[Assam] What’s government for Gurjjars?

[Ram Sarangapani]

>It is about time India did away with the reservation system

I was just thinking about the very same thing the other day. One solution
may be is to make 97% of the population as deserving "quota". The only
exceptions being the crorepatis and near corepaties (they won't complain if
they are not included in any quota).

In the US, we have had Hispanics wanting to be recognized as a separate
"race" from White/Cauasian. The reason - again economics and political
clout. Indians, were/are, I understand are still classified as
"White/Cauasian".

And of course it is all about money. This Houston Chronicle/AP Article says
it all. Highlights mine.

--Ram
_________

*June 4, 2007, 11:42AM*
*Group eyes lower India caste system spot
*

*By MATTHEW ROSENBERG Associated Press Writer
*(c) 2007 The Associated Press

GURGAON, India — For a week, angry throngs from one of India's lower castes
blocked roads with burning barricades, stoned police and clashed with rival
castes to make a single, simple point: They want to be even lower.

With 25 people dead, the unrest spread to the fringes of New Delhi on Monday
as thousands of Gujjars, a class of farmers and shepherds, pressed their
demand to be officially shunted to the lowest rung of India's hereditary
caste system so they can get government jobs and university spots reserved
for such groups.

"I am farmer and I am poor," Rajesh Gurjjar, 26, said after police chased
him off a main street in this New Delhi suburb, his thin T-shirt shirt
soaked with sweat. *"I want a government job. It pays more. The office is
cool in summer. The fields are too hot."*

To put it another way, the fastest way up India's economic ladder now is a
quick step down its age-old social ladder.

While caste violence is not new, many see a paradox in the Gujjars'
struggle. The political importance of the caste system is growing even as
the rise of an urbanized and* educated middle class has weakened its grip
socially, making it more acceptable for a group to try to fight its way down
instead of pushing its way up.*

*"This isn't a case of a group agitating for the primacy or superiority of
their caste.* It has nothing to do with a claim of caste loyalty according
to the Hindu world view or religious scriptures," said Parvan K. Varma,
author of "Being Indian," a book about Indian society.

*"This is the use of caste as political negotiating currency. It's about a
finite cake and a caste community attempting to get a piece," he said.*

The politics were clear late Monday when Gujjar leaders called off their
protests after officials agreed to look into their demands.

*The move immediately drew threats from leaders of a rival caste, the Meena,
* who are classified among the lowest castes and don't want more competitors
for reserved jobs and school spots. During the unrest, clashes between
Meenas and Gujjars killed at least four people.

The origins and inner workings of the caste system are the subject of much
debate. The system divides people into four broad groups, with the priestly
caste at the top. There are hundreds of sub-castes within each group, most
of them drawn along occupational lines.

While the caste system is part of Hinduism, there are also caste-like
divisions among Muslims, who account for 13 percent of India's 1.1 billion
people, and Christians, who make up 2.4 percent.

Although the system was outlawed after independence from Britain in 1947,
its influence remains powerful and the government has sought to redress
discrimination against those on the lower rungs by setting quotas for
government jobs and university spots.

Rather than weaken caste affiliations, the result has been a fracturing of
politics along caste lines as lower groups vie for a share of the quotas.

Further complicating matters is that caste has never been as rigid a system
as imagined in the West — there is, over generations, movement within
subgroups, sociologists say — and determining who gets access to the quotas
has long been an issue of red-hot contention.

There have been repeated protests the past year over a government plan to
reserve more than a quarter of the spots at India's top professional schools
for the 3,743 castes and sub-castes, Gujjars among them, classified in the
second-to-lowest category, the "Other Backward Classes."

That plan was suspended in March by a Supreme Court ruling that presaged the
Gujjar protests.

*"No where in the world do castes queue up to be branded as backward. No
where in the world is there a competition to become backward," the court
said.*

Less controversial have been the decades-old quotas for those on the lowest
rung of the caste system — the "Scheduled Castes and Tribes," a group that
include the "dalits," once known as "untouchables."

India's 160 million dalits have no caste, and for centuries have been viewed
as "pollutants." Many are forced to live in separate villages, forbidden
from drawing water at wells used by other Hindus and often subjected to
violent abuse.

It is this group the Gujjars want to join.

"Our people have not benefited from India's economic growth. Most Gujjars
are herders. They live in huts on the hills. This is a matter of survival,"
said Bharat Tanwar, 30, who took part in a peaceful protest in New Delhi on
Friday.

That may be true for most Gujjars, although not for Tanwar — he's a textile
engineer.

"But I did not go to a top university, I cannot make so much money," he
said. "I want my son to go to a top engineering school, to work with
computers."



