 So, first of all, I'd like to say that the reservation policy which is laid down in the constitution for categories like the SCST and OBC is basically a question of representation of large sections of the Indian population which have been historically left out of both education and the decision-making processes because of the exclusion being practiced against a section of people through the caste system or the caste hierarchy that has existed in our country for a long time because of which those who worked with their hands, the artisans and the ones who were considered lower down in the caste hierarchy have historically been discriminated against and left out of this process. The statistics about this is very clear. If you look at the number of, first it was even in the student population and later on in the distribution of teachers, faculties across the country in colleges and universities where their representation was not in keeping with their population at all. In fact, the population would roughly be estimated at about 85%. There are some disputes about it but we haven't had a census for a very long time. But roughly you have about 55% of the other backward classes and 25% of the SC&ST taken together. So, initially the reservations for SC&ST had come in through the constitution just after independence, after India became a republic and the constitution was framed. But for the other backward classes it took a very long time. The Mandal commission was set up for example and its reports were not implemented by successive governments and finally in 1991 the V.P Singh government decided to implement it for government jobs and for government educational institutions. First of all government jobs and government education institutions are just a small number from the large number of institutions available. Government jobs are a miniscule minority of the total number of jobs which are mostly in the private sector or in small business and elsewhere. But it was felt that at least where the government is directly funding institutions or it is in the government sector, the government can insist on the implementation of this policy which is laid down in the constitution. Now, there was a huge resistance to the implementation of these policies which is very natural because if a small percentage of the population has been beneficiaries of the resources of the country and historically there is this conditioning against certain sections there will be a resistance to change. But over a period of time some amount of inclusiveness was achieved. For example, let us take our university, Delhi University. In Delhi University despite the reservation for SCST have been there in the constitution and in law but it was implemented in teaching positions for the very first time in 1996. And that is probably a fallout of the Mandel commission after which there was political pressure generated from the sections who had been left out. And because of that university's vice chancellors were summoned by Parliamentary Standing Committees and told to either implement it or just resign. And as a result of that the momentum for reservation for SCST was stepped up and it got implemented for the first time. Till then you would hardly have one or two teachers from these categories in out of say six or seven thousand teachers in the entire university. Subsequently many many years later we had the OBC reservation came in in 2007. But before that if we go back to the reservation policy that was followed initially in 1996 the way in which the reservation was implemented for SCST was through a vacancy based roster. A vacancy based roster applied only to the fresh vacancies coming up and not to the existing teachers. There was something called the 40 point roster in which the first post was reserved for SC and the fourth post was for SC and so on until out of 40 you had nine posts reserved which would achieve the percentage of 15 and 7 and a half for the two categories respectively. The idea probably was that because there has been historical deprivation we must early on give an opportunity to these categories so that we start correcting the imbalance that has been there in our society. However within a year a new system came in and that was a post based roster as a result of a Supreme Court judgment called Arke Sabarwal versus State of Punjab of 1995. The government of India then declared through a notification brought about by the DOPT on the 2nd of July 1997 that we have to follow a post based roster which takes into account the existing posts in the institution as on 2797 and of all the existing posts in a Kader, Kader the DOPT said was all posts which are to be filled by the same selection committee process and the same pay scale which carry the same pay scale. So that's all they said and they said that you have to reserve the posts in the entire Kader and then later on whichever new posts are coming up they get added at the bottom in a manner in which the entitlement of the category is achieved and you cannot get more than your entitlement that's what the Supreme Court said. So they said that you don't reserve the first post you reserve the 7th post for the first post reserved for SC is the 7th post. Why the 7th? Because the entitlement in the first post is 0.15 15% in the second is 0.30 and so on it becomes a whole number only when you reach the 7th post so you can't reserve a fraction of a post so a whole post is reserved for an SC only when you reach point number 7. Similarly for the ST it was point number 14 and then SC again point number 15 and so on. So it makes it easier to implement the reservation because at one point of time you don't have so many vacancies so it's not easy to delineate that you have so many for SC so many for ST. You have a roster system so that ensures that you will get over a period of time 15 and 7.5% for SC and ST respectively. So now when after the vacancy based roster was replaced by the post based roster by Delhi University we kept the carder as the department. In the vacancy based roster it was the department. We did not change it to the whole college at that time it was not realized that there was of course a lot of apprehension many of us I was in the executive council. We said that you know the post based roster makes it very slow reservation but the government had decided and the university had no choice it seems although the Supreme Court had very clearly said that you follow the post based roster after achieving the required percentage of 15 and 7.5 and if wherever it is 27 for OBC but somehow the Delhi University decided that we have to adopt it now and DOPT also said you have to adopt it now. So it was started but it was applied to departments and the result of that was because our departments are quite small often you do not reach the 14th post for a long time. So for departments which had less than 