A quota for farmers

It would have made more sense — economically, legally, politically, morally, constitutionally — to have limited 10 per cent EWS reservation to those with farming or rural backgrounds

ews quota, farmers, job reservation, farmers reservation, India news, Indian express news — Farmers today need support not just for remaining in agriculture, but also to enable exit by some in order to make holdings viable. (Illustration by Surajit Dey)

The last few years have seen the so-called dominant farming communities — especially the Jats, Marathas, Patidars and Kapus — mount violent agitations demanding quotas in government jobs and higher educational institutions, whether under the OBC (Other Backward Class) or any specially created category.

In all these instances, the standard government response was, “look, we want to grant you reservations, but doing it entails breaching the 50 per cent limit set by the Supreme Court in the 1992 Indra Sawhney judgment. And including you within the 27 per cent OBC quota isn’t practical, since that would be at the expense of the communities already in the list”.

This feeble narrative has, however, undergone a sudden transformation now, with the Narendra Modi government introducing and passing in Parliament a Constitution amendment bill that creates a new economically weaker sections of citizens (EWS) category entitled to 10 per cent reservation, over and above the 15 per cent for Scheduled Castes, 7.5 per cent for Scheduled Tribes and 27 per cent for OBCs.

Such alacrity and boldness to defy Indra Sawhney is striking for two reasons.