. Then he or she got promotion after promotion, and retired from the top-level of government service. The same Dalit's son or daughter now gets the same treatment. The system continues and spreads out. From 5 to 7.5 percent reservation, successive governments instead of reviewing the policy judiciously, saw the vote-bank advantage of extending and increasing the percentages.
Instead of extending reservation benefits to economically backward or geographically disadvantaged people, politicos of various shades have mindlessly been pushing for caste-based reservation.
Naturally, there are many communities which have been left out of the race of getting plum government jobs or seats in educational institutes. More importantly, a few wannabe netas of these communities find a short-cut to success by raking up 'reservation' bogey and whipping up passions. Tikaitism is gripping Bainsalas and the likes of Yash Pal Malik, the latest neta on the block.
Malik extensively toured northern states in the last couple of months to garner support for the agitation and then launched it on one fine sunny March morning. The march was slow. Trains were the easy target. Hundreds of train services disrupted. Initially, authorities ignored the plight of lakhs of people caught in cross fire due to the unwarranted agitation. They woke up to the problem only when the newspapers started highlighting the problem.
The Jats had arrived. A handful of them had done in days what Gujjars managed to achieve in months.
The news became a talking point. Uttar Pradesh chief minister behen Mayawati saw a god sent opportunity in the agitation and tried tow exploit the situation to her advantage by wooing the Jats away from her arch rival Chaudhary Ajit Singh and his Rashtriya Lok Dal party. However, the Uttar Pradesh Government lent a passive support to the agitation, while Haryana CM bhai Bhupinder Singh Hooda activelty backed the Jat stir. Train routes from Delhi to Lucknow, Jaipur and Hisar were blocked. By doing so they might have scored a point but lost the argument. Later, the Allahabad High Court had to step in directing the Government to restore train services. Yet the agitation went on unstinted. What is more, the agitators even went on to threaten to choke Delhi. Now the Supreme Court has stepped in pulling up both the CMs for their unprincipled support to the agitation.
Nevertheless, the Jats are losing ground. Not many are falling for the reservation demands of the community. In the Army, the Jats have a whole regiment dedicated to their community. The regiment has got all the recognition due to it for its valour and sincerity. In the agricultural fields, they toil like none else and make the moola. The 1857 Mutiny against the British had started from Meerut and so did the agitation for reservation. But both are poles apart. Today, the Jats are on a sticky wicket that can be bowled or even stumped if they try and score too many points with this one.