Reckless Social Engineering

Each state making OBC list will mean sub-castes jostling for quotas, a recipe for turmoil

- D Shyam Babu

Both Houses of Parliament have unanimously passed the Constitution (127th Amendment) Bill, 2021 ceding to states the right to prepare their respective list(s) of backward classes, for granting affirmative action benefits. One may be tempted to applaud the passage of the Bill as a triumph of federalism. That the Bill was passed by the most divisive and disruptive session of Parliament since 2014 is indicative of how electorally salient the issue of quotas for the backward communities has become.

The Bill seeks to rectify a couple of ‘mistakes’ in the Article 338B – inserted by the Constitution (102nd Amendment) Act, 2018 – that created the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) as a constitutional entity. One, the Bill enables states and UTs to prepare their respective lists of socially and educationally backward classes. Two, they can do so without consulting NCBC.

Interestingly, whereas Parliament passed the 2018 Act in three days, it took just two days to pass the current Bill. The enterprise is destined to undergo even more amendments in future because political parties have no interest in investing their time and energy to come to grips with this complex issue.

How did mistakes creep into a constitutional act? Have its underlying assumptions changed so drastically in three years? Has the judiciary done its usual mischief by nullifying the act? None of the above. The Bill is necessitated as Parliament did a lazy job of copying Article 338 that deals with the Scheduled Castes (SCs) to create Article 338B for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).