Quotas: How bias in favour of SC/STs works against them

It is difficult to trust politicians and political parties with the quota debate. It is time civil society took over the idea to bring sanity. Just as politicians, despite the horrific Delhi bus gangrape, don’t get it, the same is the case with the quota debate. Nobody will ultimately benefit from it – at least not significantly – but everybody is still rooting for it. It is not clear what Mayawati, who already has a Dalit votebank in UP, hopes to gain from the constitutional amendment bill for ensuring reservations in promotions for SC/STs. It is not clear, why the BJP would support the measure in the Rajya Sabha when this directly threatens its upper caste vote-bank in Uttar Pradesh. Now that UP BJP leaders, including Varun Gandhi , are up in arms, the BJP will slink away from a vote in the Lok Sabha, but this is a copout. It has to stand for something. Why not try to stand for inclusive sanity, and affirmative action for Dalits instead of quotas. It is difficult to see what the Congress expects to gain from it either, despite the grandstanding by Sonia Gandhi in parliament the other day. Notwithstanding his best efforts, Rahul Gandhi did not wean away a big enough chunk of the Dalit vote in last year’s UP elections. Will the amendment change that? The Samajwadi Party, which holds a majority in UP on the basis of a wafer-thin popular vote, is opposing quotas vociferously with a  view to consolidating its Yadav vote-bank, and bringing in some marginal upper caste votes. It has something to gain, but by calling for quotas for Muslims as a diversionary tactic, he risks alienating the upper castes. Clearly, the political parties are shooting in the dark for illusory gains from quota politics, and unless the thinking public gets into the act, we are not going to see good sense restored. And sanity calls for recognising two opposite realities: that Dalits are indeed under-represented in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, and also that the answer does not lie in imposing quotas in promotions as well. Let’s start with stats first so that we understand the reality. First, Dalits and tribals (i.e. SC/STs) account for around 23-24 percent of the national population, of which Dalits account for around 15 percent, though the proportion varies from state to state. Second, in the central services, the SC/ST proportion becomes close to the actual population share the lower down you go in the hierarchy. In short, enough of them get in, but not many rise too high. According to Harish Damodaran, writing in BusinessLine, of the 102 secretary-level officers in the government of India, only two are from this group – i.e. less than 2 percent. At the next level of additional secretary, there are six SC/ST officers in a total of 113. The proportion here is slightly higher – just over 5 percent. Things look better at the joint secretary level, where there are 46 SC/ST officers out of 434 – that is, about 10.5 percent. [caption id=“attachment_566353” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The question quota-enthusiasts should be asking themselves is this: how do we get the age at entry down so that the SC/ST don’t get ruled out for promotions through the normal route?[/caption] Leave hierarchy aside, and this is the picture that emerges overall: in Group A employees, the SC/ST proportion is 16.3 percent (not bad, but still a third below comparative population share); in Group B, the proportion is 20.9 percent and only in Group C does the figure (25.1) percent match, or even marginally exceed, their population percentage. In Group D, there is no lack of SC/ST representation in the right proportions, says Damodaran. These figures clearly point to the fact that the higher you go, the SC/ST presence thins down, and almost disappears at the top. Does this clearly establish the fact of discrimination and bias? The answer is yes, but not an emphatic yes. While nobody should assume that traditional anti-Dalit prejudices do not apply in the bureaucracy, the point is this: is this the main or only explanation? Here the answer is no, and calls for remedies different from just quotas in promotions. The problem goes down to the age of entry, since in the bureaucracy promotions go as much by seniority as merit alone. The age range for entry into the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), for example, is 21-30. But for SC/STs, it is extended to 35. When you enter the service later than the general category aspirants, you have to be super meritorious to reach as high as the rest. This is unlikely. But even this does not tell the full story. For SC/STs, the age relaxations become even more if they come from dual categories. For example, if they are SC/STs who are also ex-servicemen (the latter also get a five-year age limit extension), they get a double-relaxation. That is, five years for being an SC, and five more for being an ex-serviceman. Thus the entry age can be as high as 40 for some SC/ST entrants. Not only this, while general category candidates for the IAS can try only four times, for SC/STs there is no limit. They can sit for the exams any number of times. Though it is highly unlikely that any SC/ST will have such a stout heart as to face six of seven attempts for the same entry-level job, the fact that the SC/STs enter the bureaucracy late is now very, very clear – and this is the principal, non-discriminatory reason for their not making it to the top. Bias may exist, but that operates only at the margin. In fact, one can say the opposite: it is precisely because the age discrimination is in their favour that they lose out. The question quota-enthusiasts should be asking themselves is this: how do we get the age at entry down so that the SC/ST don’t get ruled out for promotions through the normal route? The answers are clearly in the medium-term. And the solutions are obvious. First, preparing SC/ST candidates for the IAS and other exams must begin much earlier – from the school and college level. Second, once they enter government service, they should be mentored – both by their own Dalit/Tribal officers and others already in the service. If this is done, the chances that they will be discriminated against will be lower. Third, even after this, one can create a promotion panel that includes Dalit representatives – and if they are over-ruled, and Dalits lose out on promotions, the reasons should be given clearly in the service records. These are the real solutions to the problem of the lack of Dalit/tribal presence at the top of the bureaucratic power pyramid. Trying to artificially catapult 35- and 40-year-old SC/STs above 25-30-year-olds from the other categories artificially is a sure recipe for bad blood and reduced harmony, mistrust and inefficiency in the services. Unfortunately, this is a cause politicians will not take up since there is no vote-bank to exploit in the next elections. It is for civil society to take it up.