CONTEMPORARY bourgeois social science is intellectually focused on the problem of multiculturalism, group rights and representation, non-discriminatory equal opportunities for all disadvantaged groups on the basis of affirmative action/positive discrimination policies of reservations in public institutions. This agenda of ensuring special rights for the multiple disadvantaged minority of women or race or caste based groups is legitimized in the name of making procedural democracy substantive and socially inclusive. The upshot of this approach is that multiple social groups in every democracy have to be identified by the state for purposes of ‘uplifting’ ‘disadvantaged’ groups by following pubic policies of providing them special rights so that they achieve a ‘status’ from where they can eventually compete with other social groups in the free market of opportunities.
Eleven scholars in the May 2005 issue of Seminar have put their collective intellectual energies to show a roadmap to the Indian state for ‘Redressing Disadvantages’ of multiple primordial and pre-capitalist identity-based groups with a view to ‘manage social conflicts which have emerged in the ongoing process of social change. Is there a different way of addressing the problems of socially disadvantaged classes which are exploited and oppressed? Is there an alternative approach to ‘liberate’ the oppressed and exploited social groups and establish structures of social equality? Bourgeois social science, given its definition of ‘society as a group of groups’, has no answers to the central issue of a total restructuring of property-based social relations and enlightenment for the theory of social liberation, which comes only from scientific social theory of historical materialism of Karl Marx. It is unfortunate that none of the contributors have tried to examine the scholarly writings on ‘caste’ by Karl Marx and other Indian Marxists like D.D. Kosambi, R.S. Sharma or Debi Prasad Chhatopadhyaya. Though Marxists have recognized the ‘formation and consolidation of a caste-based village community in India, they have still to grapple with the ‘revival of this “age-old” caste-based system’ by the British colonial rulers, the national movement led by the Congress, or the post-independence state and the different political groups. The entire historical process of socio-economic development – from the ancient Indian society to the present day – clearly reveals that caste-divisions have been used for the appropriation of social surplus value by the exploiting ruling classes whether feudal or colonial rulers, or the post-independence exploiting segments and strata of the Indian ruling classes.
Caste divisions in Indian society have invariably helped the exploiting classes because caste-based consciousness keeps the exploited popular classes divided amongst themselves. Marxist social theory firmly situates social relations in the overall structural logic of the production system and argues that divided and fragmented groups become ‘conscious’ through their own struggles. Social consciousness, which is a product of social struggles, makes the fragmented exploited groups conscious of the fact that they are an integral part of the majority who are oppressed and exploited in the process of production. The central issue is that social relations are not determined by the inherited categories of ‘birth’ or so-called ‘status in a stratified society.’ Rather, it is the material system of production based on the institution of private property which governs the private appropriation of wealth which is a collective product of the labouring classes who in this process get collectively exploited. Karl Marx argued not only that social production relations are formed within the structural logic of the total productive system, but also that ‘liberation’ becomes possible only by demolishing the overall exploitive system of production. Further, that this can be done by fragmented labouring classes only when they become socially conscious that they are the majority and not disparate groups who are victims of social deprivation.
The above narration of two contending and competing grand social theories of society helps us to analyse the social consequences of a caste-based reservation policy in Indian society. It is clear that caste-based consciousness exacerbated social divisions and fragmentations and the policy of caste-based reservations has accentuated caste versus caste or subcaste versus subcaste conflicts. It is not accidental that caste-based parties, groups or leaders are champions of specific castes and special rights for one caste and not the other. Not only this, the Indian state has developed a social technology of accommodating social conflicts by following policies of caste-based reservations. The state and the ruling classes have ‘appropriated’ caste-based multiple identities and instead of addressing the problems of the absolute majority of the poor, find it convenient to provide ‘patronage’ to a caste or a sub- caste and thereby manage social conflicts.
Scholars favouring reservations need to answer: Why is it that the ‘forward’ among the Scheduled Caste or persons above a particular ‘family income’ do not want to voluntarily opt out and make place for more deprived members of their own caste group. Further, caste in politics has given birth to pure caste-based parties, leaders and groups and every caste-based leader is a champion of reservations in public institutions. Instead of launching a popular movement against the new economic policies of ‘liberalization’ which have led to a shrinking of job opportunities in pubic services, casteist leaders have become advocates of reservations for Scheduled Castes in the private sector. This demand is a telling example of the status-quoist politics of caste-based political groups. A Laloo Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Nitish Kumar or a Mayawati are all united in their support to the policies of globalization, liberalization and privatization. These champions of caste-based reservations either have no understanding of the crisis inherent in the structural logic of globalized capitalism, or as status-quoists, they only want some crumbs from the crisis-ridden Indian capitalism.
Caste-based fragmented politics is a double-edged anti-poor weapon. First, caste consciousness acts as a roadblock for the development of a social consciousness where fragmented, oppressed and exploited caste groups can relate to millions of other poor who are in a similar social situation. Moreover, caste-based parties and leaders strengthen ‘false consciousness’ among the poor that reservations in public services/private sector is the real panacea. Caste in India needs to be unmasked and demystified because every public policy which is caste-specific leads to the strengthening of social status quo.
