Much is said about the good that the reservations policy has done. Yet the employment scene appears to fall pitifully short of the ideal as far as quotas are concerned. In Central universities, 80% of posts for professors under the other backward classes category remain vacant as do 83% for the scheduled tribes. This information was given by the Union minister of state for education in reply to a question by the Rashtriya Janata Dal member of Parliament, Manoj Kumar Jha. The figures for associate professors’ posts are 69% vacancies for OBC and 65% for ST. The scheduled castes fare fractionally better, with 51% of posts being vacant. The posts of assistant professors are better filled, with 23% vacant in OBC posts, 15% in ST and 14% in SC. In the general category, 39% posts of professors are unfilled and 16% of associate professors. The contrast is stark and embarrassing. Mr Jha also asked whether the ‘none found suitable’ numbers were greater for reserved seats, but there is apparently no record of that. It is obvious that in spite of levelling to some extent the field of education and development, the lacuna in recruiting quota candidates in the teaching system remains huge. Is this a glimpse into deep-seated prejudices that appear as fair assessment? It is certainly possible to infer a lack of political will to implement reservations for the purpose for which they were formulated.

Recently, the department of personnel and training refused to answer a right to information query about the number of backlog vacancies under SC/ST and OBC categories in the Union government. This was in spite of the fact that the questioner had appealed under the RTI Act and the appellant authority had ordered the DoPT to share the information. The questioner feels that the department either has faulty data collection or the numbers are too shocking to be revealed. What is being revealed, though, is the entrenched refusal to create balanced representation in work. The government itself has not done it. When the caste census is being hotly debated, this is not just ironical but also politically dangerous for the ruling regime. Years of creating vacancies cannot be corrected in a day. But the government must be able to show that it is trying. So far it does not seem so.