Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 20, 2007
All Gujjars can't get ST status
Despite the rhetorical cries of "betrayal"
by the leaders of the Gujjar protesters in Rajasthan, it is difficult to disagree
with the logic of the Justice Jasraj Chopra Committee, which has just submitted
its report on the community's demand for Scheduled Tribe status. The Chopra
panel has contended that, given current socio-economic realities, the very notion
of according Gujjars ST status is open to question. Certainly, the "obsolete
and outdated" criteria used so far need to be revisited. While tacitly
accepting the report and forwarding it to the Centre, the Government of Chief
Minister Vasundhara Raje has acquiesced in to another suggestion by Justice
Chopra and his colleagues -- that special, ad hoc measures be taken to help
those communities (or sections of communities) living in deprivation, whether
in remote areas or forests or the like. Those Gujjars who meet these parameters
-- as indeed members of other caste or community groups -- could be beneficiaries.
What this amounts to is a fine-tuning of the Mandal-style formula that, using
a one-size-fits-all approach, declares whole communities 'backward' across an
entire State. In the end this only becomes an incremental advantage for the
well-off in the individual community, the creamy layer as it were. This has
led to a mania of sorts among communities and groups to gain entry into the
quota ambit. Some years ago, the Jats of Rajasthan agitated for OBC status and
today somebody like Mr Natwar Singh, a former diplomat and Union Minister, scion
of the royal family of Bharatpur and descendant of the redoubtable Raja Surajmal,
is officially recognised as "Socially and Economically Backward".
This absurdity has been carried forward by the vanguard of the Gujjar agitation.
By no stretch of imagination can Gujjars be considered an aboriginal tribe.
A targeted, narrow-focus strategy of socio-economic
uplift that does not use caste as a base unit but looks at the disaggregated
demography within is not unprecedented. In Karnataka, for instance, various
castes/communities are decreed 'backward' and worthy of positive discrimination
on a district by district basis. If 'Banias' can be designated as OBC in Bihar
but not in Uttar Pradesh, it is possible that Vokkaligas in one corner of Karnataka
are in need of Government-backed reservation and those in another corner are
not. This could well be the experience of Gujjars in Rajasthan as, in fact,
the Justice Chopra report has made out. In bowing to this argument, rather than
resorting to panic or populism and contesting it, the Vasundhara Raje Government
has acted with maturity. It has potentially set a very important precedent that
could arrest the quota craze and the astounding and completely bogus race to
the bottom of the caste hierarchy. If Gujjars are tribals, Rajputs can next
claim to be OBCs. This is not social justice, it is Mandalisation gone mad.
It is hoped that the Centre will respond to the Chopra report with the same
sagacity and finesse that the State Government has displayed. Election in Rajasthan
is only a year away and it may be tempting for the Congress to play the Gujjar
card and embarrass the BJP Government. This would be self-defeating because
it would leave any future Government in Jaipur with a combustible political
legacy.