Tamil Nadu: Reservation Bill anxiety

The constitution (124th Amendment) Bill 2019 passed by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre on January 9 to provide 10 percent reservation in all government education institutions and jobs for economically weaker sections (EWS) within the upper castes from the academic year 2019-20, has created a furore in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million). Individuals not under existing quotas and with annual family incomes below Rs.800,000 or agricultural land below 5 acres are eligible for reservation. But if they have residential homes of 1,000 sq. ft and/or 100-yard plus land holding in a notified municipal area or a 200-yard plot in a non-notified municipal area, they are excluded. When the Bill was introduced in Parliament, the E.K. Palaniswamy-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) which rules Tamil Nadu, opposed it and even the opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) voted against it. Moreover, the DMK and its allies have challenged its constitutional validity in the Madras high court and Supreme Court of India. The strong all-party opposition to the new Bill which mandates reservations for the poor within upper castes is rooted in Tamil Nadu’s long history of affirmative action quotas in higher education and reservation of jobs for historically oppressed and marginalised lower castes, irrespective of the criterion of economic backwardness. Reservations have been the bedrock of the Dravidian movement and politics since 1920, when a non-Brahmin movement under the Justice Party in Madras Presidency (as Tamil Nadu was known during British rule) won the provincial election. The movement launched by the backward castes/classes from 1930 to 1950 gave a distinctive character to Tamil Nadu politics and maintained continuous pressure for larger reserved quotas in higher education and government jobs. In 1969, the then ruling DMK government appointed the first Tamil Nadu State Backward Classes Commission which recommended increasing the quota of backward castes from 25 percent to 31 percent and for Scheduled castes and tribes to 18 percent, aggregating 49 percent. In 1979, when the AIADMK government headed by former (late)chief minister M.G. Ramachandran issued a government order introducing reservations based on economic criteria, it was badly defeated by a DMK-Congress alliance in 1980. This jolted MGR into withdrawing the government order and increasing the quota of backward castes from 31 percent to 50 percent and the SC/ST reserved quota to 19 percent. Thus 69 percent reservation of seats in higher education institutions and government jobs became de rigeuer in Tamil Nadu since 1982. In the early 1990s, the Supreme Court while upholding the validity of a Constitution Amendment Bill introduced in Parliament at the Centre reserving a 27 percent quota for other backward castes/classes (OBCs) on the basis of the Mandal Commission report (1979) which assessed that OBCs constitute over 50 percent of the nation’s population, also ruled that total reservations in Central and state government-owned education institutions and offices should not exceed 50 percent. However in 1993, former chief minister, the late J. Jayalalithaa, introduced a Bill in the state’s legislative assembly ensuring continuation of 69 percent…