The Supreme Court has reserved the decision on sub-caste reservation for SC/STs.
Any decision on sub-caste reservation needed to be justified not only on legal grounds but also on academic grounds.
The academic basis for sub-caste reservation seems to be weak.
So far, the government has used three policy instruments namely
legal safeguards against caste discrimination,
reservation in the legislature, public jobs, education institutions, and
measures to improve ownership of capital assets such as land, businesses and education levels.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, justified these three sets of policy measures due to the denial of equal civic and property rights, employment, and education, as well as the physical and social isolation of untouchables as a whole, not specific sub-castes within the untouchable community since all suffered similarly from untouchability.
But the three measures were proposed as a complement to each other and not as substitutes or standalone solutions.
As a first step, Ambedkar proposed legal safeguards against caste discrimination.
The legal safeguards and reservations together ensure a fair share in the “present.”
He also argued that while these measures address discrimination in the “present”, they have limitations in dealing with the consequences of past denials of the right to property, employment and education.
Therefore, a third policy to improve the ownership of capital assets like land, business, and education was thought to be essential as complementary measure to the reservation policy.
Reservations in the legislature, public jobs and education institutions was needed for untouchables as a whole with a “social group focus”.
The policy of economic empowerment was thought to be focused on those untouchable “individuals” who lack income earning capital assets and education.
Therefore, any decision on sub-caste reservation must take these propositions into consideration.
The supporters of sub-caste reservation argue that some sub-castes benefitted more than others, thus, the sub-castes that lag behind should have separate quotas.
Some may lag behind in public jobs because they suffered from low education, which in turn is due to a lack of income earning capital assets.
This reduces their capability to seek public jobs.
If this is the case, then the policy to improve the share of these sub-castes in jobs and admissions to educational institutions must focus on enhancing their ownership of capital assets and education.
It should be focused on those SC “individuals” who lack ownership of capital assets and education.
If the sub-caste reservation is given without improving their capital ownership and educational participation, they may continue to have a low share in jobs and education
So, the policy of economic and educational empowerment, which Ambedkar suggested, is a better alternative than sub-caste reservations with low capital ownership and low education.
It needs to be recognised by the legal authority that legal solutions for discriminated groups are determined by economic and social realities.
The problem of low participation of some sub-castes in job reservation will have to be dealt with by improving their ownership of capital assets and education levels, which in turn will improve their capabilities to access jobs under reservation and education.
But if legal authorities prefer sub-caste reservations without academic justification and the factual reality based on data of sub-castes, the problem may remain unaddressed.
Besides, it will open the floodgates of demand for sub-caste reservations by thousands of sub-castes/tribes from SC/ST/OBC.
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