Athavale’s 25% Quota For Upper Castes Will Destroy What’s Left Of Meritocracy

In India, the market for bad ideas is always bullish. The latest to come up with a rotten idea is Ramdas Athavale, Minister of State for Social Justice in Narendra Modi’s government, who wants 25 percent education and job reservation for the poor among the upper castes.

He said:

Since the Supreme Court has mandated a limit of 49 percent on quotas, Athavale wants a constitutional amendment to ensure that 75 percent of jobs are reserved for various categories.

One shudders to think how much damage this will do to India, given that our politicians think every problem can be solved by state intervention and quotas. Six-and-a-half decades of reservations for Dalits and tribals, and another quarter-century of quotas for OBCs, have done less for the underprivileged than 25 years of economic liberalisation, but this is the last thing politicians want to acknowledge.

Consider just a few downsides of Athavale’s quota-for-upper-castes proposal:

First, with 75 percent of jobs under quotas, merit will be further sidelined. Thus education and jobs depend not on study and effort, but identity. Indians already chase mediocrity; this will now be institutionalised. When you are lying in the operating theatre after a heart attack, you can only hope that the cardiac surgeon who will cut you open has picked up some skills along the way, and not there just because of his caste.

Second, the logical progression will be from 75 percent reservation to 100 percent. Once the upper castes get 25 percent quotas, politicians will invariably argue that they get a larger share of quotas than their population; hence the quota limits for the SC/STs and OBCs must also go up. After all, who can argue that the upper castes need 25 percent when Dalits get “only” 15 percent? It needs no leap of the political imagination to go from 75 percent to 100 percent quotas. Also, if every community is going to get quotas, why leave Muslims out of it? Athavale’s idea is thus a trap set to move the country towards complete quota raj.

Third, if jobs depend on your identity, why will performance matter? Barring gross incompetence or immoral behaviour, it is not performance that will get you ahead, but your caste or communal identity. Government jobs will move from partial incompetence to near total incompetence, since no one will believe you got the job because you deserved it. Promotions through quotas will also become the norm. And sooner or later, once people realise the quotas aren’t working, demands will be made to make them applicable to the private sector too.

Fourth, the social outcomes will be horrendous. Far from annihilating caste, which was Babasaheb Ambedkar’s dream, 75 percent quotas will entrench caste as the only reality for Indians. We will go from being a low-trust society to one where no one trusts anyone.

Athavale’s thinking, however, is not unusual for politicians. They love quotas. A quota, by definition, is required when demand is in excess of supply, and politicians love quotas because they can then create electoral rent-seeking opportunities by promising you a share of quota.

When jobs are in short supply, politicians will be right there doling out access to the few jobs going.

Politicians are instinctively demand siders, as offering supply side solutions and abundance will make their services redundant.

To make housing for the poor an electoral offering, politicians bottle up supplies of land, make it horrendously expensive, and enact a Land Acquisition Act. Once you kill the land market, politicians have a role to play is distributing shortage.

To make education an electoral benefit, politicians will enact a Right to Education Act so that schools that are providing a modicum of education close down and the masses rush to the few remaining good schools available. Politicians can then distribute what is in short supply, making money from admissions and quotas.

To make food an electoral issue, you need to destroy the food market through minimum support prices and a Food Security Act. Once food prices at shops bear no resemblance to real costs of production or market prices, you effectively destroy the food market, and what you have left is state-determined food supply and control system which politicians can dominate.

Whether it is education or food or jobs, India needs a supply side situation. We need to create more jobs, not redistribute what jobs are there among various castes and communities through quotas. Athavale’s idea is a job destroyer.