Legal Commentary

Social Downgrading: The Logic Of Affirmative Action

A blockade by thousands of protesters from India?s Gujjar tribe brought Delhi to a standstill today, paralysing trains by squatting on tracks and setting up a ring of burning tyres around the perimeter of the city.

The Gujjars, traditionally nomadic farmers, are demanding to be socially downgraded in order to gain government jobs and university places....

Community leaders have been demanding that the government give the community special status for several years. The Gujjars, already considered a disadvantaged group, want to be reclassified further down the Hindu hierarchy.

The Indian government runs the world?s largest affirmative action programme, reserving half of government jobs and university places to those socially disadvantaged by centuries of caste oppression. Gujjars, who the British Raj classified as part of the ?criminial castes? are already considered ?backward?. But they themselves say they are not backward enough.

Full post as published by Discriminations on May 29, 2008 (boomark / email).