[ZESTCaste] Quotas alone can't give dalits agency (Opinion)

[Tarun Udwala]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/461170.cms


Quotas alone can't give dalits agency

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2006 12:18:58 AM]

The lost empire of politics

That the government met corporate sector representatives to ascertain
the industry's view on affirmative action for Scheduled
Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs) in the private sector, even as the
brutal rape and murder of four Dalits in a Maharashtra village came to
light one-and-a-half months after such barbarism was perpetrated,
underscores the abominable hypocrisy of the Indian system.

Continued marginalisation and oppression of backward social groups
indicates a larger political failure that cannot be resolved through
caste-based reservation — or for that matter any other form of
affirmative action — alone.

Affirmative action is policy. The political resolve that drives it is
meant to deepen the democratic process. Only sustained political
engagement on the ground, which would arm marginal social groups with
real political agency, could support such a progressive consensus.

That the political class should be preoccupied with reservation, even
as it does nothing to politically change archaic social structures
that engender casteist oppression, is shameless doublespeak.

Much of India's lower castes — save a tiny elite that is as oppressive
as those from the traditional upper castes — continue to be trapped in
dehumanising circumstances. That is not surprising, considering that
most of them are engaged in unproductive, pre-modern economic
activities.

Such grossly devalued people would, clearly, have no political agency.
To that extent, former CII chairman J J Irani's suggestion that the
private sector work towards improving the employability of SC/STs is
welcome.

The recommendation needs to be envisaged as part of a larger
public-private programme to diversify the economy. That would truly
broad-base growth and enhance social development.

But it cannot be achieved without first breaking the traditional
caste-occupation correlation. That can only be accomplished by
political action that strives to transform the realm of public culture
and consciousness. Policies and instrumentalities are matters of
secondary details.



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