Reservations Have Acted As a Form of Social Engineering to Address Centuries of Oppression and Discrimination: Justice Ravindra Bhat

"Affirmative action is not an exception to equality of treatment, but a method of ensuring equality, by enabling all individuals to perform according to their potentials," said Justice s. Ravindra Bhat while delivering the Annual Havanur Endowment Memorial Lecture, orgainzed by the Karnataka State Law University on Monday. The Supreme Court Judge spoke at length about the unique form of equality adopted by the Constitution framers, certainly to alleviate long years of suffering on account of caste discrimination, and to redistribute the benefits that privileged elites had monopolized, to a larger segment of the population, turning the caste system on its head. Affirmative action v. Right to Equality He observed that the pursuit of an "anti-discrimination" constitutional ethic, is more rigorous than the pursuit of a standalone "right to equality". "There are, in effect, two integral facets of equality: one, the right of all people to the benefits of society; in that sense, the positive right to equality of opportunity. The second is the positive right to equal treatment or anti-discrimination. The right to equality in the first sense, is an affirmative one, which is that all human beings should be treated alike. Here, we talk of benefits, of public goods, of services and other rights, which every citizen of a modern state, can expect. The second limb, i.e. the anti-discrimination law, is to ensure that existing barriers are addressed through innovative state intervention, through policies, through legislation, and ensure that the largest number of people benefit and partake of the benefits of progress achieved," the Judge said. He added, "India's equality jurisprudence aspires to secure a society free of all distinctions based on caste; at the same time, it permits as a necessary means to that end, caste-based remedial programs - but only when those programs are carefully designed, limited, and taper over time. The Indian perspective is that affirmative action is nothing but the rationale of a just and fair social order. xxx Reservations have acted as a form of social engineering to address centuries of oppression and discrimination, extreme inequities in the distribution of educational opportunity, and the formation of a huge class of Indian citizens who are not equipped to compete without this assistance." Persistent caste-based discrimination The Judge highlighted that despite enactment of anti-discrimination provisions like Article 15, 17 of the Constitution, stigmatization, exclusion and rejection continues to persist. He spoke about different forms of discrimination still underlying in India's behavioural patterns, and hinted that the same is often conveniently overlooked. Talking about the treatment meted out to the Dalit community, Justice Bhat said, "In rural India, despite the breakdown of the traditional subsistence economy, caste continues to exert its strong presence in many different dimensions. Untouchability is not only present all-over rural India, but it has survived by adapting to new socioeconomic realities and taking on new and insidious forms… These include the well-known forms, such as preventing Dalits from entering temples, but also a mind-boggling variety of other practices such as Dalits not being allowed to enter the kitchen, even when they are employed as domestic workers, not being allowed to buy or rent houses in non-Dalit residential areas, or public goods such as street lights or municipal taps not being allocated to parts of the village where Dalits live." He further disclosed that violence against Dalits over the period 2001-2009 increased when expenditure gaps between Dalits and upper castes decreased. "This could be due to upper castes feeling threatened, or a reaction to a perceived unsettling of an entrenched social hierarchy, where Dalits are expected to remain at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder," he said. Talking about caste discrimination in urban spaces, the Judge said, "An impactful illustration of this, is an empirical study conducted by Thorat and Attewell. The researchers sent out exactly identical resumes to private companies, both domestic and MNCs, in response to newspaper advertisements in New Delhi. The only difference in the resumes were the easily identifiable names of applicants: Hindu upper caste, Hindu Dalit and Muslims. The study revealed significant differences in callbacks between Hindu upper castes and the other two categories" xxx In public administration, it has been found that there is a shortfall in the recruitment of SCs and STs to the elite services (the Indian Administrative Service), and smaller percentages rise to the highest levels of the administration. Their concentration in the Central Government is at the lower echelons of the bureaucracy. xxx At the higher levels or promotion stages, formal and ...

Reservations Have Acted As a Form of Social Engineering to Address Centuries of Oppression and Discrimination: Justice Ravindra Bhat

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"Reservations have acted as a form of social engineering to address centuries of oppression, extreme inequities in the distribution of educational opportunity"

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