Editorial 1 : Extending Social Justice
Context: Internal inequalities must stay at the heart of sub-quota conversation
Supreme Court Judgement
- Supreme Court rejected a set of review petitions challenging its August 1 judgment affirming the constitutional validity of the sub-categorisation of the Scheduled Castes.
- The 6-1 majority verdict by a seven-judge constitutional bench is a legal landmark that sets aside the Supreme Court’s 2004 verdict in E V Chinnaiah vs. State of Andhra Pradesh (2000), where sub-categorisation had been declared to be unconstitutional.
- The judgment points to significant changes in the contemporary discourse on reservation.
Features of Judgement
- It enunciates the principle that sub categorisation, like reservation itself, must be seen as a means of promoting substantive equality rather than an exception to it.
- it insists that the need to maintain efficiency in administration must be interpreted in ways that foster equality and inclusion.
- It rejects the path taken by the 2022 EWS judgment (which excluded the SC, ST and OBC castes from EWS reservation even when otherwise eligible) by stipulating that sub categorization must not have the effect of excluding the socially and educationally advanced castes within the SC.
- The judgment makes it mandatory for sub categorisation schemes to provide empirical evidence of material inequalities within the Scheduled Castes, especially their disproportionate representation in government services.
Post Judgement Developments
- Internal differentiation, inequality, and discrimination should be at the centre of public debate around sub categorisation, but this is not happening.
- OBC reservation: Internal differentiation was used to oppose reservation itself in 1990s.
- It is distressing to see the same arguments that upper caste-vested interests invoked against the idea of reservation being unthinkingly deployed to oppose sub categorisation.
- Arguments like sub-quota seats won’t be filled for lack of qualified candidates and the absence of data are mere prevarications that refuse to address the main issue.
- Ground Reality: There is growing inequality and continuing discrimination within the Scheduled Castes.
Addressing the Reality
- Transparent, evidence-based and context-specific criteria for subclassification must be developed.
- Work out the limits and modalities of the criteria for subclassification.
- The history of successful struggles for sub categorisation in Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh shows the way.
- Example: In Andhra Pradesh, a cross-section of the public, intelligentsia, ordinary people and political parties came to a consensus to implement sub categorisation.
Way Forward
- Societal Responsibility: It is the collective responsibility of society to build a broad consensus so that reservation may be shared among the Scheduled Castes based on principles of social backwardness and representation.
- The Scheduled Castes must remain united to secure their rights. Despite its difficulties, the only sustainable unity is one based on justice.
Editorial 2 : The Problem with Free Food
Context: The problem with the right to free food
Global Food Production and Food Security
- October 16 is observed as World Food Day every year by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
- This year’s theme of FAO’s World Food Day is Right to Foods for a Better Life and a Better Future.
- The world has made tremendous progress in increasing food production by large-scale adoption of better seeds, more irrigation, and higher doses of fertilisers and pesticides.
- This could not have been done without increasing incentives to farmers by means of input subsidies, higher prices for their produce, or a mix of some of the two.
- State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI report) of FAO: Roughly 2.33 billion people still face moderate to severe food insecurity.
Right to Food and National Food Security Act
- Right to food encouraged government of India to come up with National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013.
- It was to cover roughly two-thirds of the Indian population in providing rice, wheat or coarse grains (5kg/person/month) at Rs 3/kg, Rs 2/kg, and Rs 1/kg, respectively.
- The poverty ratio was estimated 29% by the Rangarajan Committee, this raised the question as to why such highly subsidised food should be available to two-thirds of the population.
Critique to the NFSA Approach
- Right to Food does not mean that everyone, or two-thirds of the population, get free food.
- The government’s job is to make sure that food is easily available and accessible.
- But distributing free food to more than 800 million people today is economically irrational.
- NITI Aayog’s Multi-dimensional Poverty Index says that the poverty ratio has declined from 29.13% in 2013-14 to 11.28% in 2022-23.
- If this is true then why is government still distributing free food to more than 800 million people?
Concerns
- Appeasement Politics: Free food to bottom 15% of the population is acceptable but free food beyond 15% of the population is nothing else but a vote-catching tactic.
- High Subsidy: Food subsidy is the largest subsidy in the Union budget.
- Along with fertiliser subsidy, it cuts down much more rational and productive investments in agri-food space, such as in agri-R&D, precision agriculture, micro-nutrients, women’s education and sanitation.
- These investments are almost 10 times more effective in ensuring the food and nutritional security of our people than free food and highly subsidised fertilisers and power.
- Abundant and open-ended subsidies are instrument of corruption.
Way Forward
- Government needs to summon the courage for the reforms and rationalisation in subsidy regime.
- Digitisation of the agri-food system can come in very handy in chalking out a more rational and robust system that can help achieve the Zero Hunger goal of SDGs by 2030.
- Overcoming the challenge can make Indian agriculture more vibrant, climate resilient, and nutritious, helping to overcome the curse of malnutrition.