Full transcript of “Is Reservation Compromising Merit? Shashi Tharoor & D.Y. Chandrachud Answers”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 A lot of the founding fathers were against reservation. >> I have a slightly different take. >> No one's no politician is going to dare to touch them because he's instantly fried. >> Discrimination against a scheduleled cast has ended has still not arrived in India. >> He's a major advocate of reservation. Even within reservations, it's possible to promote merit. What do you really mean by merit? Reservations are not contrary to merit. >> I'm just curious what ever happened to our thinking. >> I don't think India has come to that level at all. >> Dr. Dr. Taru you note how reservations originally envisioned by uh Dr. Ambedkar and as you quote are a temporary corrective but today have become politically untouchable. Um I'm from GLC myself and you know 50% more than 50% of seats are reserved and you know we work
0:46 with this immens network with so many young people we hear this quite often and there is a growing concern that merit is often being compromised in the names of reservation. Do you believe India can ever move beyond reservations or are they too entrenched in woodbank politics? >> I think they're they're very very entrenched. In fact, the irony is a lot of the founding fathers were against reservations, including Mr. Nu's written about it uh in letters to chief ministers saying why he's opposed to reservations. Um there's even a debatable proposition I don't want to get into it about whether Dr. Ambedka wanted at the end of 10 years uh the reservations to continue or not. Um but the fact of the matter is they're here to stay. You know in America I don't know how many of you have knowledge of this but the American subway system the the underground subway system in America
1:34 has three rails and the two rails on which the train runs and in between there is a third rail which generates the electricity on which the train train runs. Now if you accidentally touch the third rail you're instantly electrocuted. Reservations are the third rail of Indian politics. No one's no politician is going to dare to touch them because he's instantly fried. So the the result is very very seriously that whatever intellectual disagreements and discussions you may have um you know when when even sort of the great grandson of of of uh of of Mr. Nu is a major advocate of reservations in our politics today. I think those who may have intellectual difficulties with this notion u will have to sit back and say this we can't touch. we have to work
2:19 within it and try and ensure the promotion of merit with it. I mean I have been advocating for a long time for example that the many of the sort of underprivileged communities underprivileged by either class or cast or gender or religion >> should actually be getting also another kind of affirmative action. >> Extra courses, remedial instruction, a leg up, extra coaching for example in how to take examinations. um how you can get for example people into the police into the uh army into into in fact even the the central services by encouraging them to be able uh to take advantage of the the the the opportunities available to them through merit. So even within reservations it's possible to promote merit but you need to encourage it
3:06 because a lot of people need that extra help. Um, lordship justice, what is your advice to the government on going about this? Has the time come to re-evaluate the structure and scope of reservations? Not to weaken affirmative action but to ensure it remains fair and relevant. >> I have a slightly different take on reservations which was really your which was your question. Reservations were introduced in India in the backdrop of centuries of discrimination against the marginalized groups in our society who did not by the way constitute a minority but constitute the majority of the country. That's the difference say between India and the US. Now the idea therefore was through
3:53 reservations and affirmative action to mainstream them into Indian public life in Indian social life. The constitution itself was not just an instrument for the transfer of political power from a colonial to an independent Indian regime but an instrument of social transformation. So there were two parallel movements which were going on when the constitution was drafted and resol and reservations in that sense proceed on the postulate that you can have a stable polity. You can have a stable society when all in all elements of the society including those who have been historically discriminated against for centuries are brought into the mainstream of discourse.
