Quotas: Maya makes a fool of everybody, including herself

It’s called the Abilene Paradox. Named after a mythical family which is playing dominoes on the porch one lazy afternoon, the story begins with the father-in-law asking, more to keep the conversation going than anything else, “why don’t we go to Abilene?” Abilene is a distant place with a hot, dusty road to traverse. Nobody would want to go there for fun, but his family members, in the erroneous belief that the others were all keen on the trip, agree. All of them go to Abilene unhappily and then come back to regret it. The paradox is about people making a choice which nobody wants due to a lack of proper articulation and a misunderstanding about what everybody really is thinking. India now stands on the brink of its own Abilene paradox following the Union cabinet’s decision to extend reservations in promotions to the scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs) in government services. Does this decision benefit anybody? [caption id=“attachment_444047” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The only theoretical beneficiary of Mayawati’s move is her rival Mulayam Singh – if at all. PTI[/caption] Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati is said to be the main sponsor of this bad idea. But she already has almost the entire Dalit vote in Uttar Pradesh. So how does she expect to augment it further? Her party has not made great progress outside Uttar Pradesh, but since other Dalit parties with pockets of influence in Maharashtra and elsewhere will surely support the same idea, she has nothing really to gain. Moreover, Mayawati, who rode to power in 2006 with the help of a chunk of Brahmin and upper caste votes in UP, is essentially cutting off these possibilities by banking on this bankrupt idea. Mayawati is surely intelligent enough to know this. At best, this is her way of getting even with the Supreme Court, which has shot down caste-based reservation in promotions in a case involving the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation. The Congress, which is using the reservations idea to shift attention from its Coalgate and other corruption-related embarrassments, is doing all this just to obtain momentary relief from public scrutiny. Mayawati’s Dalit voters won’t desert her for the Congress in UP, and Dalits elsewhere are anyway Congress backers — at least where there is no alternative. But there is no vote-bank to gain. Like VP Singh’s Mandal politics, this is Congress’ stupid votebank idea – only, it’s even more bankrupt, for there is no votebank that is really on offer here. It would have been more sensible for the Congress to deal with the Coalgate issue head-on by cancelling the coal block allocations and starting on a clean slate with auctions. Despite a temporary loss of face, in the long term it has more to gain by putting Coalgate behind instead of watering the roots of casteism once more. The BJP, which is clearly the party with the most to lose, is still undecided on whether to back this Congress move for a constitutional amendment to allow for caste-based reservation in promotions. The party’s prime votebank is the upper castes, and so one wonders what it sees in the Mayawati idea. It is still hesitating, since it – wrongly – believes that it can somehow expand its base beyond the upper castes and urban votes by willy-nilly going along with Mayawati. If the BJP does this, Mayawati will eat the party for breakfast. Perhaps the only party with something to gain is Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party, with its strong base in other backward classes (OBCs) and minorities in UP. By opposing the caste-based promotions or stalling it, he may hope to benefit from upper caste crossover votes in the next round of elections in Uttar Pradesh. This way, he can make up for the party’s failure in governance over the last one year. In other words, the only theoretical beneficiary of Mayawati’s move is her rival Mulayam Singh – if at all. The biggest losers will be the Congress and the BJP – who are anyway marginalised in Uttar Pradesh – since they will be angering their upper caste voters in the state without bargaining for something in return. The Congress looks pathetic as it abandons the modernist ideas of its greatest leader – Jawaharlal Nehru - who was against these kinds of reservations. The BJP is even more pathetic. It is shooting itself in the foot by gifting away its core vote in the mythical search for a broader coalition of castes. Perhaps, Mayawati’s calculation is that by destroying both the Congress and the BJP, she will become the only other option to Mulayam Singh in Uttar Pradesh. Once it is a two-horse race, all castes will have to choose the lesser evil and vote either for her or Mulayam Singh. Apart from Congress and BJP, the biggest losers will be Dalits themselves – who will now be ostracised for using political clout to seek “undeserved” promotions. Even deserving SC/ST candidates  will now be seen as undeserving since merit is no longer required for promotions. As this writer noted in an earlier article, the reason why SC/ST candidates are under-represented in central and state services is this: they enter the services late. “Government jobs usually go by seniority up to a point, and then by merit. The reason why so few Dalits are up there near the top is that their average age of entry is around 29-31, when other candidates enter in the range of 24-26. Little wonder they lose on the seniority criteria.” The solution is to get Dalits to enter the civil services around the same age as their upper caste peers. But instead of focusing on this, all parties are focusing on non-solutions. However, even Mayawati’s calculations and Mulayam’s may not quite work out because all castes are now discovering their vote power. The upper castes did not stay with Mayawati in 2011; and the Muslims may move away from Mulayam as they rediscover the power of agency. Superficially, Mayawati may have made a fool out of every other party by playing to their guilt complexes on caste. The Congress feels obliged to back the idea, and so does the BJP. Only these two parties can call their bluff — but the Congress has already fallen into her trap. And the BJP looks likely to follow suit. Only Mulayam Singh is calling her bluff, but we don’t know if he will ultimately gain from it. The Abilene paradox is at work. Only the BJP and Mulayam can still call Mayawati’s bluff. If they don’t, Mayawati would have made a fool of not only her rivals, but herself too.