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articlesreview.docxCaste and Caste lessness in the Indian Republic:
Towards a Biography of the ‘General Category’*by Satish Deshpande**
I did not know Professor Amissah and can only claim a tenuous connection to him through one of his students at the Madras Christian College in the 1940s, the late Professor K.N. Raj, who was among my own teachers at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram in the early 1980s.Indian tendency to claim connections to the great and famous, it occurs to me that, since Profiteer central predicament in caste was the virtual invisibility of the upper caste and hyper visibility of the lower caste that had split society into two unequal and implacably opposed sections. One for which caste appeared to be the only available resource to improve life-chances in a game, where the playing field was far from level, while for the other camp; caste had already yielded all it could. The abolition of caste as demanded during pre-independence period had led to a predicament whereby the need to delegitimize caste was in conflict with the commitment to redress the disabilities of caste. Contemporary complexities of lower caste and their demands for social justice need to be addressed and close attention to be paid. The unbridgeable divergence between these two perspectives had made annihilation of caste seem more like a disabling dream than an empowering utopia. It is an immense privilege to be here today to participate in the collective task of honoring the life and work of Malcolm Satya Nathan Amissah, a pioneer in the field of development economics and especially educational planning. The other story – that of the ‘extra- electoral’ coup effected by the upper castes through the transformation of their caste capital into modern capital – is not so well known. To put it differently, upper caste identity is such that it can be completely overwritten by modern-professional identities of choice, whereas lower caste identity is so indelibly engraved that it overwrites all other identities and renders them illegible, along with the choices that they may represent. Having started out with the common goal of transcending caste – an objective that no one dared to question publicly and everyone seemed to share – we appear to have reached a dead-end where society is split into two unequal and implacably opposed sections. In short, the joke correctly assumes that ‘we’ will know the caste of the astronauts without being told, but will agree that it is irrelevant in the face of their qualifications, while simultaneously agreeing that though the quota-walks too would presumably have qualifications, these are irrelevant in the face of their caste. That is, it is seen and heard in other garbs – it appears to be a story about something other than caste, like the story of nation building for example, or the story of a great and ancient tradition modernizing itself. Because it runs with the grain of the dominant common-sense – which is for obvious reasons monopolized by the vocal upper caste minority – this story is almost unseen and unheard. Such an effort must begin by asking how a journey originating in a common starting point – the desire to ‘abolish’ caste – could lead to such sharply divergent paths. This, to my mind, is the central predicament of caste today – its hypervisibility for the so-called lower castes and its invisibility for the so-called upper castes. I would like to speak today on a subject that has been at the center of public attention for a long time, and especially in the last two decades, namely caste. The story of the political encashment of caste is often told – indeed it has dominated public discourse over the past two decades. Part II deals with the ways in which the new republic tried to give expression to the variously understood objective of ‘abolishing’ caste in its constitutional ideals, legal norms and policy practices. Part I examines the apparently universal goal of ‘abolishing’ or transcending caste and its many distinct strands in the decades leading up to independence.
The Provocation of Caste
As Ambedkar has documented in his famous essay “What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables”, even after talk of ‘abolition’ became common, it remained facile and was rarely accompanied by a concrete understanding of caste and the practical course to be followed to achieve its abolition. At the start of this political and moral journey, we have Gandhi declaring in 1921, just before the launch of the ‘constructive programmed’ that: “The caste system is the natural order of society... I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the caste system “Thus, when tracked through sites such as the Indian National Congress and its official resolutions, for example, it is clear that the public language in which caste was addressed acquired the motif of ‘abolition’ very late and only through a slow and reluctant process. Finally, while ‘everyone’ had religion including the colonizers and the moderns, caste was uniquely ours and it was without question ‘un-modern’. In this sense, therefore, when speaking of the ‘abolition’ of caste, reformist public rhetoric was leaning far ahead of its constituency which was still located well to the rear of the rhetoric. The practical measures advocated here require nothing more than the simplification of an over-intricate system and the dissolution of proliferating sub-castes in favor of a larger, more effective collective caste identity. One way of mapping the gradual and reluctant widening of the ambit of the anti-caste campaign within the Congress is to trace the evolution of Gandhi’s positions on caste. Gandhi’s faith in the basics of the caste system, which he understood in terms of the doctrine of varnashrama dharma, endured for nearly a decade and a half of his career as an anti-caste activist. And this generalized urge to change or act upon caste was typically expressed by the term “reform”, which, as Susan Bailey has noted, “proclaimed the existence of a community or confraternity of the enlightened, working in harmony towards improvement and ‘uplift’ in the life of the nation” (Bailey 2008:155). A second set of agendas were less parochial and attempted to address the severe disabilities that the caste system imposed on the lower and especially the lowest castes. As the unique institution that indelibly marked Indian society as fundamentally inegalitarian and therefore unfit for modernity, caste was the universal provocation. The Poona Pact of 1932 thus cemented the claims of the Congress and specifically of Gandhi to represent all of India, thus helping to conceal the fact that the leadership was exclusively upper caste and the even more closely guarded “public secret” that these castes represented a very small minority of the Hindu population. He also speculates about the relative importance of different possible motives for the campaign against the recording of caste data in the census, including “a bona fide desire to see caste abolished”, as different from “entirely other considerations of a political nature”, and also the sectarian desire to see an expansion in the numbers of particular communities