On 6/4/07, Dilip/Dil Deka <dilipdeka at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> All this is only for money. Isn't it? The article describes why the demand
> rises for quota in public sector jobs.
> If the Meenas get it, why shouldn't the Gujjars? Right? If the Bodos can
> get it, why not the Koch-Rajbangshis?
>
> It is about time India did away with the reservation system based on
> caste, tribe and backwardness (it is well beyond the original 10 years) and
> started something new like government doe-out based on economic status of
> the citizens. The system would be more equitable that way. The voting
> practices in India also will change drastically for the better.
>
> Dilip Deka
>
>
>
> ==============================================================================
>
> What's government for Gurjjars?
> Laveesh Bhandari Posted online: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 at 0000 hrs
> <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/32694.html#> At market's lower end,
> public sector jobs are prized. To stop caste fights redefine eligibility
>
>     Related Stories Trends & trivia in India story<http://www.indianexpress.com/story/29969.html>It's
> not hammer vs sickle <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/25735.html>The
> devil is in the leakage <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/24480.html>Wages
> of the young <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/23482.html>No homes away
> from home <http://www.indianexpress.com/story/20653.html>
>
>
>  ** Gurjjars are now demanding a greater share of the public sector
> employment pie. This community is not the first in asking for either a
> greater share or a 'better' categorisation. And with the Rajasthan chief
> minister convincing them to call off the stir, one can be certain that the
> Gurjjars will not be the last in making these demands. Some communities such
> as the Meenas may have made good use of the opportunities that came their
> way via reservation, but many others are yet to do so. Either way, this is
> the start of an interesting socio-political churn. The beneficiaries will
> attempt at ensuring that such benefits continue and the non-beneficiaries
> will try to ensure that they also hop onto the bandwagon. If the two groups
> are competitors, then each may also try to prevent the other from
> benefiting. But why does this happen? In this era of rapid growth and
> ever-increasing employment opportunities, why should anyone want to battle
> it out to get a government job? The answer is surprisingly quite
> unambiguous. Monetary and non-monetary benefits received from government
> jobs are far higher than those received by private sector employees in a
> range of occupations. And this difference is so large that it is well worth
> the effort of fighting street battles for preferential treatment. Of
> course, not all government or public sector jobs pay more than similar
> private sector jobs. Take, for instance, the CEOs of SBI and Citibank. The
> former earns much less. And therefore rarely will you see senior managers or
> bureaucrats fighting for reservations. But the lifetime benefits earned at
> the middle and lower levels in the hierarchy are far higher in the
> government than those earned in the private sector. This writer was part
> of a team that recently conducted a survey of 7500 respondents on a range of
> issues related to their expectation from the Indian state for a study by the
> National Foundation of India. The respondents were located in rural and
> urban areas, belonged to all economic and social groups, from states spread
> over northern, southern, eastern and western parts of the country. In short,
> a highly representative coverage of Indians was included. I take the liberty
> of using some of that primary data. The first and most unsurprising
> response was related to overall preference for a government job.
> Eighty-eight per cent of the respondents stated that they would prefer a
> lower paying job with certainty of tenure rather than a higher paying job
> with uncertainties. But it is not that government jobs are preferred only on
> that count. Government jobs are preferred on a range of criteria:
> post-retirement benefits (97 per cent), job security (97 per cent), health
> care benefits (81 per cent), conducive working hours (83 per cent), and
> higher incomes (58 per cent). Moreover, even in the non-tangibles many
> consider government jobs to be better: greater job satisfaction (89 per
> cent), and more respectable (92 per cent). Almost 97 per cent of the
> respondents preferred a government job to a private one. The survey had many
> other queries on health care, education, housing, nutrition, etc, and the
> role of the state. On no other issue did we see such strong agreement among
> the respondents. Needless to say, government jobs have many benefits. The
> first set consists of those that are quite explicit and include the kind of
> issues that respondents were queried about — health care, pensions, incomes,
> uncertainties. The second set of benefits is more in the tacit nature — the
> chaiwala who will not charge the policeman, the side payment for the
> permission granted, the diwali gift, etc. And the third group is of a more
> derivative nature — the 'respect' and 'power' derived from being the
> representative of the state. The long-term solution therefore is also
> quite simple. Ensure that either the difference between public and private
> sector jobs' emoluments reduces, or ensure that beneficiary criteria are
> different. There are some ways of doing this. The first is to not increase
> public sector salaries until private sector pay catches up. However, this
> model will not work, because it may lead to a high divergence between the
> private and public sectors at the higher hierarchical levels. The second is
> to create conditions whereby the private sector salary structure rises up to
> that in the government. However, the large numbers entering the workforce
> create a natural barrier for rapid wage increases at the lower hierarchical
> levels. Perhaps that is why average wages of production workers have not
> increased in recent years. In other words, both these options are
> politically unsustainable. Imaginative governments have found a third way.
> They have merely re-categorised some public sector jobs. Temporary teachers,
> for instance, are today being hired by the public sector school system,
> whose salary levels are at par with, if not lower than, private school
> teachers. There is also a fourth way. Rather than play around with
> relative salary structure of government jobs, or re-categorise the position
> as temporary, we could merely re-categorise eligibility. That is, let the
> jobs be reserved for those who are economically underprivileged. There can
> then be no caste-based disagreements on the reservation front. The same
> survey also queried respondents on what they perceived to be the best
> criteria for reservation. About 31 per cent stated a preference for
> reservations to be on the basis of economic status only; an even lower
> proportion of 8 per cent had a preference for it being on the basis of
> social status only; and almost 61 per cent preferred reservation to be on
> the basis of some combination of caste and economic criteria. Moreover, this
> response pattern is the same across various groupings such as ST, SC, OBCs
> and forward castes. The bulk of Indians (about 91 per cent) would like
> economic criteria to be used as a basis for reservations, either
> individually or in combination with some social status criteria. Whichever
> way we see it, we will eventually have to shift away from the purely caste
> based reservation criteria. They promote the wrong sort of competition,
> rewards the wrong set of individuals, punishes those who deserve better, and
> overall sets up an incentive mechanism where youth will deem fit to fight it
> out for achieving the underprivileged caste status. Either that, or reduce
> the benefits of government jobs.
>
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