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Affirmative Action In India

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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN INDIAN CONTEXT

Article 46 of the 1950 Constitution states “The State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.”
India’s affirmative action (AA) program is primarily caste-based, although there are similar norms for women in the electoral sphere. AA in India is debatable for three reasons
• There is considerable argument over the assessment of caste disparities, the reason behind the existence of AA.
• There is a larger debate about whether caste is the valid indicator of backwardness or should it be defined …show more content…
The present economic and social systems contain patterns of caste-based disparities in all spheres of life such as education, occupation, income and health indicators. The continued presence of social and economic discrimination aggravates these differences. Founders of modern India, who gave the policy of affirmative action, had two approaches to social justice. One was the principle of “equality in law” whereby the State should not deny any person equality before the law. The second was the principle of “equality in fact” which gives the State an affirmative duty to remedy existing inequalities. Opponents of affirmative action see a contradiction in the two whereas supporters of affirmative action argue that the two constitutional doctrines add on to each other rather than contradict each other. True equality can be achieved only if the state maintains an integrated society but adopts unequal beneficiary measures to help those previously …show more content…
From the point of view of implementation of AA, however, we need to focus on a few key statistics, while recognizing that the problem of equitable access and representation across caste groups in the sphere of education is far too large and complex to be captured through these few numbers. The major instances across which we see clear differences in enrolment rates are rural-urban: in all caste groups, urban participation rates are consistently higher than rural and gaps have widened over time gender: in all the caste groups, men have greater representation in higher education than women and by age groups: across all caste groups, access at the undergraduate level is significantly higher than at the post-graduate

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