and groups. Writing in the chapter on “Caste, Race and Tribe” in the Census Report of 1931, J.H. Hutton, the Census Commissioner, observes that: As on the occasion of each successive census since 1901, a certain amount of criticism has been directed at the census for taking any note at all of the fact of caste. According to the 1931 Census, Hindus accounted for 68.2% of the population of India, while Muslims made up 22.2%. Given that the “Exterior Castes” (mostly corresponding to the Depressed Classes) accounted for as much as 21.1% of the Hindu population, the grant of a separate electorate to them would reduce the Hindus to a minority. But his most interesting revelations concern the “no caste” category which was specifically provided for in the census of 1931, “as distinct from the individuals who on account of ignorance or accident failed to state any caste at all “Ultimately – after the 1936 publication of Ambedkar’s famous text The Annihilation of Caste, the undelivered text of the Presidential Address to the Jet Pat Today Mandal – Gandhi graduated to his most radical position of advocating intermarriage between Harijans and caste Hindus. It has been alleged that the mere act of labeling persons as belonging to a caste tends to perpetuate the system, and on this excuse a campaign against any record of caste was attempted in 1931 by those who objected to any such returns being made. As has been argued first by Bernard Cohn and then by Arjun Appadurai, Nicholas Dirks and others, the very effort to enumerate caste led to important changes, with the institution becoming progressively more and more ‘substantialized’ and fixed than it had been previously. Although this was not immediately obvious, the grant of reservations reduced the Depressed Classes to the status of supplicants for whom a special concession was being made by the majority that ‘owned’ the nation. The Poona Pact agreed to significantly increase the guaranteed political representation (in the form of reserved seats in the legislatures) for the Depressed Classes, but a very heavy price was paid for this ‘concession’, as Ambedkar realized only too clearly. This effectively positioned the upper caste minority (which was in control of the majority) as the de facto owner of the nation, with the power to grant favors to this or that sub group. Until the eruption of the ‘interior castes’ in their avatar as the “Other Backward Classes” in the Mandal conflagration of 1990, it was the Dalit—Upper Caste axis that was central to questions of visibility and invisibility.
Caste, Constitution and Citizenship in the New Republic
But it is also a passive or an orphan constitution in the sense that “there is no class backing the Constitution with its iron will”, as Madhava Prasad (2011:45) has written, so that it lacks ‘the will to change’ and offers only ‘the letter of the law... without the spirit.’ The legal career of caste in the passive revolution is thus shaped through the disparate effects of Constitutional intention, judicial interpretation and the policy initiatives of the new republic. In colonial and pre-colonial India caste identities were compulsory for all – only those who renounced the world could be caste-less (Burghardt 1983).Moreover, to keep its promises to the SCs and STs (and the SEBCs, who are a different category in principle but similar in practice) the state must first recognize them as castes, and this in itself is sufficient to confine such initiatives within the bounds of a benevolent exception to the prior and stronger commitment of the state to not discriminate among its citizens on the basis of caste. This ambivalence is translated into the constitution through the inclusion of, on the one hand, the rights to equality and non-discrimination, and, on the other hand, the charge on the state to show special consideration to the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Scheduled Castes (SCs), to ‘socially and educationally backward classes’ (SEBCs), and more generally, to the ‘weaker sections’ of society. If, for instance, students belonging to a certain community or caste by reason of their caste discipline, habits & modes of life, satisfy the prescribed requirements in larger number than others, it is not permissible to shut them out on that score.... It would be strange if, in this land of equality and liberty, a class of citizens should be constrained to wear the badge of inferiority because, forsooth, they have a greater aptitude for certain types of education than other classes The court is told that if the Communal GO had not existed and selection to the roughly 400 seats in government engineering colleges were made solely on ‘merit’, i.e., in terms of the marks obtained in the qualifying examination, then Brahmins would have obtained 249 seats instead of the 77 they were allotted Caste and Caste lessness in the Indian Republic 14 under their communal quota. The court sees this as clear evidence of injustice against Brahmins, with no attempt to reflect on how a republic committed to ending caste inequalities ought to deal with a situation where a historically privileged community numbering 3% of the population would corner 62% of the seats in a state-subsidized engineering college. They had managed to firmly establish the primacy of the meritocratic norm over the aberrational status of social justice initiatives, at the same time that they made explicit and endorsed a new kind of agency that the Constitution implicitly offered to the upper castes, an agency based on the universal-normative position of ‘tastelessness’. The broader consequence of these changes is that the welfare of the upper castes needs no longer be pursued in visible fashion through the mediation of public politics; it can now be made congruent with impersonal collective goals like nation building, development, or later in the story, by equally anonymous forces like the market or globalization. But already, even at this inaugural stage there is an awareness that “in this land of equality and liberty” the public declaration of upper caste identity has been made voluntary. In brief, upper caste interests go with the grain of development and the market and appear to involve the exchange of equivalents, whereas lower caste interests appear as transfer payments that must be justified as exceptions. This was, however, a presumptive tastelessness – that is, it did not require the upper castes to ‘give up’ their caste in reality; it simply assured them that they would be presumed to be casteless as long as they did not invoke their caste explicitly. Most important, the privileges and benefits that accrue to the upper caste identity may now be accessed anonymously, while its political-moral debts and liabilities are written off by the new constitution. Unlike the compulsory marking of lower caste identity which the new republic continues and intensifies, upper caste identity may now be declared or not at will. Justice Viswanathan Sastry is both eloquent and unequivocal in his defense of caste-based advantages: It may be that through the fortuitous operation of a rule, which in itself is not discriminatory, a special advantage is enjoyed by some citizens belonging to a particular caste or community.
