If the debate on the reservation issue were a game show, it would have been called Who wants to be a Pathetic Lose? I am saying this because the policy of reservation has reached a point of diminishing returns for both the supposed beneficiaries and the society at large.

You may not entirely agree with this contention. Let’s face it: Any debate on quotas is a veritable minefield of strong reactions, hysteria and finger-pointing, often with emotions passed off as rational arguments. I am a Meitei writer and many of you might brand me as a majoritarian chauvinist even before reading this write-up. I plead: Let’s not sacrifice objectivity at the altar of narrow ethinicism.

One bone of contention is whether reservation is anti-merit. Yes, it is. It is so obvious that we don’t need any explanation. Or do we? The Supreme Court said as much when it stayed the reservation of seats for OBC in central institutions and left the matter to be sorted out by a larger constitutional bench.

OK, the highest court of India is an exclusive club of the elite upper castes, so are the media who hyped up the judgment and clearly skewed its coverage in favour of the anti-reservationists—the AIIMS doctor types who floated Youth for Equality. This is the emotional part.

The rational point often lost in the increasingly antagonistic atmosphere is that we are competing against each other to be more backward—all to get ahead of others not with ability but patronage. The shortcuts, you know.

The party will be over
Reservation is a double-edged sword at best and a mirage at worst. The tap of reservation can run dry anytime and it’s beginning to happen. I worry for my ST brothers and sisters. Because as more communities try to shove their way into the ST bracket—as the recent Gujjar flare up has shown—the benefits may now start to dilute. As long as the number of claimants was kept under control, STs in the Northeast could breathe easy, but once other larger and powerful groups from the North India gatecrash into the ST league, the ST party will be soon over. I am not implying that the STs in Manipur are any less competent than their counterparts in the North India. If the results of the UPSC conducted Civil Services examination are anything to go by, we have proved almost each year that we are no laggards when it comes to fair competition. Unfortunately, this might be not the case anymore.

Despite all our hymns to the virtues of democracy, democracy is nothing more than a game of numbers. Let’s not forget that there are more stray dogs in India than the entire population of Manipur, not to talk of Manipuri STs. We are a minority among the minorities and if Bill Clinton knew this, he would have said, it’s the numbers, stupid. Moral of the story: other ST groups can easily swamp us out of the quota race.

We can’t overemphasize how transient and ephemeral are the benefits of reservation to us in a nation where we are a speck in the big demographic map of India. On the other hand, reservation tends to make us complacent, blunt our competitive streak and live on borrowed mercies. Only one phrase can sum it: false confidence.

In the Manipur context, the policy of reservation throws up certain anomalies. As much as it would sound a clichéd idea, the reality is that reservation has only widened the divide between the haves and the have-nots. Without the safeguards of creamy layer, we are witnessing the murder of social justice, where a few have cornered all the benefits meant for the entire community.

That’s why after years of reservation, we are not seeing any marked improvement in the overall conditions of the STs of Manipur. It’s an irony that in a state where there are as many tribal IAS officers, if not more, as there are Meitei officers of equal rank, we have not seen any similar achievements of the STs in other fields—for instance, the HSLC examinations. If you look at this year’s results, you can’t find a single ST name among the top twenty position holders.

This is not to say hill peoples are in any way inferior to the Meiteis. No scientific study anywhere in the world has so far been able to prove that members of some races are more intelligent than others. Unlike the self-serving humanity, Nature has distributed IQ equitably and evenly among the population.

Common history, common destiny
Then what explains the economic, social and educational gap between different groups. There are many reasons, the most crucial being lack of equal opportunities and access to quality education. The over concentration of all administrative and political powers in the valley has led to the distortion of equitable development. Then there are the universal problems of lack of governance and accountability, corruption, embezzlement, poor infrastructure, teachers’ absenteeism and many others.

At the end of the day, you see, we all are victims of the same malaise. Among the Meiteis too, it is the small minority of elites that have had the cake and eaten it too. There is no much difference between poor and powerless sections of the Meiteis and those of the hill people. Poverty is ethnic blind.

Moreover, before the advent of the Hinduism, we all had the same customs and lifestyle, the living proof of which are the Meiteis living in the Sekmai, Andro, Kwatha and so on. That the Meiteis and the hill peoples are two separate racial stocks—in the face of such common historical origin—is an untenable construct designed to undermine the age-old unity that existed among us. The truth is: We still look, smell, sound and are “one people” in the eyes of others. If we venture outside the state, we all are treated as the same tribes from the Northeast. (I was once a strong votary of ST status for Meiteis because of this. My point: Why should Meiteis be treated as tribes by the world and denied the benefits dolled out to STs?).

Yes, the STs need reservation at this point of time, but it will be morally wrong to gift it away on a platter to the fat cats and deny it to those who need it the most. And reservation should be time-bound and should not be perpetuated. We don’t need a policy that keeps us backward till eternity.

Since vote bank politics is a dicey matter that can’t just be wished away, I think reservation is here to stay for a long time to come. The next best thing to abolition is reforming the system to fulfill its constitutional brief as it was originally envisaged. As Yogendra Yadav of Center for Studies of Societies have proposed, we can make a combination of economic and social handicaps as criteria for determining the beneficiaries of reservation. This will entail a mental revolution that will purge terms like caste or tribes from our discourse which only end up souring the harmony of the society.

But in the ultimate analysis, what we really need is a robust and universally accessible education system supported by matching infrastructure that can prepare each of us and our children to face the competition of the world. For no matter how many bandhs and economic blockades you impose on the hapless public to claim more reservation, it will lose its sheen sooner than later. We need more balanced development and less reservation. This I say without any reservation.

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