In many ways, the rollout of the reservation plan for other backward classes and the demolition of the Babri Masjid had been triggered by many forces and Singh, Advani and Rao played important roles in all these developments. Nor were these disruptions sudden. These were the outcome of a series of developments that preceded what happened in August 1990 and in December 1992.
Reservation as a disruption did not end in itself. It led to more disruptions with more people demanding reservations —the Jats and now the Patels.5 The acceptance of the Mandal Commission by V.P. Singh showed to the political leadership that it was possible to widen the scope of reservation for backward classes. Till then, successive governments may have endorsed the idea of using jobs reservation as a tool for ameliorating the social, educational and economic conditions of those who remained backward in the country even after Independence. But none of them agreed to expand the scope of reservation.
The Nehru government, for instance, did not accept the recommendations of the Kalelkar Commission that had submitted its report on extending reservations for jobs in government services in 1955. Similarly, the Mandal Commission submitted its recommendations in 1980, when Indira Gandhi had just returned to power. But she took no action on the report’s recommendations till she was killed by her bodyguards in October 1984.
Ironically, Mandal had great hopes that Indira Gandhi would be very receptive to his recommendations. While submitting the report to President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy, Mandal had said:
It may be mentioned that although this Commission was appointed by the previous Janata government, Smt. Indira Gandhi’s government not only gave two extensions but extended all support and cooperation in the discharge of our work. This clearly shows her devotion and commitment to the cause of the suppressed, depressed and the oppressed.6
The Mandal Commission’s report was ignored even by Rajiv Gandhi, who took no view on its recommendations from November 1984 to November 1989. It was the V.P. Singh government at last that mustered the courage to accept it in 1990. And he took that decision, arguably, to counter his political opponents within the National Front and outside. In the nearly three decades since then, the clamour for more reservations for more backward castes has only increased. Not only backward castes, but also members of some minority communities have suggested that reservations as a policy tool for their social, educational and economic emancipation should be used for them as well.
V.P. Singh’s highly adventurous move on reservations, whatever be its motives, has shown that many castes and economically underprivileged sections of society want to be covered by reservations. In a highly unequal society like India’s, there is certainly strong logic behind reservations from the point of view of securing social justice and compensating the backward classes for the social exploitation, suppression and injustice perpetrated on them for many generations. But at the same time, the implications of the reservation policy for a merit-based system are serious. And the fact that the reservations policy pursued till recently does not give any weight to the economic conditions of people is a pointer to the deeper problems and resentment that this approach has created for the government.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the Narendra Modi government, almost at the end of its first five-year tenure of the government, got the Constitution amended to provide for an additional 10 per cent reservation of government jobs and seats for economically weaker sections in the general category. The new law has defined economically weaker sections and one of the conditions is that the annual household income would be less than Rs 8.5 lakh. Parliament passed the Constitution amendment bill on 9 January 2019. The politics of reservation that V.P. Singh had started in 1990 continues to stay relevant even after almost three decades, triggering reactions and counter-reactions from different political parties.
The temple movement, on the other hand, has been an equally powerful disruption for the secular fabric of the nation. It certainly gave a push to the political movement for a Hindu rashtra, an idea propagated by the BJP for obvious political gains. There is no doubt that the BJP managed to use the idea of building a Ram temple at Ayodhya as a tool for political mobilization and gaining power at the Centre. And the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 was seen as a move to realize that goal. The BJP’s rise has been truly remarkable—from 1984, when it had just two Lok Sabha seats, to its emergence as a single-largest party with 182 Lok Sabha seats in 1998 and forming a coalition government, and then becoming the first political party in three decades to secure a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha in 2014 after winning 282 seats and completing its tenure of five years without any political hiccup. And in 2019, the BJP improved its majority in the Lok Sabha by winning over 300 seats in the general elections.
At another level, the demolition of Babri Masjid caused probably the biggest disruption to the social fabric of the nation. It deepened the communal divide in the country. Not just Muslims, but other minority communities have also, after the demolition of Babri Masjid, become apprehensive about their status and position in India. It has also raised questions over India’s claims that the rule of law prevails in the country under all circumstances. To that extent, this disruption has also had an impact on India’s reputation as a diverse and democratic country in the international community of nations.