After Mandal: The Crystallization of the ‘General Category’
Despite this, the national media and even academia seemed to realize for the first time that the upper castes who had been accustomed to regarding the general category as their ascriptive birthright were actually a minority while the reservation categories constituted the vast majority of the population. Although, once again, this is not new (various High Courts as well as the Supreme Court itself had reached similar conclusions several times since 1958), there is something about the context that adds weight to this revaluation. However, the most recent national level assertion of tastelessness is that provoked by the proposal to enumerate caste in the 2011 Census. When it comes to the positive and productive facets of caste, we have only broad correlations between outcomes; we lack detailed accounts of processes and modalities, the concrete ways in which an upper caste identity secretes and synergizes the dispositions and embodied competences that add up to that abstract term, ‘advantage’. Coming full circle from the ratio of the Madras High Court in its Devarajan and Venkatraman decisions of 1951 that quashed the Communal GO, the Court reiterates that the unreserved or general category cannot be treated as a de facto quota for upper castes. In the last analysis, then, the call to interrogate the upper caste self is not about the end of illusion as it might first seem, but about the revitalization of what is perhaps our most intimate utopia. The constitutional attempt to be ‘caste blind’ had worked against the public naming of caste (outside the reserved categories), thus offering anonymity to the upper castes and OBCs.
Caste & the Corporate Sector by Surinder S. Judoka
The candidate's family background being an important consideration, the chances of a Dalit or a Muslim candidate for being called for interview for a job in the corporate sector were significantly lower than others with exactly the same CV, argues the paper. Indian corporate sector seems to deny the fact that caste plays any role in the labor market in India while the truth is that the suitability of a candidate is rarely judged on formal qualification alone.
The expanding role of the private sector in technical and professional education may also mean a shrinking of the quota system in higher education! In fact, the official data is beginning to show that those belonging to the Scheduled Tribes and Muslim minority have been experiencing a process of further marginalization and downward social and economic mobility. Given the compulsions of a democratic system, the Indian polity had to soon respond to this "crisis", though much of it has been arbitrary in nature, simply through the process of economic libera libation has also been criticized by ideologues of the historically margin allied sections of Indian society, the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), apart from the advocates of the farm sector.
UPA's Proposal & the Responses
Though some Dalit intellectuals and activist groups began talking about the possible negative implications of the new economic policy soon after the introduction of economic liberalization, the issue acquired national significance only when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) proposed extension of the quota system for SCs and STs to the private sector upon coming to power in the Centre in 2004.In its National Common Minimum Programmed, the new government made an unambiguous statement in this regard (2004:10): 'The UPA government is very sensitive to the issue of affirmative action, including reservations, in the private sector.
Caste & India's Economic development
Those who were given the task of framing the Indian Constitution were well aware of the social and historical realities of Indian society and its rigid hierarchical structures that inhibited an easy institutionalization of the idea of citizenship. Perhaps the most debilitating of these traditional institutions was the system of caste hierarchism. Srinivas, who wrote extensively on the link between caste and social change in contemporary India, made this point in the 1960s: "The new opportunities - educational, economic, political - were in theory caste-free; that is, they were open to all, and no one was banned from having access to them by reason of birth in a particular caste or sect or religion. Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar believed that caste was a traditional institution that had been a part of Indian social life for centuries without having experienced any fundamental change in its structure or ideology. While they recognized that the secular education, modern technology or democratic politics had far reaching implications for traditional social structure, they also underlined the point that caste too influenced the processes of modernization and westernization. The Indian social reformers and nationalist leaders - Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar - had all been educated about Indian society within the colonial institutions of modern learning and much of their understanding of Indian society was derived uncritically from the writings of colonial/ Western scholars. Though the varna theory did not provide any specific position to the "untouchables" in the Hindu rankings of social categories, they could be easily accommodated at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, outside the varna system, by using the larger logic of the system. It is not only that caste has come back in the form of horizontal identities (Srinivas 1966) or substantialized communities (Dumont 1998), but also that caste continues to be an important indicator of social and economic deprivation in India.
Caste & the Corporate Sector
Further, it also con ceded to the appeal made by the UPA government that there was a need for: "...private industry to supplement efforts of government and civil society to ameliorate this through concrete steps for giving better opportunities to socially and economically underprivileged Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, in all levels of employment, including self-employment"8.The private corporate sector relented and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) jointly appointed a committee to look into the matter and suggest ways of evolving a policy for affirmative action. In fact, a closer reading of the document produced by the two Chambers of Indian corporate sector seems to deny the fact that caste plays any role in the labor market in India, and it soon reverts to oft stated language of meritocracy and universalism. It even claims that "...limited data available indicates that a significant number from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are already in employment in private sector industry”. Guided by its CMP, the UPA government after coming to power-initiated negotiations with leaders of Indian private industry and asked them to come-up with some viable proposal for an inclusive employment policy.