13 posts there was a separate way of doing the roster which was called the 13 point roster in which you follow an L shape. After reaching the bottom if you have 6 posts you fill after the 6th point you move horizontally in an L shape and the ST post comes at the end of that horizontal line that is point number 14. It is not as if it is missing there is a misconception it is not missing but it comes at point number 14. So the problem is that that was so late because vacancies were few and far between. So we were not reaching the ST position in most departments. As a result from 1997 till 2013 because of the department wise roster being followed we hardly have any STs in various departments in the university and in the colleges. OBC reservations started very late in 2007 and the 4th post was reserved and so on. So that also very little of that happened because the appointments more or less froze after 2010 for no good reason we were not told why appointments are not taking place. Now in 2006 government of India seeing that in education institutions the carders being misinterpreted to being the department because all the disciplines have the same selection committee. Same means the composition is laid down in ordinance 18 and we have the same pay scale for assistant professors. Associate professor is a different carder professor is a different carder and assistant professor is one. So it was wrong to do it department wise not only that because of that the benefit of reservation was not actually accruing to the people for him the policy was made. So the government of India sent an order to the UGC under section 20 which makes it mandatory for the UGC to then take action. The UGC has failed to have reservation properly implemented in the universities. Therefore it is now declared that you have a strict policy of strict guidelines for implementing reservation policy in which department wise reservation is prohibited. It became the whole college or the whole university so that your entitlement is reached. Reason is because if you get many fractions in departments if you look at the whole college then that fractions add up to a whole post which would not get if you just looked at it department wise and so that was the order of the UGC which unfortunately many universities just neglected to follow because there is a resistance always to doing justice to people who have been historically deprived. Only in 2013 Delhi University adopted the 200 it is called the 200 point roster which is university or college based but there were some distortions which had crept up in it. It was not the way in which the DOPT had outlined and Dutta kept protesting about that that you should correct it because the concept of backlog. Backlog is if you have adopted the policy but you do not fill up the post by declaring people not found suitable or you nobody applies then that post has to be filled up. The backlog post has to be filled up before you distribute the vacancies 50% of the vacancies to reserve categories first you fill up the backlog vacancies all of it is laid down in the constitution in the section 16 even the backlog vacancies part but the roster that came in in 2013 did not take care of the backlog it started from 2013 instead of 2000 1997 it didn't take care of the way in which the running roster had to be followed there were many problems with it so as a result of that there was a lot of manipulation possible because if the post reduced by one or increased by one in a department the entire roster would change. So we found that people's category is also kept shifting so it was a quite a mess and many colleges we still didn't get any reserve category person for example in ST in Aarabhat College for example. So the Duta kept representing to the UGC to the SC Commission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee and finally the Parliamentary Standing Committee brought out a report which upheld our objections and said that this is wrong it's a big mess cannot be done like this please set up a committee to settle it then the university dragged its feet and finally set up a committee in 2016 did not allow the report to come out I mean we feel vested interest did not allow meetings to take place that is called the Kali committee. The Kali committee upheld finally what we had the objection that we had made and made some recommendations which would be a corrective mechanism but by then what had happened was the High Court had ordered appointments to take place we said that please correct the roster before you start permanent appointments but six months past Kali committee report was not brought out and all colleges by then had made their rosters and brought out their ads so at that time the Duta felt that okay now we must let one round of appointments take place because people of all categories SC, ST, OBC in general had been suffering for long years as ad hoc teachers and there was a great opening because of the High Court intervention that the post would be filled up and we must make use of it so we were trying to push to have quickly have permanent appointments even on the basis of a roster which is somewhat flawed although it was a 200 point roster. After that in three departments in the university appointments took place and in one college permanent appointments were made in Dalatram college in psychology department and the long serving teachers were made permanent which was what the Duta wanted but soon after that an Allahabad High Court judgment which had come in 2016 said that the rosters cannot be university or college wise they have to be department wise in other words it was doing a complete U turn on the strict guidelines of the UGC and in fact it squashed two of the clauses in the UGC guidelines which had precisely said the departments cannot be the basis so it was a complete U turn and the government did not even challenge it in 2016 or 17 in the Supreme Court it did not even defend its own policy some individual went to the Supreme Court and lost so the Supreme Court in 2017 had already upheld the Allahabad High Court judgment. Allahabad High Court had objection was basically on the grounds that since a person from one department can't teach in another department if only reserved posts come out in one department what does a person from the general category do so in fact that is one of the criticisms because of the unimaginative way in which the rosters were implemented the duty had a way forward in which we said you decide the entitlement for the whole college but distribute the post proportionately in different departments so no department is fully reserved or fully unreserved it's not a matter of accident where it comes you have a policy in which you have diversity in every department which will ensure both social diversity and academic diversity which is absolutely essential so but that we were not