Turning Points
There are three clear turning points in this disruptive phase of India’s politics and they could have influenced the course of the developments in many different and as yet unanticipated directions. The first turning point is V.P. Singh’s decision to accept the Mandal Commission’s recommendations for extending reservation to backward castes. It was perceived to have given Singh two advantages. One, it was aimed at reining in the followers of Devi Lal, his deputy prime minister, who had decided to flex their political muscles through a public rally. Two, it was aimed at countering the BJP’s political ploy to mobilize and consolidate the Hindu vote bank around its movement for a Ram temple at Ayodhya. As it turned out, neither of Singh’s objectives was actually fulfilled. Even after announcing the acceptance of Mandal Commission’s recommendations, the V.P. Singh government fell as the dissidents moved away along with Chandra Shekhar to form a new government with the latter as prime minister. Devi Lal continued to remain the deputy prime minister even under the new dispensation. Singh was the eventual loser. Even the BJP’s Hindu vote bank mobilization drive saw no respite after Singh used the Mandal card. On the contrary, the temple movement got a fresh impetus as the threat of the Hindu vote bank getting fragmented in smaller caste groups became real. What would have happened, if Singh had not made that abrupt announcement of accepting the recommendations of the Mandal Commission? It is likely that Singh would have got a few more months to rule from New Delhi, after making some concessions to the Devi Lal camp. It is possible that the steady decline of the Indian economy could have been averted or at least delayed as Singh certainly had a better and saner sense of running the economy as prime minister. And certainly, the demand for more reservation from different caste groups could have been averted, as the acceptance of the Mandal Commission encouraged many other groups to make similar claims for reservation. The genie of reservation and clamour for more reservation was out of the bottle and all prime ministers after V.P. Singh have unsuccessfully tried to put the genie back inside the bottle.
The second turning point is the arrest of Lal Krishna Advani in Samastipur in Bihar in October 1990. The arrest of Advani, ordered by the Bihar government, which was then led by Chief Minister Lalu Prasad, helped both the Mulayam Singh government in Uttar Pradesh and the V.P. Singh government at the Centre in getting the political satisfaction of foiling the BJP’s attempts at mass mobilization near the disputed Babri mosque in Ayodhya. But it also intensified the BJP agitation for a Ram temple and converted that demand into an emotive issue with a wider appeal among large sections of the Hindu population in north India, in particular. It is debatable what would have happened if Advani’s Rath Yatra had been al
lowed to complete its journey unchallenged. Did Lalu Prasad’s decision to arrest Advani make him a Hindu Hriday Samrat (darling of the Hindus) and help the BJP widen its appeal among the Hindu electorate? Or would it have been better to strengthen the law and order enforcement in Ayodhya and prevent any mass mobilization around the mosque, instead of arresting Advani in Samastipur? These are the imponderables of the Mandir–Masjid politics of that time.
The third and final turning point is P.V. Narasimha Rao’s response to the December 1992 congregation planned by the BJP in Ayodhya. Should Rao have taken pre-emptive action against the Uttar Pradesh government, then led by Kalyan Singh of the BJP? It had reports from all sources, official and unofficial, that a large mob would be mobilized to gather outside the mosque area on 6 December 1992. Rao has argued that he went by the rule book and the commitment the UP government had given to the Supreme Court on maintaining law and order on that day. But as prime minister, should Rao have acted in advance and possibly removed the UP chief minister and imposed the President’s rule on the state? If he had followed such an action plan, the history of the BJP movement on building a Ram temple in Ayodhya would have taken a new course. Whether it would have helped the BJP or not is, of course, a moot point.
Economic and Political Consequences
Both the disruptions—reservations of jobs and the demolition of the mosque—have had huge economic consequences. Since reservation of government jobs and seats in educational institutions has been extended to people only on the basis of their birth into a backward or scheduled caste, the benefits have largely been enjoyed by those who were slightly better off and relatively less underprivileged. In other words, the same family has continued to enjoy the reservation benefits, instead of these being spread over a larger group of deprived sections of society. The concept of a creamy layer for excluding the economically and socially well-off among the backward castes has so far been applied only to the other backward castes (OBC) and not to scheduled castes and tribes. The creamy layer concept, introduced in 1993, implied that OBC members enjoying constitutional positions or employed with the rank of Class I officers and those whose parents have a gross annual income of over Rs 8 lakh would not be eligible for reservation benefits.
In spite of a September 2018 order by the Supreme Court that suggested that the creamy layer concept could be extended to scheduled castes and tribes, the government is yet to act on it.7 The lack of an economic criterion for deciding on extending reservation benefits to SC and STs has thus harmed the policy’s effectiveness to a great extent. The Modi government’s decision in early 2019 to amend the Constitution to grant 10 per cent reservation for everyone belonging to economically weaker sections of society was aimed at addressing that weakness. But its impact is yet to be felt on the ground.
On the other hand, the demolition of Babri Masjid had initially dealt a blow to India’s attractiveness as an investment destination. With bomb blasts, violence on the streets of Mumbai and riots in other parts of the country, India was seen as an unstable place for doing business by both domestic businesses as well as international investors. The demolition also coincided with a particularly delicate state of India’s economy, when it had just begun to revive international confidence in its markets. Fortunately, the adverse fallout of the demolition of the mosque was contained after a few months. But the risks the disruption posed to India’s economic stability cannot be underestimated.
