http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Editorial/Recast_reform_and_affirmative_action/articleshow/2088045.cms
Recast reform and affirmative action TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, MAY 31, 2007 03:52:36 AM] Race to the bottom That people can die fighting for their right to be ever more backward is tragic, and a double condemnation: of quotas as the preferred form of affirmative action, and unidimensional conceptualisation of economic reform. The violent agitation by Rajasthan Gujjars — who are demanding that the BJP fulfil its election pledge by 'downgrading' them from their 'other backward caste' status to that of scheduled tribes — demands an urgent rethink on both counts. Liberalisation offers both Rajasthan and the rest of India a way out of that regressive bind. The structural shift it is meant to effect in the economy would lead to rapid diversification of occupations, essential prerequisite for an agenda that has gone out of fashion: abolition of the caste system itself. But that cannot be accomplished unless there's a political agency that seeks to articulate the liberalisation project as much in the idiom of social transformation as of economic growth. The absence of such politics would, however, make sure that liberalisation continues to be a crucible of inequitable prosperity, social anxiety and a collective race to the bottom of the kind seen in Rajasthan. Our reservation policy, thanks to the preponderance of competitive identity politics, has been made to stand on its head with every social group trying to outmanoeuvre the other in its quest for ever more 'backwardness'. India's reservation policy, and the concomitant competition for social backwardness, have become instrumentalities of segregationist identity politics. And while such inversion of affirmative action is now a nation-wide phenomenon, it has been most disturbingly manifest in Rajasthan. The dash to the base of the social pyramid there is clearly the outcome of the state's powerful intermediate castes trying to reappropriate their traditional privileges within the modern institutional framework. Their proximity to and kinship with the feudal Rajput royalty of the region indicates that. The ease with which they have subverted the principle of affirmative action should be ascribed to the absence of any strong current of indigenous social reform in the region. Rajasthan has, particularly since the 1998 assembly elections, seen an intensification of this wholly undesirable social-political process, with even the upper castes forming associations to bargain for quota-based patronage. -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
