http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-4741810258336684534&q=shourie
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/events/16Oct2006_Shourie.htm
Some may have noted the rather long exchange I had with Tambi Dude on quota-based affirmative action on this forum.
I must note that the owner of this platform, Nizhal Yodha has endorsed an NFL-type reservation scheme. I am not sure how it will be applied - I suspect neither is he :-) ; let me say however that I, Ghost Writer, am opposed to the policy being adopted and the fantastically twisted rationalisations used to justify it.
The links to the above two talks will hopefully help, as always with Shourie the research is exhaustive and reasoning is razor-sharp
An interesting point is that a lot of folks who like quota based AA are opposed to the present scheme ; they think 'quotas are good but caste-politics is bad'; Shourie, with considerable skill inverts that paradigm. He shows that caste-politics is what has actually led to quota demands in the first place.
As with everything in life - acute caste-consciousness has not been all bad as it has meant that the so-called backward castes have in asserting their caste-identity, doubly asserted their Hinduness.
Long term - I think that caste-based political mobilization is a movement that will eventually come to a head. It is, like the radicalisation of Shiv Sena in the 70's or the Sikh-separatism of the 1980's - this also is one of India's 'million mutinies'. The only question is the amount of damage that this will inflict on Hindu society in further perverting the institution of caste.
1 comment:
i personally think caste is a good thing. it is one of the things that enabled hinduism to survive the mohammedan attacks, when its fellow civilizations like the egyptian and the persian were trounced by the barbarians.
for, caste gives hinduism the character of a distributed system, where there is no center. we all know how much more robust distributed systems are.
the other thing that nobody seems to realize is that people of every caste are happy to be of that caste; it is not that OBCs are dying to become brahmins, for instance. it's just that the whole mythology about caste has become a convenient collective-bargaining mechanism to extract more and more from the nation.
my belief is that the existing levels of reservation can be retained and slowly reduced over time: people are used to it even though they complain. i object to its being increased. the NFL's example of a level playing field is salutary.
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