Recently, several media reports confirmed that Justice GD Sharma commission is about to finalize the process of inclusion and exclusion of villages into socially and economically backward categories, colloquially known as the RBA category. Pertinently, RBA, a unique reservation category exclusive to Jammu and Kashmir. The Jammu and Kashmir Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Commission (JKSEBC) reached out to the Government seeking information regarding the development of villages previously deemed as backward, which were given 20 percent reservation under the Residents of Backward Areas (RBA) category.
In this respect, it has sought details from authorities about parameters such as the construction of roads, distance of villages from colleges, higher secondary schools and other schools, Primary Health Centre or any other hospital, Wi-Fi facilities and other modes of communication about erstwhile RBA-categorized villages.
While re-categorization on the basis of objective criteria will certainly bring fairness in the RBA category, the details sought out to determine its parameters are not exhaustive. For instance, the mere availability of educational institutions, roads, hospitals, internet access among other facilities cannot give a complete picture about the “backwardness” of a village.
If the reservation for is seen as an enabling provision that facilitates socio-economic betterment of backward villages, then in my view, the commission disregards several other parameters such as selling price of agricultural land in these villages, per capita income, employability, resource availability, human development index, etc. that can actually give a holistic assessment of backwardness. If the commission intends to assess backwardness only in terms of availability of infrastructure, even the most backward areas in terms of per capita income and employability will miss out and in turn will face further disempowerment.
Let’s assume a certain village is well-connected with the urban center and it has the entire infrastructure that the commission has sought details about. If the same village has historically been disadvantaged because of scarcity of facilities, based on current details that commission is seeking, the current disadvantageous position of its inhabitants (poverty, destitution, etc.) would not reflect in its final report. With the criteria devised, the report will then treat the villages presently falling under RBA category with robust socio-economic development and also those villages which only possess infrastructure but are devoid of socio-economic development because of historical disadvantages at par. So, an exhaustive review of all socio-economic parameters is necessary to realize the objective of renewed categorization, which is to extend a hand-up to backward communities and be an enabling mechanism rather than a mere yardstick to assess the available infrastructure.
It is pertinent to mention here that, in J&K, almost 75% of the population lives in rural areas. Some of these areas suffer from specific structural handicaps including remoteness from towns and villages, retrograde roads and connectivity, minimal economic activity and absence of jobs. The traditional job-creating sectors like agriculture and handicraft industry are already in disarray there. On top of that, the fragmentation of land-holdings generation by generation and climate crisis has made agriculture unsustainable for the farmer community. If a farmer owned 5 kanals of land, their 4 children would inherit mere 1.25 kanals each. Over the years, even the cottage industry (carpet-weaving, etc.) has completely disappeared.
The basic purpose of RBA category is to provide succor against such handicaps. But, mere infrastructure availability won’t necessarily mean the village has changed into a dreamland overnight.
The commission should also seek details about the selling price of land-holdings to get a sense of the village’s economic value, per-capita income and overall human development index to measure economic development, employability and resource-availability to check resilience of villages.
The information about the commission’s proposed criteria is sourced from some recent news reports. However, if the commission does seek details such as per capita income, human development index, employability and economic value of land already, then the criteria will definitely separate chaff from grain and bring fairness in the renewed RBA category.
Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
- The author can be reached at [email protected]
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