A question of quota: How to determine who is 'economically weak'

Determining who is 'economically weak' will shape the success of the reservation policy

Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech became a rallying cry for the world’s oppressed communities demanding equality. More than a decade before that speech, India’s constituent assembly legislated caste-based reservation to lift the historically marginalised. The ambit was expanded in 1992 to cover Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld another expansion giving a 10 per cent quota to the economically weaker sections (EWS) in the general category.

With the ambit of reservation expanded, computing who qualifies for the benefit has become complicated. A national census could fix the number of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but determining non-creamy layer OBCs is a complex task. Even more daunting is determining who gets the EWS quota.

The government informed the Supreme Court that as per the 2010 Sinho Commission report, 18.2 per cent of the general category belonged to the EWS section. The commission made its calculation based on the number of people living below the poverty line, which is different from the government’s criteria of a gross household income of less than Rs 8 lakh per annum and a family owning less than five acres of agricultural land.

Another source the government used to advance its argument for a quota for the economically weak was the Niti Aayog’s multidimensional poverty index, but that study too caps the number of poor at 25.1 per cent.

Data from competitive exams NEET and JEE, where the EWS quota for the general category has been implemented since 2019, support the government’s claim. People applying for the exams under the EWS category comprised around 18 per cent of the total candidates under the general category.

The proportion of EWS students in these competitive exams didn’t vary much over the three years.

But even the way JEE and NEET determined EWS was stricter than what a government panel has proposed. So, more people may turn up for exams under the EWS category next year. Academic studies suggest the number of EWS in the vicinity of 90 per cent of the general category. This year, the government’s State of Inequality report showed that 10 per cent of the population earned more than Rs 3 lakh per annum.

Moreover, just over 10 per cent of rural households, as per the National Sample Survey report, had land ownership of more than five acres.

The government would need a fair assessment of EWS for the reservation to succeed. Too large an ambit would end up defeating its purpose, and a loose criterion would lead to people gaming the system.

It may even lead to the government succumbing to the demand for a socio-economic caste census.