We have the best of reservations and probably the worst as well.

Quotas for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs) were inspired by B R Ambedkar, and meant to make full citizens of those who had been banged down for centuries. As Jats did much of that hard hitting, it is ironic that they now want reservations too.

This ambition would not have stirred among them, nor in many of the once rural elite, if Mandal had not gamed the system with the Other Backward Caste (OBC) formula. This has opened the way for powerful rural castes to jump the queue and claim urban jobs as a right.

What Ambedkar bequeathed has a transparent honesty about it, but that can’t be said of Mandal’s legacy. Not surprisingly, while the former aroused little violence, the latter can’t have enough of it. From its inauguration in 1990 till now, Mandal activists have repeatedly taken to the streets with all kinds of sharp, blunt and fiery instruments. This is why neither OBC reservations nor current Jat excesses are extensions, or morning-after effects, of the earlier SC/ST scheme.

Let us first examine the difference between creating and transferring assets. The rationale for Ambedkar’s reservations was to allow SCs and STs to acquire socially valuable skills and, with it, some dignity. As these communities were denied such attributes from way back in tradition, their social presence was deeply scarred by negative markers.

Mandal’s formulation, on the other hand, had eyes only for the rural dominants and how their reach could be extended to urban India. No wonder the Jats love it.

Thus while SCs and STs have no assets anywhere, OBCs do in rural India, both in terms of land and power. Now, through Mandal, they can leverage these rural assets for urban jobs. This is what makes the claims to reservations by Jats, Marathas, Kapus and Patels so transparently unfair.

In the original script, reservations were never intended to transfer assets but to create them. Reservations were devised to confer self-confidence in those from whom it had been robbed. They were not meant to create jobs and fight poverty; there are other policies for that.

Second, on the future of the caste system. While Ambedkar campaigned for SC quota he was clear that his final aim was to uproot this unjust hierarchical order from public life. Mandal, on the other hand had no such ambitions. For him caste was not to be “removed”, as with Ambedkar, but to be “represented”. This is why, while Ambedkar wanted SC/ST reservations to be periodically reviewed, Mandal showed no sensitivity on this matter; the aims of the two were vastly different.

Not surprisingly, Mandal gave fewer points to objective education and economic factors, reserving the bulk for a fluffy category called “social backwardness”. This allowed communities like the Jats to still make the cut in spite of scoring poorly on educational and economic deprivation. They did this by maxing the social backwardness criterion; indeed, failing on this count would be the hardest thing to do.

The math is really very simple. For backwardness to kick in, all one requires is 11points. The four criteria in this social backwardness category carry three points each and every box in them is practically pre-ticked. How difficult is it to claim that one does manual work in the fields? Or, that women of the household labour too? Or, even, how poorly other castes think of your own? There is no known caste that thinks well of any other caste!

Finally, it is possible to score three more points in this section by actually breaking the law. This is because the fourth criterion rewards those who practise child marriage. This, according to Mandal, is also a sign of “social backwardness” worthy of being rewarded.

Now four times three is 12, and all one needs to be “backward” is a mere 11points. That this bogus scheme has been allowed to fly for so long is obviously because it has powerful political patronage.

As OBCs are far from being downtrodden, they are not used to being denied. Naturally, their representations nearly always end up in violence. This feature is heightened because they find encouragement from local authorities with whom they have intimate social and economic links; powerful people have powerful friends. This is also why the Jats of today can go right on and attack weaker Sainis and other rural castes, forcing many of them to conceal their family names.

Like most other nations, India too came into being in a mess of blood and pain. But happily, the Constitution arrived soon after on a healing mission, hoping to convert us from bigots to citizens. Unfortunately, Mandal inspired OBC reservations are sending us back to our sordid past.

As unemployment affects everyone, why should only certain communities have the freedom to run wild? True, village India is no longer what it once used to be. True also that the rural economy is getting increasingly non-agricultural and that everybody wants to vault over the mud walls and head for the city. But surely this dry fig leaf can hardly justify Jat mayhem of the sort going around these days.

What can be explained need not always be excused!