Social justice : More about representation to social groups and less about redressing disadvantages, deprivation and discrimination that characterised the caste system
Kickstart a reversal
In politics you don’t stand at the dead end for too long. Someone comes and pushes you where you did not want to go. Or walks away with your valuables. That is precisely what the BJP has done to the politics of social justice through devious but dynamic strategies of selective accommodation of leaders, powerful appropriation of symbols, and micro targeting of smaller and sub-communities within the Bahujans.
This is the challenge that the Congress faces today. A reversal of this sorry state of affairs would take a careful rethink of the theory and practice of policies and politics of social justice. Here are four concrete ideas to kick-start this thinking.
First of all, the Congress must focus on recovering lost spaces and claiming new spaces for social justice. Today the imagination of social justice is limited to the state and the public sector that are rapidly shrinking. While there are some areas within the public sector that need to be reclaimed – the Raipur resolution rightly talks about SC-ST-OBC representation in the higher judiciary – the focus today has to be on the representation in the non-government sectors like the media and the NGO. Raipur resolution has rightly started the discussion on equal access to jobs in the private sector.
Second, the Congress must openly embrace the idea of refining the target groups for policies of affirmative action as long as the benefits of better targeting go to the designated groups. Let’s face it: 70 years of the practice of reservations has created its own vested interest that resists further percolation of the benefits of this policy. They have captured Mandal politics. Congress must challenge this by endorsing the idea of sub-quota within SC, ST, and OBC, as long as the vacancies are not transferred to the general pool. Similarly, it should back the idea that families and communities that have availed benefits of quota should be placed at the bottom of the queue.
Third, sooner or later, it must be open to finding new ways of achieving social justice so that affirmative action is not reduced just to caste-based reservations. Our society is marked by multiple, overlapping, cross-cutting and graded inequalities that cannot be captured by only one dimension like caste or class or gender. Gradually, we must revise the criteria of affirmative action’s one-dimensional emphasis on caste. We must also find smart ways to redesign the mechanism of affirmative action so as to expand its repertoire beyond reservations. Mechanisms like deprivation index-based weightage, incentives and disincentives for the private sector, and a system of strong disclosure requirements need political backing.
Fourth, social justice policies require refurbishing its institutional set-up. The Raipur resolution has proposed a separate ministry for the OBCs and a National Social Justice Council. More importantly, it proposes an Annual Social Justice Report to be placed and discussed in Parliament. Smarter mechanisms like this need greater attention. So does the idea of an Equal Opportunity Commission backed by legislation prevalent in many parts of the world, an idea proposed by a committee during the UPA. [I was a member of that committee]
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