As someone emotionally involved with the Uttara¬khand agitation, I have followed, with interest the articles and correspondence published in the last three issues of Himal. I was born in Uttarakhand, and after a long career with the Government of India have now, for the past 20 years, been living in my ancestral home in Almora. Several people have asked me to pen down my thoughts on the Uttarakhand agitation; I refrained. I think I should do so now.
Six months ago, an agitation erupted in Uttarakhand, following the announcement of a 27 percent reservation for people from Other Backward Castes and Classes (OBCs). The agitation was immediately dubbed anti-social, anti-reform, unprogressive, pro-high caste, pro-manu-wdi, backward looking, etc.
This propaganda, unfortunately, did not take into account the fact that the people of this region had played an active part in the independence movement and various other social reform movements. They did: not oppose OBC reservation just for the sake of opposing it. What the students, and later the teachers, government employees, ex-servicemen, etc. demanded was that reservation reflect the region´s population ratio. The OBC population in Uttarakand is estimated to be not more than two percent.
Twenty-Seven Percent
Why was 27 percent reservation so vehemently opposed here, especially when earlier, the hill people had supported reservation for scheduled caste and schedule tribes? No attempt, I feel, has been made to understand this. Unlike in other parts of rural India, agriculture does not provide even basic sustenance in Uttarakhand. Land holdings are meager and fields are actually narrow terraces in steep hills. If high mountains and steep hillsides are not considered, and only agricultural land taken into account, the density of population per hectare is even higher than in eastern U.P. And what are called canals in the hills are actually a misnomer for drains.