The Urbanisation of Caste

While talking about workplace discrimination in India with one of my cousins during a recent trip to Orissa, he happened to remark that caste discrimination doesn’t exist in urban India. I agreed with him then, as I too believed that systematic and institutionalized caste discrimination is a rural phenomenon. This is not an uncommon opinion; the rhetoric of “caste doesn’t exist in cities” has been vociferously echoed by elites in urban corridors for a decade. And  there is truth in it. While conducting surveys on behalf of the Institute for Human Development (IHD) in order to study correlations between urban violence and poverty, I learned that the vast majority of  urban communities – rich or poor- did not report caste issues as being a major source of conflict.

But while urbanisation may have eroded to a certain extent the traditional distinctions associated with Hindu jatis, it seems to have insidiously transformed caste, stripping it of its name, but letting it stratify urban society subtly  but substantially. When we think of the word ‘caste’, we immediately think of  either varnas or jatis, the latter of which is the basis for discrimination and affirmative action. But caste has a broader meaning in the English language. Wikipedia defines caste as –

“a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of lifestyle which often includes an occupation, ritual status in a hierarchy  and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution.”

The urban poor form a caste-like strata vis-a-vis the middle classes. While endogamy is still practised in the context of the Hindu jatis, the hereditary transmission of  lifestyle and occupation is a consequence of the structural shackles which come free with their poverty. Unable to access good schools- the state of public schools being dismal- the poor are barred from any upward social mobility. Their children are often condemned to occupying the same jobs , with the same wages adjusted for inflation. But the most important aspect of caste – one that separates it from simply class as a form of stratification- is the notion of “purity” and “pollution”. While these fundamental tenets of casteism are not explicitly invoked in modern urban Indian society, they are nevertheless deeply entrenched in the public subconscious.

This is evident in our daily lives and yet evades conscious reflection. When maids work at our houses, they eat in the kitchen rather than at our table. More often that not, they have separate utensils from which they are allowed to eat. Poor carpenters who work in our houses are often given water in glasses separate from the ones we use ourselves. Some time back, my apartment society even passed a rule stating that there would be a separate lift to ferry dogs and maids! This rule was later revoked, but the fact of the matter was that the society “legislators” voted with for a apartheid era relic without noticing the overt parallels to their own colonial subjugation-

Even the most “progressive” of urban households are blissfully unaware of the fact there is something wrong in this. When questioned, they reply with a verbal shrug: “This is nothing to do with caste or class or anything, it’s just that these people are much more likely to be dirty…”. Well, discrimination against castes which traditionally performed menial labour (especially labour related to the cleaning of human waste) also evolved due to a perception of “dirtiness” that was associated with such unappealing – but indispensable-tasks. Yet, by distancing ourselves from the nominal construction of caste discrimination, we have been seemingly absolved of all blame. Thus we feel justified to vent all that faux-outrage at the abstract and distant caste discrimination which plagues the hinterlands, while ignoring the prejudice in our own homes. Perhaps we need to engage in a somber reflection on our own lives and lifestyle to take a step forward in promoting real change.

 

http://www.firstpost.com/india/scs-orders-on-afspa-prove-that-it-is-a-draconian-provision-not-an-enabling-one-2888652.html

The apex court did not go to the extent of declaring AFSPA as unconstitutional but suggested stern measures to prevent its abuses.

Source: http://www.firstpost.com/india/scs-orders-on-afspa-prove-that-it-is-a-draconian-provision-not-an-enabling-one-2888652.html

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/two-years-after-ls-polls-is-narendra-modi-going-the-rajiv-gandhi-way-2881134.html

That leaves us with the question: Is Narendra Modi is going the Rajiv Gandhi way?

Source: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/two-years-after-ls-polls-is-narendra-modi-going-the-rajiv-gandhi-way-2881134.html

http://www.firstpost.com/india/progressive-muslims-have-done-better-than-hindu-counterparts-in-contributing-to-secularism-2873846.html

The conclusion is obvious: that progressive Muslims have better credentials in their contribution to the secular cause compared to their Hindu counterparts.

Source: http://www.firstpost.com/india/progressive-muslims-have-done-better-than-hindu-counterparts-in-contributing-to-secularism-2873846.html

In Defence of Nehruvian Socialism

The mixed economy of pre-1991 India has been much maligned in the past decade – and not without reason. Colloquially labelled as the ‘License Raj’, the regime has been tainted by the twin evils of corruption and inefficiency, coupled with an output growth rate so low that it attracted a curious moniker: “the Hindu rate of growth”. In 21st century India, this appears to many to be an ironic misnomer, given that the planned economy was formulated and implemented by the secular Congress, whereas Hindu nationalist BJP has always been a stronger advocate for free markets. But the tirade against the perceived evils of this Nehruvian brand of socialism is not a partisan one. Indeed, since the liberalisation of the economy occurred under the Narasimha Rao government, even the Congress has distanced itself from the ideology it had so fervently advocated right up until and during Rajiv Gandhi’s leadership.

