Gopal: If you told me that reservation should be only on social, or political criteria- I'd be the first to oppose.
Gopal: Poverty is defined as a multidimensional problem that goes beyond economics. This is something we decided in 1950s.
Gopal: Lastly, please don't divide the joint family of social, political and economic- they go together. The rest of the world has just begun to realise that they're all sides of the same condition.
Gopal: They're not homogeneous. They're massive human suffering and to call them homogeneous doesn't do them justice. Weakness is a quality, Backwardness is a rank. Weakness produces that rank but they cannot be opposed to each other.
Gopal: The work weakness comes from the German word waiku- it means soft.
Gopal: It should be monitored but we should not throw the baby out. Second, the relationship between weakness and backward. They're not totally opposed to each other.
Gopal: We must see the value of a uniting category. Is that being abused? Yes. That's why jats were not named as such. This mechanism is working.
Gopal: This category unites all as backward classes fighting for a greater share. Every Varna is represented, every religion, every muslim is represented. This reservation is repeatedly been vilified as casteist reservation. What is the basis
Gopal: Any caste or any community which fulfils these criteria can be SEBCs. Which is why this court stated that transgenders be included as OBCs.
Gopal: "Class and communities which have poor representation, class and communities whose literacy rate is atleast 8% less than average, matriculation is atleast 20% less than average"