[Reader-list] Pratap Bhanu Mehta And The Compulsive Need to Oppose Reservations

[anoop kumar]

  The compulsive need to oppose
reservations<http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5623:the-compulsive-need-to-oppose-reservations&catid=119:feature&Itemid=132>

  *Kuffir*

Pratap Bhanu Mehta wants to break down the 'tyranny of compulsory
identities'. Shouldn't reservations be the last place to begin then?

Reservations happen when the state finally decides to pay attention to what
caste has done to a lower caste individual. A whole life precedes it: a
life spent facing and struggling against, in varying degrees, many
structural efforts to incapacitate that individual. Shouldn't we begin at
the beginning, then? From the 'scandalous failure to prepare the
preconditions for advancement'?

What are these preconditions? Mehta mentions: 'Access to primary education
to access to public goods, financial support, and a robustly growing
economy that provides opportunities for mobility'.

Ignoring the superciliousness in Mehta's tone which seems to indicate the
implicit belief that Dalits or other backward sections of Indian society
have never seriously considered or agitated for the resolution of those
issues, you will probably admit: how can there be any disagreement on all
those issues? But how do we get *there* from *here*? It's quite clear it is
very difficult to get there from here, because we haven't got there in the
last 65 years. But the ruling classes, as represented by people like Mehta,
should understand that a major reason why we are still stuck *here*, still
discussing reservations, the symptoms, is probably because they have never
paid as much serious attention to, or expended as much passion in,
discussing causes as they have deprecating reservations. *We're still here,
because the ruling classes most probably like it here*. .......


Read the complete article at Round Table
India<http://roundtableindia.co.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5623%3Athe-compulsive-need-to-oppose-reservations&catid=119%3Afeature&Itemid=132>


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