Negative action

FOR long, the debate on the equality provisions in the Indian Constitution has centred around the issue of compensatory discrimination in favour of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes. Any mention of affirmative action (AA) in favour of the deprived minority groups in India has always invited derision as it is construed as a manifestation of communalism. Zoya Hasan, professor of political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a Member of the National Commission for Minorities, has to be commended for writing Politics of Inclusion, an extraordinary book, which questions many of the precepts and stereotypes that figure in Indian debates on equality.

One such precept is that the concept of exclusion is applicable primarily to historically oppressed groups and not to minorities. The author seeks to demolish this assumption by relying on Amartya Sens distinction between active and passive exclusion: the former works by fostering exclusion through deliberate discriminatory policy intervention, while the latter works through social processes such as the caste system.

Exclusion, she says, leads to the denial of economic opportunities and consequent powerlessness. Low income, low merit and low productivity are not the causes but the consequences of such exclusion, she suggests.

Among the minorities, Muslims constitute a significant segment 13.4 per cent of Indians. The Sachar Committee Report found stark underrepresentation of Muslims and systematic evidence to show that they are in many respects as disadvantaged as the lowest caste groups among Hindus. She points out that caste divisions remain central to the definition of disadvantage, and thus disadvantages suffered by lower castes in terms of development and access to public services are well documented and addressed through policy intervention. For the minorities, however, knowledge and concern are invariably centred on issues of security and identity and not on equity and justice, she observes.

It is argued that the policy of AA cannot apply to minority communities as it militates against the constitutional project, which seeks to make religious identities less salient for participation in the economic and political processes.

According to the author, it is not clear whether recognising the minorities for policy attention is against the rules of a secular democracy or whether it is unacceptable because it leads to communalisation of the polity. Dwelling on the Constituent Assembly debates, she observes that the trade-off between preferential treatment for lower castes and cultural rights for religious minorities proved to be disadvantageous for the latter as it meant that the real problems of minority citizens in terms of livelihood and access to resources were not tackled.

The two key issues with regard to inclusion, according to the author, are backwardness (which in principle covers the Muslim community but is not specific to it) and underrepresentation (which is specific to the Muslim community). Drawing from the data compiled by the Sachar Committee, the author points out that the absence of Muslims in positions of power and at the decision-making level is as marked today as it was 55 years ago when Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister, drew attention to it. Muslims share in government jobs is 4.9 per cent and their representation in the armed forces is believed to be just 2 per cent. The Sachar Committee showed that only 8 per cent of urban Muslims were part of the salaried classes compared with the national average of 21 per cent for urban India. It reported severe underrepresentation in government jobs even in States in which Muslims constituted large minorities.

The author reveals that the situation is worse in the private sector. According to one survey, just over 1 per cent of corporate executives are Muslim. One effect of this exclusion in the economic sphere, she claims, has been the slowing down of the emergence of a Muslim middle class.

She attributes the educational backwardness of Muslims to their perception that they will not be able to get government jobs in comparison to other communities, and hence there is no incentive to complete higher education. This encourages them to drop out and take up self-employment. The author admits that it is hard to establish the existence of any discrimination against Muslims in public employment but points to evidence (in the form of court cases) that Muslims feel they are affected by biases in selection. The Sachar Committee cites a number of instances of discrimination against the Muslim community.

Zoya Hasan believes that educational backwardness can explain Muslims underrepresentation at the higher levels of employment but cannot account for their near-complete absence from the lower levels of employment, for instance, at the level of Class IV jobs such as drivers, messengers and constables. For example, in 2003 when the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) was asked to excavate the Babri mosque site at Ayodhya following the Allahabad High Courts orders, it turned out that of the 55 or so diggers it engaged, not one was a Muslim. However, after the courts intervention in the matter, the ASI hired a few Muslims.

She argues that it is imperative to promote participation of ethnic minorities in public institutions and the hierarchies of power so that these groups do not become vulnerable to exclusion from the broader policy discourse. According to her, it is because of reservation in public employment that a middle class has emerged among the S.C.s, and this has in turn provided a measure of energy and leadership to the community in its struggle for equity, dignity and justice.

Zoya Hasan notes that by and large all the States have listed backward Muslim groups as Other Backward Classes (OBCs), but States with a high demographic concentration of Muslims have not been able to provide adequate representation to Muslim OBCs in government employment. AA is possible on the basis of social backwardness defined in caste terms but not on the basis of minority identity.

The author finds from the data collected by the Sachar Committee that Muslim OBCs have not benefitted from their inclusion in the OBC list: it has had no significant impact on their access to jobs or education, nor has it contributed to an improvement in their welfare. Muslim OBCs constitute 40.7 per cent of the Muslim population, and their share among the OBC population of the country stands at 15.7 per cent. But this is not reflected in their representation either in public employment or in educational institutions, Zoya Hasan laments.

The Sachar Committee recommended special measures and targeted intervention to help the disadvantaged minority, but it was not in favour of reservation for the community as a whole because it lacks legitimacy as against caste groupings. However, the committees emphasis on the institutional deficit of Muslims bolstered the long-standing claim of the Muslim community that it has been unfairly treated by successive governments. Zoya Hasan agrees that mandatory reservation is not the best solution to problems of institutional deficit and that AA need not be synonymous with reservation. She suggests that AA can give preference to minorities in public institutions and higher education.

She seeks to justify this kind of AA because making political elites and legislatures more representative is an important objective that stands on its own. The demand for AA or a sub-quota for Muslim OBCs, according to her, is not a radical one, yet a positive response to that can signal a major conceptual shift in the approach towards the minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, which has been outside the developmental and constitutional discourse on social justice and equity, and facilitate its integration into the national mainstream.

Zoya Hasan succinctly sums up her central thesis in the concluding chapter: Reservations on the basis of religion are not permissible under the Constitution, yet from the beginning religious criteria have been inherent in the process of classification and designation of beneficiary groups and the definition of backwardness, since the government as well as the court have conceived caste as a constituent of Hinduism.

This is obvious, she says, from the continuing exclusion of Dalit Muslims and Christians from the S.C. list. She believes that AA minus reservation in employment or education may address the deprivation and disadvantage among Muslims, but even this faces opposition on the grounds that it violates secularism. Targeted intervention through the 15 per cent budgetary resource allocation for minorities in all government welfare schemes could help address empowerment issues, she says. End of exclusion, on the other hand, would require bolder initiatives, such as the recruitment of Muslims in government, she suggests.

A recurrent theme in the book is that while India has been relatively successful in addressing discrimination and disadvantage among caste groups, it has not been equally alive to discrimination against minorities. She makes a plea for taking a fresh look at the Supreme Courts rejection of the economic criterion in framing AA yardsticks in the Indra Sawhney judgment in 1992 as, in her view, rapid economic and social changes in the past 15 years have increased the stakes of those who face marginalisation.