There is very little that is fresh and innovative about reservations. In April, Mr Manmohan Singh, then a member of the Congress working committee, had said in the context of the party’s vision document on economic growth, that it was time for a “dialogue” with the private sector on how it could enlarge opportunities for the scheduled castes and tribes. Fresh and innovative thinking was necessary. Four months earlier, the former prime minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee had told the SC and ST members of parliament that they should work towards creating an ambience that would persuade the private sector to accept the quota system. Other leaders, across parties, have brought up the subject whenever there was the need to offer a carrot to a particular vote bank. So when the new United Progressive Alliance government returns to reservations as the only way to enlarge opportunities for the underprivileged in the private sector, it is hardly fresh or innovative. In an unequal society like India’s, affirmative action would seem an obvious measure for the correction of imbalances. But for affirmative action to be meaningful, there would have to be absolute clarity in the understanding of the goal and the way to it.

There is always the danger that reservations for particular categories, instead of leading to the erasure of inequality, consolidate those categories in the polity. The system of reservations as it now exists divides Indian society into caste-based groups. If inequality becomes a kind of reverse route to privilege, it breeds other dangers, those of expectation and dependence. It is in the politicians’ interest to keep these simmering. Education is one sphere in which reservations are meaningful, but that is so only if it is targeted towards the needy communities and within a time-frame. Job quotas in the public sector have generated much bitterness already, although the need for diverse representation is one argument that the government can make. Merit is hardly the issue in a situation where the conditions are unfavourable for the free and equal development of merit in the first place. But the demand for reservations in the private sector is a peculiar imposition. The private sector has its own ways of discharging its social duty, if only by paying taxes. The government cannot expect it to tailor its requirements to the demands of social equality, that is not something the private sector is in business for. Affirmative action, to be effective, has to be meticulously targeted, carefully monitored and made timebound for different segments. An unchecked extension of the quota system is the sure recipe for a prime mess.