We must realize that the process of capitalist modernization though gradual and distorted, has made caste identity less relevant for millions of Indians. Unfortunately, the storm created by the opportunistic caste politics of a V.P. Singh virtually eliminated every forward looking and socially progressive social and political formation in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the 1990s. The reasons for the total replacement and displacement of socially progressive political movements represented by the Congress and the Communists in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar by casteist leaders in the 1990s are not difficult to identify. Today, the one point programme of every casteist leader is to demand more quotas for their caste groups in public institutions and the private sector. This is the India of 2005. The defenders of the policies of reservations and quotas in public life only serve to legitimise this India.
C.P. Bhambhri
Delhi
THE elaborate discussion on Redressing Disadvantages (Seminar 549, May 2005) is much too fixated on reservation of seats in education and posts in services for the members of the Scheduled Castes/Tribes and Other Backward Classes (SC/ST/OBCs), in the process ignoring vastly more important factors responsible for the persistence of deprivation and poverty among them. The point of this critique is that such reductionist studies of what are essentially systematic problems lead us to no enduring solution.
A little digression into history can explain the point. Colonial exploitation by the British in vital aspects of the Indian economy, particularly land ownership, revenue collection, pattern of production, both of agriculture and small industries, import, export, and so on, hampered normal growth of income, employment and other factors in the national economy. Independence did not usher in the promised egalitarian land reforms to generate a buoyant agricultural growth, with its all round attendant benefits. The major emphasis instead was on urban-industrial development, then thought to be the pivot of economic growth, even if food had to be imported from abroad. Worse, the introduction of HYV seed/fertilizer technology, which while substantially improving production threw out millions of poorer farmers and labourers from the land only to enrich the richer ones further.
There is abundant empirical evidence now to show that the productivity of organic agriculture is as high as, if not better than, the technology intensive one, and without the ecological, sociological and long-run economic damages characteristic of the latter. The millions displaced from land, moved to urban slums for precarious employment, mired in various sociological evils; or else stayed back to starve and die at home. This process continues. But high technology, being a product of science, fascinated our intellectuals then as it does today, though many home-grown organic technologies, not only in agriculture, are decidedly better.
Then came liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG), largely engineered by the U.S., the West and Japan, and embraced by vested interests at home, often with good intentions no doubt, that further worsened the situation of employment and wages at lower agricultural and urban levels. Admittedly, there have been geopolitical, technological and macro-growth compulsions inherent in the process; but this should not prevent us from recognizing the adverse repercussions of LPG at lower levels, extending the area and intensity of the disadvantages which is the subject of our discussion. No compassion of ‘the human face’ can undo the genesis of these inequities, though complementary measures can mitigate them in many areas, particularly if implemented with receptive local participation. The present UPA government is trying to do this, though it is too early to asses the results.
Nowhere have the many papers presented touched on the problem of our exploding population which, on its own and even in its complementarity with development, is the most important factor contributing to our increasing deprivation and poverty. It is often said that development is the best contraceptive. It is noteworthy that parallel to the successive inegalitarian models of development, touched on above, population which ranged around 300 million in the 1940s, now exceeds one billion. The phenomenon of deprivation and poverty among SC/ST/OBCs, the womenfolk, children, the Muslims – one article touched on the last category also – to whom reservation of seats and jobs has been offered as a solution, springs basically from that population-development interface. Three-fourths of these under BPL come from the neglected rural areas; close to half the displaced persons come from SC/ST, lower rungs of OBCs; and the women and children among them are the more deprived. It is notable that deprivation among Muslims is less a product of religious bias; it is essentially economic. In this context the idea of reservation would appear to be more electoral than a quest of a basic solution.
There may be a three-fold approach to such a solution: one, egalitarian land reforms, to begin with, as introduced in West Bengal (and less widely in a few other states), with complementary development of structural and social infrastructure in rural areas; two, substitution of the reigning LPG paradigm of development with one less controversial and egalitarian. Against both, there are powerful vested interests, those against the LPG of global dimensions. But there are more abiding reasons than egalitarianism as to why the fight should nevertheless be taken up. The LPG paradigm is not ecologically, sociologically, or even economically sustainable. Even some high priests of LPG now recognize that it is widening disparities in income and wealth, and generating unconscionable deprivation and poverty at lower levels, particularly of less developed countries. Three, apart from ‘development as a contraceptive’, there should be an effort to bring down population by direct measures such as the one-child norm, greater emphasis on disincentives than incentives, and so on.
All these need a no-holds-barred discussion so that awareness about alternative paths grows. As this intellectual ferment grips the public imagination and starts troubling the conscience of the political leadership, divisive caste politics would tend to recede into the background and parties may coalesce on ideological issues to symbiotically strengthen the economic quest. Such reductionist and divisive ideas as reservation of posts for the removal of deprivation and poverty would then be seen in a different perspective.
B.K. Banerji
Delhi
