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Sagar Watch : Opinion
Sagar Watch News/ Reservation was introduced in India like a remedial class—temporary, corrective, and with the noble intention of helping those historically pushed to the back bench finally move to the front row.
Seventy-five years later, the class has not ended. In fact, the classroom has expanded, more students have enrolled, and the syllabus remains unchanged.
When the Constitution came into force in 1950, the Scheduled Caste list had 607 castes. Today, it has nearly 1200. Untouchability was constitutionally abolished, yet somehow touch-me-not categories multiplied. It appears that while social evil was outlawed, social paperwork flourished.
The Scheduled Tribe list followed a similar academic journey—241 tribes then, about 744 now. The OBC category began with roughly 3000 castes and has now crossed 5000. If backwardness were a currency, India would be an economic superpower.
This leads to an uncomfortable but necessary question:
Are we uplifting communities—or manufacturing backwardness?
Reservation was meant to be a ladder. Instead, it has become a comfortable sofa, where no one is expected to stand up once seated. In seven decades, not a single caste has officially been declared “uplifted enough” to leave the list.
Not one has been told, “Congratulations, you have arrived.” The policy seems to believe in once backward, always backward—a concept both sociologically pessimistic and statistically miraculous.
Every other welfare scheme has an exit door. Poverty lines are redrawn, diseases are eradicated, literacy targets are achieved. But reservation? It has no graduation ceremony. No farewell speech. No alumni list.
Ironically, representation was the goal. Yet reservation today often ensures permanent representation without measurable progress. The son of a civil servant still needs protection from the same system that failed his grandfather.
If after generations of access to education, jobs, and power, a community is officially still “backward,” the question is not about the community—it is about the policy.
This has also created a peculiar social competition:
A race to prove who is more backward.
Economic success is hidden, prosperity is understated, and caste certificates are guarded like family heirlooms. In a country racing toward the future, backwardness has become the most valuable identity card.
To question this is not to deny historical injustice. It is to ask whether justice should be corrective or hereditary. Whether empowerment means progress or perpetual protection. A policy that cannot declare success after 70 years does not inspire confidence—it demands an audit.
Reservation was meant to be a bridge. Today, it looks more like a destination. And any system where reaching the destination is discouraged is not social justice—it is social stagnation.
Perhaps it is time to ask, politely but firmly:
If reservation has not moved even one caste forward in seven decades, should we continue calling it a solution—or finally admit it has become a habit?
After all, even history moves on. Only reservation, it seems, is eternally under construction.
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