Merit & Discriminatory Practices
Who is a suitable candidate and how do they judge the merit of those who are selected for the upper-end jobs in private sector? During a study of corporate hiring managers carried-out during 2006 and 2007 in Delhi, Judoka & Newman (2007) found that the suitability of a candidate is rarely judged on his or her formal qualification alone.
Concluding Comments
I have been told by several friends that the Dalit applicants tend to avoid mentioning their being from reserved category for the fear that it would work against them because of the wide spread prejudice among the corporate employers against them.
GLOBALIZATION AND CASTE by Anand TELTUMBDE
Globalisation, as I have been defining it, is a euphemism for the imperialist strategy of capitalism in a terminal crisis Capitalism, having experienced a golden period from 1948 to mid-1960s, due to massive reconstruction of the world devastated in World War II and unleashing pent up aspirations of new colonies that were freed during the period, faced severe crisis of over production, fall in profits, lack of investment opportunities, and consequently social unrest all over the world.
The Religion of the Elites
After Indira Gandhi's assassination, Rajiv Gandhi, who became the prime minister, had given a major push to these policies with a series of deregulation and liberalisation measures in terms of increasing the number of industrial areas where TNCs could invest; allowing 100 %foreign equity in export-technology oriented units; introducing tax concessions for TNCs, and so on. However, sometimes with the arguments like 'there is no alternative' (TINA), or sometime by pointing at the glitter of 'foreign goods' being freely available in shops or the spate of foreign cars running on the newly constructed flyovers as a proxy for development, or asking counter questions like 'what good did the forty years of 'Licence Raj' do to the poor?', the protagonists of globalisation have managed to keep people in the state of bewilderment. In our country these policies were formally adopted in July 1991, taking shelter under the fact that the country faced acute crisis on Balance of Payment (Bop) and did not have enough foreign exchange to meet country's import needs even for a fortnight.
A Heuristic and Strategy
While there has been an overabundance of discussion on the impact of globalization, both negative and positive, theoretical as well as empirical, on secular parameters of development, such as poverty, employment, health, etc., there is a relative lack of it on the other non-secular factors, such as race, colour, caste, gender, etc., which in large measure determine the state of the former.
Adverse Impact 011 Dalits, But ...
That globalization does not have any conflictual attitude towards the caste system and if at all, it finds certain amount of ideological complementarity with the latter; the local socio-political dynamics it engendered and supported rather aggravates existing caste relations, are some of the conclusions presented in the last section. The argument ranges from the stereotypical 'economic growth' assumed to come from globalization benefiting Dalits through the 'trickle down' effect to the onslaught of modernity assumed to stem from its processes crushing the castes. Insofar as castes are considered a part of economic structure, operative ideology and culture of Indian society, it is felt necessary to examine globalization from these three corresponding aspects. There is a kind of aggressive resurgence of Hindu customs and traditions, which were being apologetically spoken and passively followed for last several decades, during the period that strikingly coincides that of the spread of globalization. Insofar as globalization is associated with imperialism, some people have gone to the extent of advocating that Dalits should support globalization as they did before in the case of British colonialism. Indeed, the special state of Dalits and their consciousness provides ample opportunity for the comprador elements to confuse gullible Dalit masses about the nature of globalization. The subsequent section then presents the causal analysis based on the actual experience with globalization that may concretize the theoretical findings of the previous three sections.
Drive Towards Convergence? A Global Village Metaphor
A typical definition of globalization would take it as the increasing integration of economies and societies around the world, transcending the boundaries of the nation state, particularly through international trade and the flow of capital, ideas and people, the transfer of culture and technology, and the development of transnational regulations, aimed primarily at the transcendental homogenization of political and socio-economic theories across the globe. Globalization has been a household term for the last two decades, with volumes written and spoken on it but it meaning still remains elusive and obscure. At one extreme it is taken as natural phenomenon of wide-spreading economic, social, and political transaction of different countries beyond their physical borders and at the other it is seen as colonialism in new garbs. But globalization is not the same as globalism, which points to aspirations for an end state of affairs wherein values are shared by the world's six billion people, their environment, their roles as citizens, consumers or producers with an interest in collective action designed to solve common problems. It implies globalization would lead to cultural and economic convergence through standardization of consumer habits, values, and ways of thinking that contributes to the development of global markets, greater efficiencies and profits; and politically, it would promote neoliberal values and assumptions and therefore weaken castes in India.
Underscoring Theme
In this view, globalization is characterized by an intrinsically related series of economic phenomena, comprising the liberalization and deregulation of markets, privatization of assets, retreat of state functions (particularly welfare ones), diffusion of technology, cross-national distribution of manufacturing production (foreign direct investment), and the integration of capital markets. All countries undergoing economic modernization must increasingly resemble one another: they must unify nationally on the basis of a centralized state, urbanize, replace traditional forms of social organization like tribe, sect, and family with economically rational ones based on function and efficiency, and provide for the universal education of their citizens ... Moreover, the logic of modern natural science would seem to dictate a universal evolution in the direction of capitalism. It represents a complex vision of globally integrated production; of specialized but interdependent labour markets; of the rapid privatization of state assets; and of the inextricable linkage of technology across conventional national borders, leading to the development of a whole 'new economy.' A paradigmatic shift is taking place that influences the way we think about a variety of social and economic relations. Globalization represents the universalizing of American values (if not Anglo-Saxon ones), driving convergence towards liberal democracy and modernity defined as industrialized economic development- one that involves the characteristic features of a limited state apparatus.
