Talk of quota in govt job promotions is in sync with RSS's Dalit-outreach

The Union government appears to be trying its best to find a way around a Supreme Court-judgment that stands in the way of implementing reservation for Scheduled Castes and Schedules Tribes in promotions in government jobs.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has reportedly presented a report to Prime Minister Narendra Modi supporting quotas in promotion. The report paves the way for the revival of an amendment on the issue that has been pending for a long time.

The provision to enable quotas in promotions had already been brought in by amending Article 16 of the Indian constitution in 2001. However, it was contested in the courts and the Supreme Court eventually restricted it in 2006, ordering the government to prove "backwardness", "inadequacy of representation" and "administrative efficiency", every time it wanted to enforce the provision.

An all-party consensus when UPA was in power led to the Rajya Sabha passing the Constitution (117th Amendment) Bill, 2012, which sought to bypass the SC order. The Bill couldn't clear the Lok Sabha which was eventually dissolved in 2014. Ever since, votaries of the amendment have been waiting for the Modi government to revive the legislation and get it cleared so that quota in promotions could be finally made a reality.

The DoPT exercise appears to be essentially aimed at carefully examining loopholes, if any, in the amendment that may make the provision vulnerable to judicial review. It indicates that the Modi government is keen to implement quotas in promotions, in sync with the RSS's Dalit outreach.

Why quotas in promotion?

The votaries of the concept argue that the discrimination against lower castes doesn't end only at the entry level in government offices. It continues in promotions, whereby upper caste officers conspire against their lower caste colleagues and deliberate spoil their records to scuttle their promotion. The evidence lies in well-documented statistics on number of officers from the SCs and STs serving the government on the ranks of Secretary, Addditional Secretary, Joint Secretary.

A parliamentary report from 2015 puts the figures at 1 from SC and 3 from ST at the Secretary level (from a total of at least 55 Secretaries in the Union government), 3 SCs and 2 STs at AS level and 10 SCs and 4 STs at JS level.

Those against the move say promotions, as distinct from landing a job, should only be based on merit. That position, however, completely negates the assertion that caste-based discrimination is practiced in deciding on promotions.

The Modi-government's stand on the issue should not be confused with the RSS' repeated assertions that the reservation policy should be reviewed. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had landed himself in a soup after making these comments in 2015 just before Assembly elections in Bihar. Many believe the controversy contributed to the BJP's defeat in Bihar as its rivals succeeded in portraying Bhagwat's views as BJP's agenda.

The test of the RSS-BJP combine's intentions is not in what it says but is in what it does. The Gujarat government, under BJP, has ushered in an Upper Caste quota in the state, completely reversing the very logic of reservations. It remains to be seen whether the Modi-government will actually revive the Bill on quota in promotion. Till that happens, it is convenient to keep making the right noises on the issue to appeal to Dalits.