Affirmative action in India: Before and after the neo-liberal turn

Abstract

The inauguration of neo-liberal economic reforms in India coincided with a substantial expansion in the scope and coverage of affirmative action provisions. This article offers an explanation of this puzzle. However, while policies of affirmative action per se have not been adversely affected by the economic reforms, weaknesses of implementation persist, as seen in the poor outcomes for Dalits in terms of both public sector employment and poverty statistics. A small section of Dalits have lately begun to view the market as offering opportunities for accelerated advancement and prosperity, and this article assesses the discursive and empirical claims of Dalit entrepreneurship and Dalit capitalism, and its links to past histories of affirmative action.

The Modernity of Caste and the Market Economy

“…The second (1980) Commission on the Socially Backward Classes (or Mandal Commission) introduced the hitherto politically and judicially rejected idea that caste could be used as a criterion of socio-economic backwardness (rather than socio-ritual disability) and extended quota reservations (for example, for government jobs) to a diverse collection of so-called Other Backward Classes (the OBCs), some 3,743 caste identities comprising 52 per cent of the population. As the Mandal Report put it, ‘caste is also a class of citizen’ (cited in Jaffrelot 2006, 183) and socio-economic backwardness a caste-collective (or categorical) effect (Jayal 2015, 122). But, as Jaffrelot argues, the rationale behind the eventual implementation of Mandal's recommendations was not so much to view caste in relation to economic processes and improve the position of caste-disadvantaged groups as to empower them politically (Jaffrelot 2006, 183).…”

“…There is an argument by Niraja Jayal (2015), among others, that the extension of public-sector reservations to lower castes, and the restriction of the caste issue to this, was a strategic effort to keep caste out of economics—that is, a form of ‘caste abatement’, offering political recognition to disadvantaged groups while avoiding economic redistribution, and serving to contain the political discontent surrounding unequal economic opportunity unleashed by the simultaneous (but more stealthy) introduction of neo-liberal reforms, effectively protecting elite class-caste interests now reoriented to private business.…”

The fair share dimension of tertiary educational distribution

“…The methodology accounts for the link between education, inequality, policy and development (McCowan, 2016a, 2016b) and the concern that expansion in access to development resources without consideration for equity (Grob and Wolter, 2007; McCowan, 2007, 2012) undermines development (McMahon and Oketch, 2013) and limits the greater good that comes with the social benefits of development for society as whole (McCowan, 2007). It recognizes that the long-term benefit of education to welfare and development is not a factor of the level of educational attainment of an individual alone, but a function of equity in its distribution as a resource, - how equitably it is distributed across the entire population and the link between education, historical injustices and social justice (Bagde et al, 2016; Betrand et al, 2010; Espenshade and Chung, 2005; Espenshade and Walton, 2009; Espenshade et al, 2004; Espenshade et al, 2016; Jayal, 2015; Lupton, 2005).…”

“…This calls for a reversal in the popular viewpoint of globalization, in which higher education is considered a positional and competitive good (Gewirtz, 2001), a private rather than a public good (Brock-Utne, 2000), a ‘classed’ phenomenon (Gewirtz, 2001) and an integral part of national economic planning processes, where access is not a human rights issue, but economic one, given that nation-states must prioritize human capital investments in ways that attract global capital. For this reason, educational inequality is inseparable from economic inequality (Jayal, 2015) hence the need for the notion of equity to be taken into account as a full dimension in the distribution of education and other development resources.…”

Historical Burden or Lacking Effort? Caste Perceptions of Dalit Socio-economic Conditions

“…In addition, by focusing on caste rather than economic criteria, the reservation policy is seen as skewing its benefits towards the wealthier lower castes and ignoring those who have the most need for access and opportunity. Upper caste objections to reservation policy (since the adoption of the Mandal Commission recommendations) are thus framed as the end of meritocracy, or caste appeasement, or an outcome of vote bank politics (Jayal, 2015, Jodhka & Manor, 2017); for instance, Subramanian (2015) notes that upper caste ‘claims to merit must be understood, not simply in terms the transformation of capital, but as responses to subaltern assertion’ (p. 293). The political power transition between the entrenched upper castes and ascendent lower castes has produced a perception among upper castes that state institutions favour the lower castes, including Dalits, and treat upper castes unfairly.…”