Reservation, Affirmative Action and New Middle Classes

Detailed chapter description

Reservation became one of the principal institutions through which the democratic state attempted to alter inherited inequalities in education, public employment and representation. In Bihar this history is unusually layered. Scheduled-Caste and Scheduled-Tribe safeguards intersected with backward-class commissions, the Karpoori Thakur formula, Mandal politics, a statutory division between Extremely Backward Classes and Backward Classes, women’s and other horizontal reservations, local-government quotas, welfare hostels, scholarships, examination support and, later, an Economically Weaker Sections quota. Across the border, Nepal developed a different but comparable inclusion system in which Madhesi representation became part of civil-service and federal-democratic reform. This chapter is not a legal digest and does not assume that a reserved seat automatically produces equality. Its historical question is how affirmative action changed pathways into education, bureaucracy, teaching, policing, technical employment, elected local office and professional life, and how these pathways helped create new salaried, credentialled and politically connected middle strata among communities previously weakly represented in state institutions. It also asks who remained outside these gains, why intra-category inequality became a recurring political question, and how the shrinking relative weight of secure public employment changed the meaning of reservation itself. The Constitution abolished untouchability and prohibited discrimination while also permitting special measures for historically disadvantaged groups. Article 16(4) allowed reservation in public employment for backward classes not adequately represented in state services; the First Amendment of 1951 inserted Article 15(4), enabling special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes as well as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The resulting framework did not erase caste from public life. It moved caste into a new institutional language of backwardness, representation, equality and state responsibility. In Bihar, where access to education and administration had long been socially concentrated, these provisions created a constitutional route through which groups could demand a share in the modern state.