Divergent Voices
Globalization: Hard laissez faire Ideology
Globalization as an Ideology
Some authors however could provide insight to differentiation between these two phenomena by characterizing them as "structural" and "ideological" respectively, the former referring to the growth of intensive, large-scale networks relative to more localized ones and the latter to neoliberal political ideology, the so-called "Washington consensus"· 26 Structural globalization denotes processes that at any given time have a dynamic of their own, which conditions and constrains human action; whereas ideological globalization denotes attempts by particular social groups and political communities to turn those processes to their own advantage. Ideological system exists not as fiction but 'truths'- and not only evidential truth but moral truth. There is a characteristic confusion among theorists about whether 'globalization' is a process, an ideology or a 'state of being'25 Much of it seems to be coming from mistaking globalizations in the past as the same as their contemporary version.
Globalization essentially Capitalism
The reproduction of the relations of production is carried out through Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA), comprising specialized institutions such as religion, education, family, media, culture, etc.33 The major weakness of the capitalist ideology, based on accumulation and market forces, is that while it promises wealth and prosperity, it yields canary experience to majority of people.
Neoliberalism as a counter to Marxism
According to researchers, the three main pillars of Neoliberalism are faith in what Polanyi (1944)39 called the, "self-regulating market" as the institutional form most likely to produce optimal social outcomes; unremitting hostility toward the state (particularly the Keynesian and developmentalist states) as owner, provider, or regulator of goods or services; and faith in civil society, or its constituent communities, as the sphere best able to redress any market failures that do occur"0 ; Peet and Hartwick (1999)41 ; Peck (2001)42; Lamer (2003)43; Tickell and Peck (2003).44 Neoliberalism's faith in market exceeds that of any fundamentalist. It actually borrowed heavily from two established ideologies: the libertarian variant of liberalism (often referred to as 'neoliberalism') inspired by the ideas of Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, and the late-twentieth century brand of Anglo-American conservatism ('neoconservatism') associated· with the views of Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan While these two ideologies differed on the issue of role of the government in the free market regime and certain other matters, they both emphasized 'free market' and 'free trade’. His argument in his famous book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis was that because "the standard of living of the Russian masses is much lower than that of the masses in the country which is universally considered as the paragon of capitalism, the United States of America", it clearly shows "superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism." 34 Mises was followed by a series of neoliberals like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who attacked the Marxist notion of history as a teleological process in accordance with 'inexorable laws'.
'Invisible Hand' a God of Brahminism
It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged." 47 Even Jean Baptiste Say, one of the most ardent laissez faire advocates, saw government as the mechanism through which not only would property rights be developed and enforced, but also the institution in charge of developing a broadly defined educational program through which the "ignorant" sections of the population would come to understand their "true" self-interests. As they converted soft laissez faire ideology of classical liberalism or Smithian economics into its hard version, the ideology of neoliberalism reflected extreme individualism, social Darwinist competition and free market fundamentalism49• This ideology does not contain any apologia for the weak and poor. Thus, it may be seen that the present-day globalization with its hard laissez faire ideology rather reflect the rigid ideology of caste system that seeks to preserve the iniquitous social structure through religious code. As Samuel Fleishhacker has recently demonstrated, Smith was quite keen for his time to point out the need for governments to undertake some redistribution program in a system of private property rights as those rights, necessary for "natural liberty", could well result in poverty.
Globalization's Growth Promise
Growth Good for Caste Annihilation
Contrary to a commonplace rhetoric prevalent among Dalits that economic condition of person does not mean freedom from caste, it is futile to deny that economic condition does liberate him/her from caste shackles. If the entire country becomes economically developed and with reasonable distributive justice economic prosperity comes to the share of all, the very basis of caste system would have gone. Caste system is rooted in the premise of a backward economy in which a large population, devoid of any means of living, is utterly dependent upon the higher caste people.
A Faulty Premise
Anybody can see that the theory of comparative advantage is based on a number of assumptions, such as there is perfect competition between firms, there is full employment of all factors of production, labour and capital are perfectly mobile within a country and do not move across national borders; a country's gains from trade are captured by those living in the country and spent locally; a country's external trade is always in balance, and market prices accurately reflect the real (or social) costs of the products produced. Now, even the undergraduate economics student also knows that Ricardo "proved" his theory of comparative advantage using a two country, static model of the world, using examples of Portugal as more efficient producer of both wine and cloth than England, but with greatest superiority in wine production.
But Where's Growth?
