PDS and Reservations

The constitution of India authorizes the state to provide various opportunities to the backward classes in terms of their education, employment, social status and so on. Various govts. over the period of 60 years have sought to implement these provisions. Numerous commissions were set up to look into the operational aspects of these provisions. The basic underlying factor which guided the reports of these commissions was to provide Reservations.


The prime reason for reservations is to provide a level playing field to the different sections of the society. These sections can be classified based on any of the viable criteria like caste, religion, economic status, gender, regions and so on. The census data presents statistics for caste, religion, gender and regions but never has there been a census with an accurate data on the economic status of the citizens.

There are obvious difficulties in collecting the data on economic status compared to the caste, religion or regional data. 92% of the workforce in India is in the unorganised sector which makes it almost impossible to track their economic development. But rich or poor, literate or illiterate, north indian or south indian, all are bound by caste and religion in this country. This makes it a very easy criteria to provide reservations.

In reality, under the veil of reservations the political parties have played vote bank politics. In the name of upliftment they encouraged regionalism and casteism. Yes, there were many beneficiaries of these provisions who have improved their economic status, but even after 60 years of independence, this system has not provided a level playing field for all.

The present state of poverty in India can be attributed to the weak public distribution system (PDS), apart from other important factors like low agricultural productivity, erratic monsoons, lack of access to agricultural credit and lack of proper storage facilities leading to wastage. The way out to strengthen the PDS is have a clear statistics about the BPL and APL beneficiaries so that PDS can be targeted directly to them. Even today, we do not have a clear line drawn for the below poverty line (BPL). There are differences in the findings of Arjun sen gupta committee (72%) and Tendulkar committee (42%) approx.

This seems to be a clear cut strategy of the govt. not to provide the basic rights to the people i.e food security. When the govt. can afford to provide reservations to the poor on the basis of caste and religion, why not then provide food again on the same basis? Why look out for an economic criteria like monthly salary, expenditure on education, food and health which seems to be an impossible basis taking into account the lack of proper statistics?

If economic criteria seems to be the correct way of providing services to the people then why not extend it even to other areas like education, employment, political reservations and so on?