‘Reservation Hatao Andolan’ gets caste and merit wrong
Does reservation really take away upper-caste jobs? That's one of the biggest claims made by the 'Reservation Hatao Andolan'. But what does the data say?
On July 22, as the protests against Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan gathered momentum, something unusual began happening online.
A new movement suddenly appeared. Reservation Hatao Andolan.
At first, it barely had any followers. But on the very day Pradhan resigned, its reach exploded. It now has millions of followers.
The people behind Reservation Hatao Andolan position themselves as the ideological opposite of those who had forced Pradhan’s resignation. At the same time, they insisted they were not aligned to any political party.
Was it simply a coincidence that an anti-reservation campaign surged just as the Modi government was facing one of its biggest political setbacks? We may never know.
What we can expose is the fake narratives and flawed logic behind this mysterious new campaign. Its central argument is simple: reservations should be based on economic status, not caste. That argument falls apart once you understand why reservations exist in the first place.
Reservation is not a poverty alleviation program. It is designed to address social exclusion. It is meant for those castes whose economic status has no impact on their social standing. It is for those individuals who could become rich entrepreneurs or powerful bureaucrats and still be denied entry into a temple or public space. Economic success does not erase caste. SImply put: Reservation is a way to include those groups in the mainstream that are identified as Shudhra, Chandala, Mleccha or Avarna in the Hindu scriptures.
Of course, this argument is unlikely to persuade those who deny that caste discrimination is rooted in Hindu society, or who believe caste was merely a creation of the Mughals or the British. But that isn't the argument I want to spend time on today.
Instead, I want to examine a different claim. One that is repeated endlessly by the anti-reservation movement. That reservations have stolen educational opportunities and government jobs from forward-caste communities.
The evidence tells a very different story.
Let me explain.
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