For 70 of these countries, average incomes are less in the mid-1990s than in 1980, and in 43, less than in 1970."55 For developing countries as a whole (excluding China), the average trade deficit in the 1990s was higher than in the 1970s by almost 3 percentage points of GDP, while the average growth rate was lower by 2 percent per annum." 56 This pattern was broadly similar in all developing regions. The Asian countries managed to grow faster in the 1980s, while reducing their payments deficits, but in the 1990s they have run greater deficits without achieving faster growthy A study by Mark Weisbord, Dean Baker, and David Resnick on the consequences of neoliberal policies on third world development comes to similar conclusions. The following "Globalization Facts and Figures" reported by the International Forum on Globalization illustrates it further: "Excluding China, there are 100 million more poor people in developing countries than a decade ago.54 "Since 1980, economic decline or stagnation has affected 100 countries, reducing the incomes of 1.6 billion people. Martin Hart-Landsberg and Burkett (2006) show that even in the current phase of globalization, this much claimed economic growth had not materialized and that the post-1980 neoliberal era has been marked by slower growth, greater trade imbalances, and deteriorating social conditions.
And Now Deadly Recession
Mark Martinez, in his recent book The Myth of the Free Market describes how the flawed myth of the "invisible hand" distorted our understanding of how modern capitalist markets developed and actually work. The loud claims of economic growth have automatically been subdued today by the terrible recession that befell the world since August 2008, wiping out millions of jobs, trillions of dollars of wealth and pushing majority of people to the brink of disaster. Martinez drew from history to illustrate that political processes and the state are not only instrumental in making capitalist markets work but that there would be no capitalist markets or wealth creation without state intervention. Indeed, today there is no need to belabour to refute the standard mantras of neoclassical free market economic theory that free trade automatically leads to economic growth.
No Trickle, Only Inequality
As a result, whatever growth that accrued during globalization was increasingly pocketed by the rich leaving an ever-wider gap between them and poor. In 2001 itself the 358 billionaires of the world had assets estimated at $760 billion equivalent to the wealth of the bottom 45% of the world population, that is about 2.7 billion individuals. The three richest people in the world owned assets that exceeded the combined gross domestic products of the world's poorest 48 countries. This metaphor of trickle countries. This assumes permeable social structure, which certainly does not exist in case of India with its impregnable caste layer. The above discussion shows that primarily much vaunted claim of economic growth through globalization itself has not materialized However, even if growth accrued, as it did in some countries like India and China, the trickle has not materialised. The implication of these finding to the castes is clear, as corroborated by the experience that globalization rather than weakening the castes may contribute to aggravation of their viciousness. Inequality is the single biggest outcome of globalization that stands acknowledged by even the globalist camp. It could be historically seen that economic growth does not automatically correlate with reduction in poverty.
Cultural Homogeneity, Not Quite
Cultural Imperialism?
They see that despite globalization the nation states will remain the primary unit of political and cultural organization. Also, he observes, "population pressures building up in various parts of the globe, the struggle for resources intensifying and the communications revolution often fuelling ethnic animosities rather than producing world citizens."64 Mathew Horsman and Andrew Marshall's book After the Nation State concludes that although the world's economy may be globalizing, or at least integrating, the idea of the nation state is not diminishing ... and a global culture is not anywhere near to being established.65 They point out that "in India, the mass culture is not dominated by Hollywood, western-style newspapers and magazines, or US television despite concrete signs of economic reforms in India. " 66 It is interesting to see that even a writer like George Ritzer, whilst elaborating his 'McDonaldization Thesis', refuses to slip into sloppy generalizations regarding homogenization of culture. Herbert Schiller (1991), one of the earliest and most prominent proponents of 'cultural imperialism' in media proposed the use of the term to describe and explain the way in which large multinational corporations, including the media, of developed countries dominated developing countries.68 Schiller highlighted the process of cultural imperialism by which a society is brought into the modern world system when its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured and sometimes bribed into shaping its social institutions to correspond to or even promote the values and structures of the dominating centres of the system. Schiller's work was thus mainly focused on the area of media and communication but later cultural imperialism was used as a genuine framework to explain phenomena in so diverse an area as of international relations, anthropology, education, science, history, literature, sports and so on. Many globalization theorists claim that, not only is the nation state being subsumed by the process of globalization, but national characteristics and national traditions and cultures are also being threatened or replaced. Claude Ake (1995), for instance claims that cultural homogeneity is a central aspect of globalization: "(globalization is, amongst other things) about the emergence of a global mass culture driven by mass advertising and technical advances in mass communication. "However, these ideas are contested by many others.
Hierarchy of Cultures
Thompson had come to see culture as a means of resistance to capitalism. The counter to cultural imperialism seeks to revive 'peoples' culture' as evidenced by the forms as well as contents of the cultural products of the anti-imperialist movements all over the world. “capitalism. They are presented as the effects of various globalizing processes, generally deemed to hold common origins in the imperial drives of powerful western institutions." The process of acculturation into global culture also takes place hierarchically and necessarily selectively as in any other. For instance, mass culture - the culture of television, radio, film, and cheap paperbacks - is a tool of domination, a way for capitalism to offer ephemeral gratification to people condemned to lives of work. As Rivkin and Ryan (2004) contend culture is both a means of assuring the domination of one class or group over another and a means of resistance to such domination, a way of articulating oppositional points of view to those in dominance. These revivalist attempts are invariably overwhelmed by the onslaught of resource rich capitalist/ imperialist culture. Within the above framework of hierarchy of culture, globalization has introduced a layer at the apex of global culture, culture of Western modernity’s.
