No Thing As Geneteic Merit

Sangh arguments for only economic quota are specious. Actually, the private sector must pass on its privileges. 

- Pragya Singh

The Sangh parivar has launched a diatribe against caste-based res ervation. It started last year, with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat pitching for a ‘review’ of the policy. That remark boomeranged in Bihar, with Nitish Kumar and Laloo Prasad Yadav exploiting it to the hilt. Yet, Bhagwat reiterated it, saying reservation should help all poor regardless of caste. Lately, he clarified that reservation must stay till discrimination persists.

Despite the denials, this was a muddled attempt to carve a ‘new normal’—not very new actually. “Lately some leaders have repeated the traditional argument of replacing caste with economic criteria for reservation. Let me remind them that one set of policies is meant to remove poverty and another to end discrimination. Reservations are not the same as anti-poverty measures,” says Sukhdeo Thorat, economist and former UGC chairperson.