Midway through the LS election, the Congress has issued a supplementary manifesto on its website as a follow-up to the document released on March 26. This could rank as a first, and is an indication of how tough the poll battle has turned out to be.
Without doubt the manifesto-supplementing exercise was launched to bring in the votes of minorities. In principle, this means all the religious minorities. But it is evident that election-time salience points to the Muslims mainly on account of their numerical strength and presence throughout the country. Considering the nature of the proposals, the dalits among the Sikhs in Punjab may also expect to benefit if the Congress’ idea takes shape, apart from dalits of other religious denominations in other parts of the country.
The party’s original manifesto had spoken of reservations in education and employment for the OBCs among the minorities. What the supplementary document does is earmark the extent of the reservation, which has been pegged at 4.5 per cent of the OBC quota. The UPA-2 government had pushed for this during its tenure but the matter ran into difficulties with the judiciary. The idea has now been mooted to strengthen the government’s hand through suitable legislation.
The other leg of the two-pronged appeal to the minorities in the manifesto addendum is to incorporate the dalits of all the religious minorities under the SC category. Currently, outside the Hindu fold, only dalits of the Buddhist minority are counted as SC and receive benefits.
Unlike listing OBC Muslims for a place in the quota regime, considering the case of the dalits among the minorities is a straightforward election ploy, for it had not been attempted by the UPA before. At the level of realpolitik, Congress may take the plea that its step is in response to BJP leaders resorting to various tricks to polarise voters along Hindu-Muslim lines in order to consolidate Hindu vote in its favour.
But this is not in keeping with the party’s non-sectarian record. Also, the party seems to be signalling to the minorities that it is a better custodian of their interests compared to the many regional secular parties in the fray.
The Congress has been a markedly centrist party drawing flak for its welfare-oriented approach, and for not submitting all delivery systems to market logic. Indeed, there is intrinsically nothing wrong with targeting benefits for the weaker sections of society. But, appropriately speaking, the notion of affirmative action should extend to the poor among the non-OBC and non-dalit sections. And, for all categories, affirmative action need not mean only reservations. A changed paradigm is needed.