Hybridization, not Homogenization
McWorld", which action-reaction dynamics between the promise of globalization to bind diverse people together through consumption of so-called "cultural" commodities and peoples' reaction against the capitalistic characteristic of consumption and greed through tribal pursuit of justice.75 Samuel Huntington's thesis of 'the clash of civilizations' or the 'West versus rest' also underscores the same process of polarization.76 Homogenization of culture, depicted by terms such as "Coca-colonization" and "McDonaldization", etc. Refer to the "worldwide homogenization of societies through the impact of multinational corporations" 77 that drive consumer capitalism with standardized brand images a mass advertising and the perceived superiority of Western products and services by many Third World countries." 78 What however is considered as McDonaldization is actually a form of intercultural hybridization as no consumer company, McDonald included, believes in standardization of products or processes.
Caste not a Discardable Feudal Relic
The potential of caste for perpetually dividing the working class, its instrumentality in exercising control over production system, the prospects of feudal lords as an ally in the supply chain, for instance, were certainly seen as great economic benefits associated with the Indian feudalism.
Rise of Religious Fundamentalism
Ram Sunyani explains this nexus when he says, "In Indian context the process of social transformation and the turmoil caused due to the adverse effects of globalization effects of lopsided industrialization resulted in the politics based on Hindutva." The rise of Hindutva, demolition of Bari masjid, review of constitution, denigration and harassment of minorities, carbonization of education and generally communalization of polity, are not to be taken as unconnected events Sunyani further, "the events if seen in totality show the deeper linkage and chronological order between the decline of state controlled economies, intensification of adverse effects of globalization, rise of America as the lone super power of the world, decline of the authority of United Nations, decline of Non-Aligned movement, rise of Fascist Fundamentalist politics in our own country and worsening of the problems of the poor and deprived.
Analysis of Empirical Rise in Casteism
New Confidence in India and Indian
It is only during the globalization period, which brought unprecedented economic growth, international recognition as one of the fastest growing economy, a name in the areas of frontier technology like ICT and Biotech, fame to Indians as heads of MNCs and TNCs and generally established the Indian community as the most prosperous migrant community in the USA, the El Dorado of middle classes, that reversed the trend and boosted the middle class confidence in their culture, customs and traditions, which are nothing but euphemism for the caste system. As these processes under the egalitarian ethos of the Constitution suppressed the innate drive of caste customs and traditions, India lingered on with its 'low income' status in comity of nations with the so called 'Hindu' rate of growth, shaking the confidence of the Hindus in superiority of their past.
Unenlightened Reaction to Crisis of Living
The choking of investment into agriculture and non-agriculture sectors, basically to adhere to fiscal fundamentalism globalization has engendered, coupled with the increase in input costs and decrease in prices of Agri-products, because of the general fall in the commodity prices in the integrated global markets, and consequent fall in food production and rise in food prices, had spiralling downward impact on the lives of rural people, particularly at the lower strata.
Neoliberal Ethos of Social Calvinism
The global wave of democratization, which impressed many in the 1980s and 1990s, appears to entail only a cosmetic, procedural democratization that allowed few liberties.88 Human rights violations are also reflected in growing inequality in the world during globalization period.89 In a survey conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2003, overwhelming majorities of people interviewed from over 40 countries believed that growing international trade and communication ties were good for their countries and their families. Thus, it results in increased unemployment; rising poverty and inequalities in income and wealth85; decline in labour rights and unionization rates; increase in use of child labours; and the spread of global criminal acts such as trafficking of humans, drugs, weapons, and money.87 These statistics as indicators of human rights conditions point to a number of human rights violations, experienced both in developing and developed countries, albeit in different degrees.
Relative Disempowerment of Dalits
Paradoxically, while Dalits have suffered relative disempowerment during the globalization period, the perception of others has been contrary because of their rapid strides in the past and partly because of their growing assertion rights and dignity. Most factions of Dalit parties having been the adjuncts of the ruling class parties or the seemingly autonomous Dalit party having itself donned the robes of ruling classes; there is no effective political voice for Dalits. Besides, rise in food prices, and abolition of the only safety net for them in form of the PDS, lowering the expenditure on social sector thereby pushing them to seek these services in market, and so on has variously contributed to economical weakening of Dalits during the globalization period. Insofar as caste also draws its sustenance from the differential strength of Dalits and non-Dalits, the relative disempowerment of Dalits that has taken place during the globalization period also has contributed to casteism ra1smg its head. Although with specific policy thrust, Dalits do show statistical improvement in literacy and dropout rates, albeit still lagging behind the general population, in qualitative terms they have been totally marginalized. Their entry into educational system, particularly higher education system has been particularly injurious to Dalits.