It is ironical that the short-lived National Front government led by Vishwanath Pratap Singh would be known less for its campaign against corruption, for which it was largely voted to power, and more for its decision to extend the scope of affirmative action or reservation of seats in educational institutions to backward castes. Both economically and politically, the acceptance of the Mandal Commission to extend the scope of reservation caused a massive disruption. India’s politics changed in fundamental ways from 1990 and its impact on the economy was no less significant.
Politically, it was a big blow against the Bharatiya Janata Party, which relied on Hindus, which till then was a largely monolithic vote bank, to expand its footprint in the country. Reservation for backward communities splintered the Hindu vote in many smaller divisions—a bigger challenge for the BJP to use its community card. The agitation for demolishing the disputed structure at Ayodhya and the demand for building a temple there got a fillip. In less than a year, the Babri mosque was demolished and the movement for building a Ram temple continues unabated.
The rise of the BJP was one of the offshoots of the disruption caused by V.P. Singh’s reservation policy. The fault lines in India’s polity had become wide open. The politics over reservation and the Ram temple is still being played out in India.
Section 10
The Telecom Bump
CHAPTER 18
IN SEARCH OF A LANDLINE
The tardy pace in the growth of India’s telecommunication services and their poor quality in the pre-reform era have spawned many stories—some of them may well be apocryphal. But recounting at least one of them would help underline at least the perception of the deep mess the telecommunications sector was in during the 1980s and how sorely it was neglected by the authorities.
In 1981, the number of telephone connections in India was estimated at 2.15 million. But the number of applicants waiting for a telephone connection, at 0.45 million, was more than a fifth of that. Two years later, in 1983, the situation got worse. The number of landlines went up by merely 15 per cent, to 2.47 million, reflecting the relatively slow rise in capacity to set up new telephone exchanges. This was an annual average growth rate of merely 7.5 per cent. The demand for telephones, however, was growing at a much faster pace, with the growth in the number of applicants waiting for a phone connection increasing by 47 per cent in two years to 0.66 million.1 Worse, the quality of telephone services was pathetic. Mere possession of a telephone connection was not good enough for talking to people on the phone. Frequently and often for long durations, telephone lines would remain dead and telephonic communication was virtually impossible.
C.M. Stephen, the minister for communications in Indira Gandhi’s government from 1980 to 1982, was one of the founders of the Indian National Trade Union Congress, the trade union wing of the Congress. He was steeped in socialist values and was reported to have once made a statement in Parliament that a telephone was a luxury, not a necessity.2 That statement was made before reforms were initiated in the communications sector and reflected how the absence of investment and policy focus had played havoc with the quality of telephone service that was a severe handicap for Indian businesses. The level of dissatisfaction over the quality of telephone services reached such a high that a joke doing the rounds then was that Indira Gandhi once became so exasperated with Stephen that she wanted to convey to him on the phone her disapproval of the way he was supervising the telecommunications department, but she was not able to connect with him since the phones were either dead or the line was so poor that no conversation was possible.
Even after Rajiv Gandhi succeeded his mother as prime minister in 1984–85, the state of India’s telecommunications saw no distinct improvement even though the young prime minister was relatively more focused on the need for developing new technology. He wanted to expand capacity for the manufacture of telephone exchanges to meet the rising demand for telecommunications. But Gandhi promoted domestic development of telecommunication technologies to such an extent that it delayed the government’s programme to meet the growing demand for telephones by allowing the state-owned company, Indian Telephone Industries, or ITI, to tie up with foreign companies and set up new exchange manufacturing capacity. Already, the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) had been set up in 1984 with the mandate to develop digital telephone exchanges for the country. The presence of C-DoT and the support it got from Rajiv Gandhi meant that the proposed tie-up between Alcatel of France and ITI was further delayed. It was ironical that Gandhi, who had succeeded in pushing the country to
wards computerization with a sharp focus on the need for using technology to improve productivity and ensure modernization, had stood in the way of India’s technological upgrade in the telecommunications space. The net result of an unhealthy contest between building technology indigenously and importing technology was that the pace of providing new telephone connections lagged far behind that of demand. The government policy of reserving the manufacture of equipment for telephone exchanges in the public sector contributed to the long waiting period for Indians to get telephone lines.
Even as the number of telephone connections went up from 2.9 million in 1985 to 4.17 million in 1989, the waiting list increased from 0.84 million to 1.42 million in the same period. The gap between demand and availability was widening at an alarming pace. In spite of the economic reforms of 1991, when the new industrial policy removed the monopoly of the public sector in the telecommunications sector, the problems did not go away. Indeed, there was no policy instrument or licensing provisions to allow any new player to enter the telecommunications sector. By 1993, the number of telephone lines had risen to 6.8 million, but the waiting list had also gone up to 2.84 million. A reduction in the waiting period for a telephone line from four years and two months in 1990 to two years and eleven months in 1993 did appear to be a significant reduction in the waiting time, but clearly, this was not enough. And the situation was ripe for a big push to telecommunications in India.
The Rise of Goliath Page 26