Reservation for social justice : a socio-constitutional approach

The time seems to be propitious for an examination of reservations guaranteed by our constitution to the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and Backward Classes. For perhaps never in long history of about a century have reservations been so questioned as they are ques tioned today, never has the attack upon reservations been so determined and so threatening as it is just now. At a time one state or other in the Union of India seems trembling in the balance between the orderly implementation of reservations and the processes of force which seem! so much more quick and effective.

Anti-reservation agitations in 1981 and 1985 in Gujarat and currently in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka appear to highlight the fact of success of force against the orderly implementation of reservations. Antireservation agitations are pernicious in their nature and character, ominous in their tendencies and disastrous in their effects.

At such threatening and ominous occasions everyone is forced to make a choice between the orderly implementation of reservations and force against reservations. If one is to make the choice intelligently it would seem reasonable, whether in the end he decides for reservations or for force. When one is caught in the vortex of such situation, even the most intelligent mind requires the just guidelines to make the choice.