Casino syndrome
Indeed, globalization has produced many success stories that reinforce the belief in luck, divine favour and in short occult. If one looks back, until the advent of globalization, belief in gods and godmen was considered symptomatic of irrational and weak minds. While generally globalization privileges the already privileged, its free market ethos always throws up some stray example of extraordinary success. The spread of Buddhism, the most rationale among all the religions, in the Western world is not due to its rationalist core but due its occult peripherals its certain forms acquired in the East. A huge market is developed for gods and godmen all over the world, and particularly in India, traditionally famed source of these species. The interesting thing is that it is not confined to India, which is considered as fertile land for the crop of occult, but it is pervasive phenomenon all over the world. People are seen seeking shelter in their cocoons of castes, communities, race, ethnicity, linguistic groups; and so, on and in turn react to outsiders with xenophobia. This may explain why globalization may go hand in hand with the emergence or re-emergence of ethnic and religious fundamentalisms and the fragmentation of nation-states into multiple micro nation-states. Since market is sovereign in globalization it does not regard any static notion of competence and could reward anyone it likes. In effect, it is not the attributes that determine the end result but the end result, the success in market place determines the value of attributes, competence and ability.
Weakening of Caste Identity?
Most news programs on local television put an emphasis on the representation of local events over the international ones; and when presenting the international news, their interpretation will, again, be based on a whole number of factors: starting from the kind of relationship maintained-with the place represented and up to the overall ideological reference frame officially endorsed within this concrete society. The dampening of certain identities has taken place right since the advent of capitalism and it has indeed been accelerated during the period of globalization, but at the samite certain other kind of identities seem to have also been strengthened. In the context of caste, the ritual identities seem to have been weakened to a large extent, dissolving virtual differences between the Daija castes and the Shudra castes, except they are enlivened by the political parties during the election times. It can be concluded that the impact of globalization is contradictory: on the one hand it works towards the unification of the world but on the other, this proves to have a dubious effect on diminishing the local specificity and the tendencies towards the local, the culture become more and more discernible and avowed. Taking the clue from the news being reeled out on the television channels, while it appears broad brush in face of it, without any emphasis that might allude to caste or class, there is always a differential treatment of the Dalit matters. As such, it was expected that the globalization processes would lead to dissolution of any stable identities, including caste identities. It is therefore that globalization processes, contrary to expectations of globalists, have reinforced caste identities and increased the caste conflicts. Television signifies a powerful medium of globalizing trends and is often viewed as representing a one-dimensional field of superficial images functioning without referent and meaning, where events and happenings are assembled as a collage that highlights their heterogeneity and the absence of common base.
Conclusion
Marx thought that "modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labour, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power."91 Likewise others also predicted demise of castes: Weber through the rationalities of planning, Veblen through the effects of education, Schum peter through the creation of a business class and the practice of entrepreneurship, Myrdal and many modern development economists such as Acerola - who formally modelled caste- through the efficiency requirements of markets, institutional economists such as North through the effects of technology and technical change. They suffered numerous ways: losing of jobs as a result of massive closure of small sector industries; commercialization of education, the major instrumentality in their emancipation, freezing of reservations through privatization and other strategies; discarding welfarist ethos of the State and thereby deprivation in terms of access to basic services; cut in rural investments- Agri and non-Agri sector as a result of which increasing their dependence on Agri-sector that is the crux of casteism in rural India; the policies of casualization, contactization and feminization of labour and general marginalization under the renewed confidence of 'shining India'.
Yes, I support reservation has benefited General category students a lot more than they think. Here are the advantages laid out:
1. You get to study: Think about that. You actually get to study for competitive exams if you want a good rank. Think about the excruciatingly monotonous lives of all those SC, ST and OBC students who didn’t have to study to get good ranks. They made their way into good colleges by studying about 10 minutes every day. Where’s the fun in that? General category candidates get to have all the fun- Studying hard for the exams, the thrill of the high cut-offs, and various other such things.
2. It prepares you for the future: There’s discrimination based on petty things pretty much everywhere in the world. Reservation gives you a taste of it in the early stages of your independent life hence preparing you for all the discrimination you’re going to face in the
future. It teaches you how to accept it calmly and not to make a fuss about it (not a very morally upright lesson, but hey, got to learn to live with it!).
3.Teaches you how to pay college tuition fee: Think about it. SC/ST students get 100% tuition fee waivers. They never get to experience the thrill of paying the tuition fee. How boring is that!
4.Reservation cares about your health: In some institutions, SC/ST students are allowed to borrow more books from the library than general category students. Hence, they have to carry more weight than general category students. Oh, their cumbersome lives!
5.Teaches you not to expect life to be fair: This one’s important. Life in general (pun intended), isn’t fair and reservation serves as an excellent tool to teach us to live with this fact.
You might not like reservation, but it’s really important.
Why Reservation is Necessary: Reservation has its downsides, but it’s justified. According to extensive scientific and biological researches worldwide, it has been found that the brains of those. This mysterious element is responsible for unbelievably high intelligence in such students as compared to those belonging to SC/ST or OBC categories. This elevated intelligence of the superior general category students makes it necessary to increase the threshold for such students as compared to other mentally inferior students. The importance of reservation is also justified by the fact that it is not prevalent in other puny institutions, the ones no one has ever heard of, like MIT, Harvard, UC Berkeley, Oxford University and many other similarly obscure and inferior institutions. Underdeveloped countries like the USA, UK, China etc. fail to recognize the obvious importance of Reservation the ill-effects of which are visible in the pathetic education system of these nations as compared to the state-of-the-art education system in India.