So to come to the defence of such an unequivocally derided form of governance at this time would seem anachronistic at best, and downright blasphemous at worst. At the outset I would like to clarify that my intent is not to advocate for a reactionary return to the socialist model; such a move would not only be a draconian violation of economic freedoms that Indians have come to enjoy, but would also cause an immediate collapse of the entire Indian economy. Instead, I wish to highlight the merits of such a model in the context of a newly independent India and reintroduce a  perspective which has been obliterated from public discourse by the mainstream economic narrative.

Proponents of unencumbered free markets often omit the key detail that free markets only function efficiently and equitably if there exist strong political institutions to support them. Take, for instance, the case of Bolivian government which was forced to privatise the water supply in several cities in the 1980s. Coming out of a long era of military dictatorships-a situation ripe for political instability-Bolivia borrowed heavily from the World Bank in order to prevent a complete economic collapse. The World Bank agreed to lend to the Bolivian government subject to the condition that the state would implement certain structural reforms- including the privatisation of water, railways, telecommunications and other industries. Agreeing to these stipulations, the Bolivian government rapidly privatised utilities in many cities including Cochabamba. In 1999, massive protests erupted throughout the city as water prices soared and supply dropped sharply. Access to piped water in Cochabamba dropped from 70% to 40%. Amid escalating and increasingly violent protests, the government finally decided to roll back the privatisation of water.

The costs of early privatisation could have been similar in a newly independent India. Emerging from a colonial economy in which indigenous industries were systematically dismantled to bolster the importation of British goods, the fledgling India simply lacked the industrial and human capital to  sustain a well functioning market economy. Nehru’s vision incorporated a strong state which would  help develop a foundation on which a market economy could later flourish.Taking the advice of preeminent statistician P.C. Mahalanobis, Nehru focused on the development of heavy industries which would produce capital goods, a move intended to create a base of capital stock on which the production of consumer goods could steadily take place. He also directed investment towards higher education, setting up institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) and the National Institute of Design (NID), in a bid to ensure that the human capital levels in India would be high enough to prevent the market from being dominated by just a handful of players. He set up various banks to absorb the savings of the Indian people which could then be used expedite the process of capital accumulation. Nehru categorically rejected the violent tenets of doctrinaire socialism, choosing instead to strengthen democratic institutions. As emerging markets specialist Ruchir Sharma recently pointed out in an interview, democracies tend to do better economically than dictatorships in the long run, partly because a regime change does not necessitate a violent insurrection which greatly destabilises the economy.

Nehru’s unflinching commitment to democracy, his unwavering belief in secularism and his emphasis on scientific research and development – a point on which he differed significantly from Mohandas Gandhi- were all pivotal in establishing institutions which would later allow the structural reforms of the 1990s to propel the Indian economy forward. That Nehru’s decisions (or lack thereof) during the infancy of our republic were crucial to the state of the nation today cannot be exemplified better than  by his neglect of agriculture, the repercussions of which are rather conspicuous with more than 60 percent of the working population generating just about 17 percent of national income. Yet avowed neoliberals – relentlessly pursuing their mission to vilify the state- have dismissed the pre-liberalisation era as a complete failure, more or less inconsequential (if not detrimental) to the growth story we see today. Nehru’s policies definitely did have its drawbacks. Unaccountable public sector units accumulated massive debts, even as the civil service grew increasingly bloated and overstaffed. Agriculture wasted away while bureaucrats ruled the roost. The legacy of this era  still forms the cornerstone of the bureaucratic culture today. Yet this only further affirms the influence that the policies of the Nehruvian period had on the economy, polity and society of India today. It is time we recognise both the good and the bad it has done for us.

http://www.firstpost.com/business/7th-pay-commission-why-govt-is-shying-away-from-linking-salary-to-performance-2867876.html?utm_source=FP_CAT_LATEST_NEWS

The 7th pay commission has also come up with certain concrete suggestions about performance-related-pay-schemes – to shift from ‘paying the position’ to ‘paying the person’. A civil servant would get a higher variable pay for outstanding performance and a negative variable pay for insipid performance. But clearly, that has not found favour with the current government. What are its implications?

Source: http://www.firstpost.com/business/7th-pay-commission-why-govt-is-shying-away-from-linking-salary-to-performance-2867876.html?utm_source=FP_CAT_LATEST_NEWS