Against SC/ST and OBC kotta in INDIA

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

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It has been a busy week for America's Supreme Court, as it returned rulings on cases regarding not only gay marriage but also affirmative action (to use the American euphemism) in the public universities. Our other blogs have handled those decisions in other entries. Looking ahead to this week two months ago the print edition considered affirmative action from a worldwide perspective. That issue took a very critical line on the entire phenomenon and paid special attention to ...examples from America, South Africa and Malaysia. India's experience was judged to be too exceptionalin large part because it does not concern race as suchfor consideration in that briefing. But as America's Supremes have remanded the issue to lower courts for a while longer, we thought this would be a fine time to take a look at the case of castes. INDIA’S experiment with affirmative action is the world’s oldest. Known locally as reservation policy it is an elaborate quota system for public jobs, places in publicly funded collegeslike the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)and in most elected assemblies. These are filled by members of designated, disadvantaged groups. There are two main intended beneficiaries. Arguably more neglected are the 100m adivasi, the 8% of India’s population counted as Scheduled Tribes. Many live in remote or forested corners. Probably more repressed for the centuries in which Hinduism’s noxious caste practice has prevailed however are the Dalits, formerly untouchables. Shunned by other Hindus as polluted for their labours, which included the clearing human and other waste, Dalits remain generally poor and discriminated against. To officials they are members of the Scheduled Castes.