It took the Gurjjars two violent agitations, the death of more than 70 members of the community and two political regimes to finally have their way in the battle for a piece of the reservation pie in Rajasthan. That moment came after Rajasthan governor SK Singh, late on Thursday night last week, assented to the Rajasthan Reservation Bill 2008, after a year of deliberating on its constitutional and legal consequences.
While the state has witnessed numerous agitations through the last decade over water, electricity and irrigation, the Gurjjars? reservation stir became the first movement to end in successful parleys with the state government. Unlike other protests, which remained localised and inconsistent, the Gurjjar stir was spread across the state and later even spilt over into neighbouring states, was tenacious and most importantly, directly affected the national capital.
The agitation, led by Col Kirori Singh Bainsla focussed on a concerted blockade of New Delhi, cutting off access by road and rail, in 2007 and 2008. A senior Gurjjar leader quipped after the Governor ratified the Reservation Bill, ?Nothing works without affecting the capital. We had seen in Rajasthan that movements were mercilessly quashed by the state, without news of the same even getting out of the state.?
According to figures from the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, the 26-day long Gurjjar agitation in May 2008 alone led to losses of Rs 7,000 crore for the railways and other industries dependent on road and rail traffic. Academic Sanjay Lodha recalls, ?The agitations held the state to ransom. And since the entire community was involved in the stir, the intensity of disturbance to public life was far greater.?
In 2007, committees appointed by the Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government, looked into the Gurjjars? demands for inclusion in the ST list and denied the same. But the reports recognised the backwardness of the Gurjjars in Rajasthan, which set the stage for another agitation in 2008, following which Raje and Bainsla agreed on a 5% special quota for Gurjjars in the state.
Curiously enough, though the Gurjjars successfully mobilised for a quota, they have not been able to achieve similar success in political representation. Though the political clout of the Gurjjar community, close to 30 lakh in Rajasthan, and spread across almost all constituencies, meant the Congress and BJP would never ignore it as a vote bank, fragmentation within the community nullified the impact of the Gurjjar vote in the 2008 assembly and 2009 parliamentary polls.
The state assembly elections witnessed the community break into three factions; Gurjjar candidates lost in most constituencies. It was the same story in the 2009 LS elections, in which even Bainsla, fighting on a BJP ticket, lost to the Congress?s Namo Narain Meena, by just about 300 votes.
Ultimately, the community gained precious little from the assembly elections despite coming together for the ST agitation earlier. However, there is no denying the community?s success in achieving a pan-Gurjjar mobilisation for the quota stir. But the battle is far from over. After the additional quota for Gurjjars and a 14% quota for economically backward groups, total reservation in Rajasthan now stands at 68%, well above the ceiling of 50% mandated by the Supreme Court.