Waiting to explode

The Raje government has lived up to its promise of efficiency, only this time, they might have shot themselves in the foot(or have they?) . Panels and commissions are a firefighting tool by themselves and who does not know that! 

Apparently, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje doesn't. Or else she would not have let the Chopra panel turn down the Gujjar bid for ST status with just a year to go for the elections. Or perhaps, it's sheer bad luck that the one bureacrat she picked out of the legions of babus was actually in possession of a 2007 calendar. 

Understandably, with Sonia ji on a mission to bridge the communal divide in Gujarat, the task of dividing Rajasthan along caste lines has fallen on Sachin Pilot's young shoulders. The Dausa MP has drawn the line in the sand.

    Sachin Pilot is one of the many princes of the Congress Party. His time would have come in due course, coinciding with the coronation of Rahul. In order to get a piece of the excitement, he has plunged into a caste struggle that looks more like a zero sum game. By doing so, he has relegated himself to the junkyard category of caste leaders too early in his career. But then, some species of geese are genetically programmed to follow the first moving thing they see when they hatch, aren't they? 

   The BJP does not want to deal with this. And who can blame them? They have tossed the live grenade into the Centre's court. The Gujjars make up, after all, just 5-6% of the population. The Jats and the Meenas account for much more and they form the backbone of the BJP's vote. Given the rabid opposition to Gujjar appeasement from the Meena community, the BJP is trying to turn a negative into a positive. If the Gujjar agitation is not able to pin the blame on either the State nor the Central government and the Meenas predictably hold on to their prejudices, the BJP's gambit might just pay off. 

   That said, one should note that this is not the first time a caste based movement has looked poised to move the underpinnings of Rajasthan politics. Early in 2003, ex-BJP leader (late)Devi Singh Bhati mooted the idea of upper caste reservation, thereby threatening to snatch the BJP's core supporters. By making inane speeches at impressive rallies, Bhati got all the media attention he could have wanted. However, on election day, not a blade of grass stirred and the state fell quite tamely into the BJP's lap.  Col. Bainsla's antics could go down as yet another instance of the same.  In summary,

   There are two mules parked on the Delhi-Jaipur highway; a Gujjar mule and a Meena mule. Which one do we kick? Both deserve a kick and richly so.

  The last word: It is reprehensible that large sections of the people of our country have not achieved the level of sophistication that they can see the impracticability of having affirmative action for every community. Generations of Indians have been bred on freebies from the government and they are unable to stop asking for more; even as millions break away from the stereotype and strike out a path for themselves in the free world. Political parties do not have the political courage to stand up to these forces because we are unable to give a courageous mandate. People need to join school and stay in school and take very good notice of their science textbooks. Perhaps, that way they will know better than to define themselves by caste. Until that happens, we have only ourselves to blame for our sluggish political system.