In the absence of critical data on the Other Backward Classes, we are only playing a political poker game, with mob violence on one side and paper drafts and legislations on the other. The Haryana incident is a good example
There is something more vexatious than violence in the four-day long Jat agitation in Haryana. The Jats’ demand for reservation is not exactly new. But it could not have been more ominously timed. It came at an hour when the nation felt hurt and vulnerable over the JNU incident. One could hardly believe that overt anti-India and pro-Pakistan sloganeering at a university campus could be met with approval by a section of political and intellectual class.
There can be dispute over the status of Jats on the socio-economic-educational scale. But their patriotic credentials have never been in doubt. However, they have done a great disservice to the image of their community by launching a agitation at an inappropriate time. The agitation turned so violent that it appeared that the State was going to the seeds. A political motive behind it could not be discounted either.
The Jats have dominated Haryana politics for decades since its creation in 1964. Despite their population being no larger than one-fourth of the State’s demography, they have produced most of the Chief Ministers. Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Om Prakash Chautala, Bansi lal etc in recent time, have been Jats. Bhajan lal, who thrice became the Chief Minister, came from a miniscule Bishnoi community, closely affiliated to the Jats. It is for the first time that Mr Manohar lal Khattar, a Punjabi Khatri, has become the Chief Minister of the State. This apparently has peeved the Jats who had solidly supported the BJP in 2014 for the first time in history.
What brought the Jats en masse to the BJP is difficult to say. But the BJP’s unstinted support to the Jat cause during the Muzaffarnagar riots in August-September 2013 was being seen as the heart-changer in Haryana as well. There was genuine anger in the minds of Jats, who are Hindus, in the entire western Uttar Pradesh belt over the riots. This was reflected in the results of 2014 general election. The Rashtriya lok Dal of Jat strongman Ajit Singh bit the dust for singing old paeans to secularism when the Jats were bleeding from the wounds. The BJP stood by them and reaped electoral benefits. It spilled over to Haryana as well, and BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi began his election campaign with a rally at Rewari, in Jat-dominated southern Haryana.
But Muzaffarnagar was only a providential intervention. Very few may remember now that in August 2013, days before Muzaffarnagar erupted, the Jats were agitating for reservation. On August 16, 2013, there was a huge Jat rally at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. A lathi-charge by the police on the unruly crowd led to many injuries. Some 87 Jats were arrested for unruly conduct. While the Akhil Bharatiya Jat Sangarsh Samity had threatened a rally across northern India on September 13, 2013, the Muzaffarnagar incident intervened to change the Jat discourse.
The Jats had demanded their inclusion in the Central list of OBCs in the States of Haryana, Gujarat, NCT of Delhi, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan (Bharatpur and Dhaulpur districts where they were excluded), Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. But the National Commission for Backward Classes, in its advice to the UPA Government on February 26, 2014, rejected the request. Yet, the UPA Government went ahead with the decision to include Jats in the Central list of the OBCs in those States, keeping the approaching election in view. Not surprisingly, a number of petitions were filed before the Supreme Court challenging the Government’s notification. The Supreme Court in its judgement in Ram Singh & othersversus the Government of India case dated March 17, 2015, upheld the advice of the NCBC and quashed the notification.
The Modi Government, beholden to its newly-found Jat constituency, filed a review petition on April 3, 2015. But it was dismissed by the Supreme Court on July 21, 2015. Thus, legally speaking the hands of the Union Government are tied. But if it still wants keep up the sham by promising a Bill in the Haryana Assembly or constituting a committee at the Centre, it will not really help.
The irony is that there is no actual provable data of socio-economic backwardness. In the Socio-Economic Caste Census-2011, this data is not available for the OBCs separately. Unlike for the SC and ST, there was no separate OBC column and the OBCs were included along with “Others”. The absence of this data is preventing inclusion and exclusion of castes from the Central OBC list, which was meant to be a continuous process. In the absence of data, we are only playing a political poker game with mob violence on one side and paper drafts (executive orders, legislations, commission reports and court verdicts) on the others. One hopes this trend of competitive backwardness ceases.