able to get what recommendation that we had made implemented nobody took it seriously because the vice chancellor's thing they're God and they know better than everybody else so there was no consultation with the teachers about what was implemented so that objection in some sense there is some validity in that but the way forward is not to make it department wise which will wipe out the numbers of reserved posts which is exactly what happened the government on the other hand instead of challenging that straightaway brought out a notification on the 5th of March 2018 saying that from within a month all colleges and universities must make department wise rosters now that was a big blow to us for two reasons one was that the the the quest for social justice would be completely reversed and squashed the second thing was that 4,500 teachers or ad hoc were appointed against the 200 point roster so the sudden change and all the screening and everything had been done sudden change would mean no more appointments and then even the ad hoc appointments were in danger and we were worried that in July when they are reappointed every four months they reappointed they would be all out because the categories would change so Duta had to move heaven and earth to actually ensure that the same ad hoc continued even in July we kept representing we had agitations and the minister promised us that we will file an SLP in the Supreme Court which they did but we don't think that they actually really work very hard to convince the Supreme Court that this will be a disaster and they promised that they will also bring out because if this doesn't work out they will bring a bill in parliament to protect the constitutional mandate because really you know this is a fit case for being a bill or an ordinance to protect the reservation policy of the country instead of having a policy which is an anti-reservation policy but they did not six months they kept promising us they didn't bring it out and what they brought out in 24 hours was something which was completely against the principles of social justice and that was that a 10% reservation of seats in the remaining 50% which was unreserved would be reserved for those in the EWS economically weaker section of non SCST OBC now that was really too much because up till now in the UR everybody could compete now they're reserving 10% of it for non SCST OBC so they can't compete even in the UR and having a poverty level defined as an income of 8 lakhs was really ridiculous one is that it's not a well-defined group I mean economic your income level is something that keeps changing with time and so it is not a well-defined class it's an individual based thing even that individual with time does not remain in the same income bracket so it is a completely unconstitutional measure which is not a measure of social justice if you want to alleviate poverty you have to use other methods like maybe Manurega and employment opportunities and gen educational prospects for everybody but this was like a slap in the face of the historically deprived sections who were already for example the percentage of reservation given to OBC is only 27% because you couldn't breach the 50% ceiling whereas their population by any estimators more than 52% so if you can breach that 50% ceiling then why will not the OBC's demand 54% reservation instead of 27% reservation in keeping with their population so you know this has opened up opened up many many areas but basically the idea that that your social discrimination which you've suffered for centuries is now not going to be addressed is something which is really going taking us backwards in time and bring back that whole you know Manu Smithy instead of the Constitution where you want to keep people out of education one last point I want to make it that I strongly feel that one of the reasons the education system has not delivered even when we had our public funding you know we've had it for many years but now it's being reversed one reason it has not delivered the goods in terms of really promoting rational independent thinking which in the way in which it should have many of us have tried we've tried for reform and so on but all of us agree that there's something seriously lacking you know maybe we blame ourselves but I think one of the things that has happened is that our faculties have never been diverse and you know when the faculties are not diverse the faculties are drawn from 10 or 5% of the population then the rich experience of people who are from the grassroots of the different cultures with the tribals or people from other sections that is not brought into the experience of the classroom and students reservation policy has been working better so there is some diversity among students but it's not there among the teachers so one is that there's lack of communication possibly second is that when your rational thinking or independent sort of your quest for justice clashes with your class interest class interest takes takes over so when for example the Mandel Commission which made perfect sense in a country I mean like in the South Africa having reservation for the blacks after independence had come would make perfect sense or in Saudi Arabia for women or for blacks in the US but in India because of your vested interest and your conditioning you would oppose it not because it is rational to oppose it but because your class interest takes you know take takes over at that stage and and you therefore promoting independent thinking then comes to a halt at that stage so many of us strongly feel that if that diversity comes and that is exactly the danger for those who do not want to share the resources of the country and want to continue with this kind of colonization of the country not by the white you know by the British but or by a foreign power but by an elite section of the country they want that colonization to continue that is why it is so important for them that they don't let people from the private sections get educated and articulate like Chandrasekhar Azad Ravan or like Jignesh Mawani and a whole lot of other people young leaders who've come up they've beaten back you don't want more such people so in a sense you're driving people either to commit suicide or leave or not even enter the institution like Rohit Damula case there are hundreds of such cases we only get to know of a few so we have to all of us together because I mean it's a question of our integrity are we only going to speak in our own class interest or we're going to talk about the welfare of the country what is good for the country what is justice right what is a democracy that is what all of us have to decide and that is why the DOTA I'm proud to say today is one of the few trade unions which has taken a leading position on the question of social justice and I'm very happy to be part of that movement