A lot of opinion has already come to the public domain related to the recent Supreme Court Judgement on the reservation for the Economically Weaker Sections i.e. 103rd Constitutional Amendment. We have not focused deeply on the specific EWS here, rather we have tried to give some consequences of this verdict in the future which we could face. At the end, we have given what could be the role of all social justice political parties and the people from oppressed communities.
Firstly, It is problematic to accept the judgement of the Supreme Court on the EWS reservation. From the first day of hearings, we were following one by one. When the SC reserves its verdict then we become sure that the 103rd Amendment will go down. Those who were following the hearings can observe how the eminent lawyers from the Supreme Court were arguing against the 103rd Constitutional Amendment. All these arguments will also give an understanding on reservation for those who are against the reservation and specifically those who support economic reservation.
While making two separate compartments namely social reservation and economic reservation, it is said that those who are getting social reservation will not get economic reservation. Even if they fit the criteria. Manu enclosed the society by erecting caste walls. Similarly, this decision has started Manusmriti anew by confining it to social and economic compartment. Reverend Prakash Ambedkar believes that it is dangerous for this country that only 27 percent reservation was given to OBCs by limiting the reservation to 50 percent. Marathas, Patidars, Gujjars, Jats etc. were rejected for this reason. But we can see how different states increased the percentage of OBC to 27 percent after SC scrapped the 50 percent limit on reservation.
People are most interested with the reservation increase for OBCs to 27% across the states. Rather than giving much importance to understanding the future consequences of the recent EWS verdict, we should again and again focus on the EWS reservation on how it will change the overall reservation. This verdict will help the judiciary to make the reservation only on an economic basis. And another problem we could face is scrapping the reservation for all. This could be seen from the majority judgement of judges who suggested putting a time limit of this reservation.
This is also a fail for the politicians belonging to SCs, STs and OBCs who elected from the reserved seats and goes towards the brahmanical political parties like BJP, Congress and others. Other political parties who claim to be the party of marginalised communities have also supported the move. Why are parties like SP, BSP, and others not getting that they have been playing dualism? One side they are okay with EWS reservation but another side they are with the marginalised people. Why do they fail to understand that they cannot be on both sides of oppressor and oppressed. They have to choose only one side, only then they can talk about the rights of the oppressed.
Let’s take the example of DMK, Stalin’s party is the foremost political party which is standing strong for the social justice principle by opposing the EWS reservation. They are also in the process of going for a judicial review of the current verdict. Under their leadership they are changing the stand of congress as well. Earlier Congress was supporting the verdict but when they got to know that their allied parties are against the verdict then they paused and started reviewing the stand of them. RJD is also on the side of DMK. Since there is a coalition of RJD and JDU, Nitish Kumar cannot take a stand in favour of EWS reservation. However, caste census is a crucial agenda which all political parties of social justice should demand. If a detailed caste census will be released, people will get to know the percentage of different communities, which will develop consciousness among the oppressed people. After knowing the percentage, the people themselves will protest on a public level that will definitely force all the parties to listen to their demand. Political parties can not go against the larger vote bank. We need to develop a larger level of awareness and consciousness on their part.
As said by Dr. Ambedkar, the state failed to work on the construction of society based on social and economical equality. Here in both cases in educating uppercaste (savarna) and providing them 10% of EWS quotas are failures of state. We have political equality but not social and economical equality. The efforts should be focusing on reducing the social and economical inequality, but the implementation of recent judgement is speaking and doing something else. Dr. Babasaheb asked to use education as a tool to destroy the caste system. But as he said, educating the people who perpetuate the caste system will put Indian democracy in grave danger. Same is happening in the case of EWS. This judgement will create more problems and so, we can say it is an intellectually corrupt decision.
This present move of EWS reservation states that anything can be changed and no one will be able to protect those basic structures. There should be a demand to oppose the collegium of judiciary. Why should there be nepotism?. There should be proper representation of SCs, STs and Muslim judges into the Supreme Court or within the constitution bench. It is wrong to say that there are not enough judges from SCs, STs and Muslims communities. We can demand reservation of judges within the judiciary as well. We feel that the SCs, STs and Muslim communities should focus in developing their career in Judiciary and lawyers level.
