Resumo de India Is Marked By Cascading Inequalities

www. Ambedkar.org
In 1990, at the height of the anti-Mandal agitation in India's northern states, us editorial page writers of The Times of India were divided over the issue of reserving government jobs for the non-avarna backward castes (OBCs). Our differences sharpened as upper-caste students immolated themselves in protest against the new policy. So some of us decided to conduct a survey of the staffing practices of our Delhi office.
The results were stunning. There were no Dalits and just three OBCs among the 300 journalists of the newspaper group, most of them Brahmins, Kayasthas and Banias. This was not due to conscious policy: it was just how things were -- 'naturally,' 'spontaneously', as a manager put it, emphasising that 'merit' alone guided recruitment and promotion.
It is astounding, and, of course incredible, that the upper castes, which form a tenth of the population, concentrate within themselves nine-tenths of India's entire pool of 'merit.' But that's the nature of the discrimination in this super-hierarchical society, where ritual purity assigned by the varna system is far more important than educational achievement, professional talent or diligence.
Fourteen years on, this systematic discrimination and denial of social opportunity has not changed. The Times of India group only embodies a trend that's pervasive in all private business. Contrast this with the frankly capitalist United States. There, two-thirds of all newspapers with a circulation of 100,000-plus, draw 15 percent to 20 percent of their journalists from racial linguistic minorities like Blacks and Hispanics. Thus, 16.2 percent of The New York Times' staff belongs to such minority groups. The proportion is 19.5 percent for The Washington Post and 18.7 for The Los Angeles Times. Presumably, 'merit' counts as much in these papers as in the Indian press! Even the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal has 17.1 percent minority recruits.
This change hasn't come about through government directives, but through a 1978 decision of the American Society of Newspaper Editors to raise the minorities' representation from a pathetic 3.95 percent to the same level as their share in the population. This was done through special programmers such as diversity promotion, scholarships, ethnic and racial censuses, training schemes, and job fairs to recruit historically disadvantaged minority groups. The key is affirmative action or positive discrimination.
This worthy principle must be strongly commended and adopted in a horrendously unequal society like India's -- where discrimination is so deeply ingrained and pervasive that anthropologists like Louis Dumont were tempted to posit a new category of social organisation to describe it -- Homo hierarchicus.
India is marked by cascading inequalities. If you are born underprivileged, you face growing discrimination in education, freedom, employment, income, etc -- each step of the way. In most people's case, the injustice is never compensated. This denial of social opportunity destroys the very possibility of realizing the human potential of millions of people. It can be effectively countered by leveling the originally tilted playing field -- through affirmative action.
This is the framework in which we should debate the reservations issue, which is being raised afresh in respect of the private sector (especially in Maharashtra) and of Muslims. In Andhra Pradesh, 5 percent of government jobs have been declared reserved under a policy initiated by Chandrababu Naidu and continued by his successor.
The policy of extending reservations for SCs and STs to the private sector is part of the UPA's National Common Minimum Programme. It promises to 'initiate a national dialogue [on this] with all political parties, industry and other organisations' to 'fulfil the aspirations of SC and ST youth.' This is unexceptionable. But reservations for Muslims as Muslims may be undesirable. The propon the private sector has drawn a negative industry reaction. Confederation of Indian Industry chief Anand Mahindra 'welcomes' a dialogue, but says 'reservation without reference to merit may have a distorting effect.' Some magnates have threatened to relocate in case Maharashtra goes ahead with the move. This is bizarre coming from business families in which birth and inheritance count infinitely more than 'merit.'

Resumos Relacionados