Alito Siqueira
write from a position of being doubly privileged: once by birth, having been born in a caste, class and gender where only the best was expected from me; I can take for granted that I got my job as a teacher in the Goa University on ‘merit.’ Equally importantly, my double privilege is to have had students from vulnerable sections of society such as SC, ST, and women who chose to trust me with their experiences of various hidden injuries that are regularly meted out by the formal education system. For instance, a teacher may casually remark ‘tumikunbi ani kunbivurtelim’ (you are a kunbi and will always remain so).Or a candidate from the Velip community might be told that “you are so lucky that you can get any job you want through reservation.” Through these distinct privileges that I enjoy, I discuss here how jobs, elections and reservations play out for different sets of people in the Goa of today. The first part looks at a reservation scam that is unfolding as the Government attempts to fill 1500 jobs as a pre-election sop.
The Directorate of Art and Culture advertised 115 vacancies across different posts on 15 November. Soon, there was a buzz on Facebook that up to 95 percent of the positions were reserved for different categories, and only 5 percent of the jobs were left for the Unreserved category. This violated the Supreme Court restriction of a maximum of 50 percent reservation of vacancies in any government recruitment. Indeed, the advertisement for jobs released by the Department of Art and Culture contravenes the law and is a major mistake.
There is, however, one, and only one exception to the above stated limit of 50 percent reservation rule. The limit does not apply to ‘backlog’ vacancies. These ‘backlog’ vacancies are reserved vacancies that were not filled during previous recruitment, hence the backlog. According to a DOPT Memorandum, these “are separate and a distinct group and would not be considered together with the reserved vacancies of the year in which they are filled for determining the ceiling of 50% reservation on total number of vacancies of that year.” (DOPT MemorandumNo.36033/ 1/ 2008-Estt. (Res.)the 15th July 2008 read along with the 81st Constitutional Amendment 2000).
Now, this is where the story gets interesting, or perhaps I should say, murky. According to information provided to the Goa Assembly about backlog posts for ST in the Directorate of Art and Culture onMarch 1, 2014 the number was claimed to be ‘Nil.’ (response to Legislative Assembly Question 107). However, just a year later, on 27March2015 the backlog had suddenly jumped to 44 backlog posts (LAQ 167) and on 30July2018, the backlog posts had reduced to only seventeen. This happened without any significant recruitment. It is quite obvious that the Government has been concealing and fudging the information on backlog posts in their responses to Assembly questions.
In the case of the Directorate of Education(which announced vacancies for Primary Teachers through the advertisement in August 2018), the actual backlog for Primary Teachers (ST category) is 225 (LAQ 167 above which also gives information on the back log at the Education Departments)and yet the government has announced no backlog in its advertisement. GAKUVED,a federation of tribal communities of Goa, has placed the matter before all concerned ministers, Secretaries and Directors. Yet, the Director of Education now says that he is going to ask the government to fill the backlog after the current regular recruitment is completed. First, according to law he is required to fill the backlog from the current posts allotted to his department, and not from some future posts that may or may not come into existence. Second, does the Directorate of Education expect us to believe that after filling 182 posts through regular vacancies now, his department will ask the government to sanction an additional 181 posts of Primary Teachers to meet the backlog? You are joking Mr. Director, and this is a cruel joke, indeed. Can you imagine what will happen if the Directorate of Art and Culture, and the 20-plus other departments that are hoping to fill almost 1500 posts before the upcoming general elections, present such silly fictitious possibilities of filling current vacancies by ignoring the backlog and then asking the government to sanction further posts?
The argument that the backlog vacancies that the reserved categories are entitled to will be filled slowly in the future is not tenable. Why? Because it undermines the purpose of the 81st Amendment of the Constitution (and numerous Supreme Court judgements) whose aim is that the communities should reach adequate representation as per their demographic numbers in reasonable time, and not at the discretion of this director or that. The avoidance of reserved category vacancies in Goa is the very reason that the huge backlog of vacancies exists in the first place and now the Departments want to add to it by increasing posts for unreserved candidates.
Here, I must add that the Directorate of Education has not made the Roster which shows the number of posts allotted, filled and the backlog available. This despite an RTI requesting for it. Clearly, it seeks to hide the backlog. Why does the Directorate of Art and Culture not make its Roster available on its website as part of a proactive disclosure so that all could be convinced of the case the Directorate is making for itself?
The major constitutional blunder in all the advertisements—that of the Directorate of Art and Culture and the prior ones of the Directorate of Education, and the Directorate of Accounts—is to ignore the backlog as a separate category, and to avoid filling fill the vacancies with the vacant posts currently available with the Department. The government is bound by the law, which is crystal clear: “In the subsequent recruitment year when recruitment is made for the vacancies of that year (called the current vacancies), the backlog vacancies of SCs, STs and OBCs will also be announced for recruitment…all the backlog vacancies reserved for SCs and STs (OBCs too) will be filled up by the candidates belonging to concerned category without any restriction whatsoever as they belong to distinct group of backlog vacancies of SCs and STs (OBCs too)” and they must be filled as soon as possible and prior to the regular vacancies in the year (Memorandum No.36012/17/2002-Estt.(Res) dated 6 November, 2003 state).
So, the Department of Art and Culture has compounded the error by first concealing the backlog ST vacancies and reducing the posts meant for STs (probably for SCs and OBCs, too). Thereafter it has advertised current vacancies without sticking to the 50 percent limit for current vacancies. This is adding insult to injury. It is hard not to suspect mischief as the advertisement seems to be designed to provoke the general candidates so one of them gets the advertisement struck down in Court. This author hopes that the Courts get seized with this matter. It will perhaps begin the ending of what has gone on for far too long: the attitude of the government, and its officials, that reservation is a ‘gift’ that they may give or withhold, or administer in doses, to best suit their convenience. I am reminded of a Principal of a College telling me: “I gave this student a job by reserving the post.” Later, the student wept as he told me that in fact, he was the only qualified candidate and had grades that did not require any concession for recruitment. These are the sort of hidden injuries I was alluding to in the beginning of the article.
It is a strange situation. The complaint of the upper castes is that reservations are promoted by politicians to bribe the vote bank from marginalised communities. However, in Goa the government is using job sops prior to the elections to pass on jobs that constitutionally belong to ST to the general category! This will deny the marginalised communities of the representation that the Constitution guarantees them. All the relevant Department Heads and Secretaries and Ministers have been notified of what is happening, but they are hoping to pull this off in an election year. Those very officials whose task is to put an end to this nonsense are turning a blind eye. As the saying in Konkani goes: Kanberabhaxenkortai. They pretend they have not heard.
In the next section we shall discuss how, and why, this condition of subverting reservations becomes possible. We will look at its painful consequences for both those with privileges and those withoutand consider also how the reservations for People with Disabilities are misused.
