Reservations: Then and Now

Follow us:WhatsappFacebookTwitterTelegram.cls-1{fill:#4d4d4d;}.cls-2{fill:#fff;}Google NewsI started my career in journalism in August 1990. Just about then Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the Prime Minister, decided to implement the Mandal Commission recommendations. A cub reporter, I was pushed headlong into flames ignited by that announcement.
My first few assignments included covering a police firing in Sarojini Nagar when a student protestor was killed. I had the unhappy experience of viewing burnt bodies of students who had immolated themselves, be they at AIIMS or in Vivek Vihar. And, of course, there were NSUI activists angrily protesting the Janata Dal Government's actions at rallies in the North Campus of Delhi University or near India Gate. In fact, a young man named Rajeev Goswami started that process, but unlike those who followed him, he survived the extensive burns he suffered.
A couple of years later, I met Rajeev Goswami again, this time not in the Burns ward of Safdarjang hospital, but in the slums of Govindpuri, where he lived with his family. He had undergone numerous skin grafts, he appeared physically broken and mentally frustrated. He had been wooed by the Congress, had joined the party, and had been discarded because like he was yesterday's news and could be trashed with yesterday's newspaper.
Now, a sense of deja vu has set in. The Congress, in its present avatar as the lead party of the many-headed UPA, is attempting to make political capital out of reservations. And the focus is on the IITs, the IIMs, NGOs, and jobs in the private sector. So, the party that once protested Mandal finds it convenient to mine it for near-term electoral gains in 2006.
And, frankly, this could be terrible timing. Corporate India is surging ahead, foreign investors are glorifying the Indian economy. So, the reaction to the political posturing from representatives of Indian companies at a business conference in Chicago was understandably tentative.
So, this is all wrong, right? Maybe not.
At one level, the question you have to ask is "why did these guys respond now? Did they have to be pushed by the Government?" So, most of them made the right noises about being socially responsible, creating opportunities, et al. And then they paled at the "r" word. They would rather go with the lukewarm "affirmative action".
But really, what I found strange was that the same issue that I covered, fresh out of college, in New Delhi, has emerged again in 2006 and was a topic of discussion in Chicago!
Of course, in 1990, I was very close to the event, thinking if they had occurred even six months earlier, I may have been among the protestors. In 2006, I get a sense that the Government may actually be doing the right thing. Doing it sneakily, but getting it right anyway.
Let me explain. The Government is nudging industry to wake up, to absorb the reality of the social mix India is. If industry doesn't respond quickly, the underlying message seems to be, they may just be forced to comply with a sarkari diktat.
As for me, I hope that 16 years later, I don't have to deal with the word "reservations" unless it's to take my wife out to dinner.
first published:May 09, 2006, 05:00 ISTlast updated:May 09, 2006, 05:00 IST
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