4:39 >> Now we have to ask ourselves this question. Can we say today 75 years after the constitution has been adopted that discrimination against say the marginalized communities the scheduleled cast the scheduleled tribes in particular has ended after 75 years and the answer to that would be clearly in in the negative you still have students who commit suicide valid students who have committed suicide in the IITs or or in different institutions so which means that the time where you can say that discrimination against a scheduleled cast has ended has still not arrived in India. India still faces that. Having said that, you know, judicially there has been a number of very innovative approaches to to reservation. One of the decisions which we rendered as part of
5:26 the constitution bench was on this issue of subclassification. Can a state government subclassify the scheduled casts which are notified by parliament or the president as the case may be so as to confine or give benefits to the most backward amongst them? The Supreme Court said yes. There's nothing in the constitution which would prevent a state government from identifying those cars which are truly backward and then ensuring that benefits go to them so that the benefits are not really absorbed by the most forward amongst the backward communities. So we've permitted that. The other reservation in India is for the socially and educationally backward classes of citizens. The OBC's as we call them. That's how the constitution
6:12 calls them. Now we've applied the creamy layer doctrine to reservations for the socially and educationally backward classes of citizens which means that the most affluent amongst the the socially and educationally backward classes of citizens are excluded from the benefit of reservations. The final point which I want to make on this of course you know you can spend a whole afternoon discussing this >> is on what do you really mean by merit? Does merit mean for instance the scores which you clock on the neat national elability commenceance test for medical admissions >> or in in the in the cl the common law aptitude test. You know the reason why merit cannot be reflected in the scores
6:58 which you have on these the raw scores in these tests is that the raw scores which students attain in these tests are themselves the product of your cultural and social capital. You know the best students who the the students who generally score the best are those who have access to coaching classes who have command over English. Uh there are of course exceptions to this but therefore if you define merit not in terms of your ability to score in examinations but merit in terms of inclusion >> of the ability of our society to give responsible positions in governance to different segments of society. That that is what defines merit. Then reservations
7:46 are not contrary to merit but they in fact further merit because it allows for people whether they become IAS officers whether they become IPS officers doctors an equal share of social development otherwise you know what is happening even today Anjeni is this that if you look at the representation of the scheduleled cast for instance you'll find a lot of representation or improved representation at the lowest levels class 4 post when you come to the top posts the most important positions of responsibility you'd find them lacking even today the same thing in the case of women for instance now where do you find so therefore I think you know the of
8:31 course Dr. Ambedkar believed that you know reservations initially should be valid for 10 years but I do believe that for India to maintain the sense of social harmony the social equilibrium and I see the flip side as you said in the law college 50% of the seats are reserved and I see the flip side from the point of view of a person belonging to a non-reserved community but looking at it from an overall national perspective I still do believe that reservations in India have been a very potent source of maintaining this social equilibrium where we brought all segments of the community and given them an opportunity for personal growth and development and social growth and development as well. >> I agree with all that. Can can I just ask you a question uh Danj on on on a
9:19 very important aspect of this. In 2015, justices Goa and Narima, neither of them was a a chief justice at the time, came up with a judgment on the Jat reservation case where they actually declared that birth into a particular category would no longer be sufficient for the Supreme Court to permit reservations and they wanted the government to come back with a matrix of disabilities that would entitle a person to reservations. Now, curious went on to become a CGI, never referred to his own judgment again. I believe he was the principal author of it and subsequently of course Nariman had a distinguished career. You've had reservation related cases coming before you. I've never seen another reference to this argument that and the government has never come up with a matrix anyway that you could actually make reservations and merit and
10:05 all of these things. something that is subject to a greater set of considerations than mere birth into a cast or a community alone. That you would have let's say you know you could have points for being a single mother uh being uh earning a certain level of income uh being of a certain cast or community being whatever all of those things and then depending on that you would qualify or not for reservation. That's what I understood by the language of that judgment. I'm just curious what ever happened to that thinking. You know the moment you you talk about these other metrics >> then you are substituting the very foundation of the reservation policy >> which is no it is not necessarily good. Now we have reservations under the EWS category, the economically weaker
10:50 sections where you apply a pure economic criteria. >> But you can't really subsume reservations only under the economically weaker sections category because in some communities birth within that community is itself a source of discrimination. Even in the India today if you go to the villages birth within that cast or community is a very potent source of discrimination. Now what the government has done which is by bringing in the recent constitutional amendment is to also allow for reserv reservations to the EWS category which is really to say that in the non-reserved categories namely the non SCST OBC categories as well there may be people who would be economically underprivileged and who should also be given a certain degree of
11:37 reservation which is a different basis altogether of reservation but to apply that criterion to casts which are fundamentally underprivileged would really take away the whole social basis of the reservation policy and I I still do believe that India has not still come to that point where we can say that well all communities are equally or all casts are equally situated and therefore we can end reservation. I don't think India has come to that level at all.
