Gadkari takes a deviant RSS line on quota
Even as the Devendra Fadnavis government is taking up on an urgent basis the Maratha reservation in government jobs and the education sector, his colleague in the BJP, Union minister Nitin Gadkari, feels that reservation will not guarantee employment as the job market is shrinking.
Talking to reporters in Aurangabad, Gadkari was quoted by PTI as saying, “Let us assume that reservation is given. But there are no jobs. Because in banks, the jobs have shrunk because of IT. The government recruitment is frozen. Where are the jobs?”
Again, Gadkari took a deviant line by saying that the problem with reservation is that backwardness is ‘‘becoming a political interest.’’
“Everyone says I am backward. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Brahmins are strong. They dominate politics. (And) They say they are backward. So, one school of thought is that a poor is poor, he has no caste, creed or language. Whatever may be the religion — Muslim, Hindu or Maratha (a caste), in all communities there is one section which has no clothes to wear, no food to eat. One school of thought also is (that) we must
consider the poorest of the poor section in every community.” This is a “socio-economic thinking” and it must not be politicised, he added.
It will be recalled that during the Patel quota stir in Gujarat, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had pitched for a review of the reservation policy, contending it has been used for political ends and suggesting setting up of a political committee to examine who needs the facility and for how long. Gadkari seems to be echoing similar views.
Bhagwat's comments on the issue of reservation in the run-up to the Bihar polls was believed to be one of the reasons behind BJP's poor performance during the state polls. The BJP, on the other hand, claims that the RSS has never opposed reservation.
But even as Gadkari is suggesting that claims of backwardness are driven by politics, the Centre, in the Supreme Court, recently pitched strongly for reservation in promotions among SCs and STs and took the line that the ‘backwardness’ of a community should be taken as a given and there was no need for quantifiable data to establish backwardness.
Even as Nitin Gadkari is suggesting that the job market is shrinking, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is counting on high levels of economic growth to deliver jobs before the country heads for elections in 2019. Before sweeping to power in 2014, PM Modi appealed to young job-seekers with a promise to create 10 million jobs. Four years later it remains unclear how many positions have been created.