ARTICLE REVIEW

1. Caste Reservations and Equality of Opportunity in Education

Caste reservations have been available in educational institutions for the last four decades in India. The issue of caste reservations is thus closely related to the concept of inequality in our caste-based hierarchically structured society. Caste being an important category for identification of backwardness, the so-called protective discrimination in the field of education has been in vogue for the last few decades. Caste reservations have been used for determining places in educational institutions for the last four decades in India.

                 The ratio of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes students passing secondary education remaining the same as that of their enrolment ratios, and further assuming that these boys do not have any alternative sources of employment. Therefore, it is necessary to provide protective discrimination to all those who are socially and educationally backward on the basis of their heredity caste, in the education sector, while eliminating the rich and powerful among them in matters of positions of power and employment .

                            The problem of unemployment and the unorganized and imperfect nature of the labor market for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are not peculiar to them. A more positive approach towards this problem is appropriate increase in intake in the educational institutions and improvement in job opportunities. The following indicators which may weigh the disadvantages of a family.  The indicators:

 (1) Caste and occupation or the weighted number that is to be assigned to each caste on the basis of the socio-economic survey conducted in every ten years,

(2) Educational status of the family that includes the education of the head of the family and the tradition of education in the family from generations, and

(3) Income (annual or men sum).

              If the weaker section students are provided with the necessary academic and social environment which is different from their demeaning home environment, as is done in the above cases in a four year residential professional course, the handicaps will be fast removed and the weaker section boys qualify very well with anyone else in the society. Reservations create a stake in perpetuation of castes and backwardness and thus against secularism puts the cart before the horse. It is hypocrisy to talk of merit only in educational institutions and government jobs while continuing to adhere to the principle of exclusiveness n social relationship. Reservations by contributing to the entry of backward groups into the mainstream have several positive aspects in the long run. Reservations could play the role of 'creative destruction' by drawing the socially backward groups into the mainstream.

                           The real problem is to see whether caste reservations really create a threat to secularism if it is used as a means to bring equality of opportunity in education. There is a suggestion that reservations for positions and places in public services and in educational institutions should also consider the secular attributes like functions or occupational activities of people in categorizing the backward classes. Some of the backward castes in rural India are responsible for the perpetuation of castes and atrocities on scheduled castes, tribes and service castes.

2. CASTE, CLASS, AND COMMUNITY IN INDIA: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH

The anthropology of India has been dominated by an emphasis on caste that has inhibited an integrated approach to understanding class in India. Using an ethnographic approach that takes into account the symbolic and material aspects of caste and class, this article focuses on the attempts to form a "community" of potters among a large group of potter-artisans in central India. The anthropology of caste in India underwent a radical revision in reaction to the revolution in caste studies that Louis Dumont's structuralism approach heralded in the 1960s and 1970s (Dumont 1970).The critiques highlighted three debilitating effects of Dumont's approach:   

(1)           It thwarts the comparative aim of sociology and        Anthropology

(2)           It makes the reality of caste stand for India, which is far more complex

(3)           It explains caste in idealist ways as a cultural construct devoid of material content, resulting in the mythology of a single hierarchy based on purity and pollution.

                         The anthropology of India arguably is still weak on discussing political and economic issues, especially those that integrate the traditional strengths of studying caste with attention to issues of class.

                        This article attempts to develop an ethnographic approach to class using the traditional anthropological emphasis on caste in India or as an idealized social structure without any material basis. An earlier attempt to integrate an analysis of caste, class, and capitalism in today's India used statistical evidence of occupational categories and caste identities to show that whereas Indian feudalism was shaped closely by caste, colonial transformations, especially in land have a severe blow to the association of caste and class (Omvedt 1992). Thus Omvedt writes, "class and caste are no longer absolutely correlated: economic differentiation has affected almost every caste”.

                                The move from Varna to jati is a precapitalist mode of production. Chhattisgarh Potter Caste Community (CPCC) organization claims to represent about 40,000 people, all of whom belong to the Jhariya Potters caste and the overwhelming majority of whom are traditional potters. Almost all potters produce utilitarian items such as pots and pans, roof tiles made on the potter's wheel, and ritual items linked to the local agricultural and Hindu festival cycle. Social reproduction is attempted through control over what Potters call roti – beti -len-den. This case of a caste-based disposition conceals a more complex class consciousness that is historically contingent on a particular condition of production relations that is culturally organized.  

                              It is necessary for anthropologists to continue to consider how class operates within culture, rather than assume that it simply exists within an objective material reality capable of somehow being immediately experienced (non-discursively and non-linguistically).This means that any social structure( whether the community is a structure of kinship, or politics, or economy, or religion) needs to reproduce the conditions of its existence, and it will have to do this by engaging with identity, interests, consciousness, and reproduction of means of production and reproduction.

3. Social and Conceptual Background to the Policy of Reservation

This article highlights the main theoretical arguments given by the proponents and opponents of the reservation policy in India and the US. The world awoke to the need of moving towards a more egalitarian society when the division threatened to destroy the very existence of state and society.  

                        Equality and non-discrimination became the creed of the day. Quota system is one of the modes of providing preferential treatment. In the US, the two groups are known as 'fair shakers' and 'social engineers’. While fair shakers want equality of opportunity, a level playing field for all, social engineers demand equality of results. Most of the western societies are governed by individualism and equality.

      A caste is a social group having two characteristics:

 (1) Membership is confined to those who are born of members and includes all persons so born;

 (2) The members are forbidden by an inexorable social law to marry outside the group.

                  A comparative study of caste position in Indian and US society can be studied under three heads:

 (1) Stratification between the castes in the societies;

 (2) Mobility between the groups; and

 (3) The present position. 

                     Indian society has been divided into many castes and sub-castes. The lower castes always tried to imitate the way of life and ritual of the dominant class. On the economic front, while most of the forward class is getting urbanized the backward class people can be categorized into two groups. The schedule castes and tribes, other backward classes. Thus, we find that while theoretically India is following the US, the social back-ground of the reserved category people is different in the two countries. The problem of ethnic diversity in India arose in the context of linguistic and religious minorities and in some cases in relation to the tribal’s. In fact, today's scheduled castes were actually the socially and economically exploited class of the religious group to which they belonged. 

                  Once we accept the theory of balance of power between different groups in Indian society it would raise several problems. In the private sector, the practical position is that it is not in the government's hands to enforce the reservation policy. Even in the US Title VII which deals with non-discrimination in the area of jobs provision for set-asides are only permissive which means that if a private employer wants to practice affirmative action it can do within certain limitations. In the coming days it is the private sector which is going to have the position and society and being the dominant group in society will be dictating many of the government policies. 

                 Thus the upper castes whose entry in the government jobs will be restricted are bound to turn to the private sector, which is already offering lucrative salaries; while for the reserved category candidates the reserved government jobs may become a big temptation to strive for any-thing else, thus blunting their competitive capabilities. In this we may find that the whole logic of reservation of power sharing concept has boomeranged because in effect it is again yesterday's upper-caste which is the dominant class.

   Submitted by:

  Name: Parmeshwar Lal Bagari

  Roll No. : CH10B045