Competing interests, social conflict and the politics of caste reservations in India

Abstract

Operating in a highly stratified society the Indian state has been attempting to strike a balance between its commitment to an overarching conception of equality and the imperatives of compensatory discrimination, popularly known as reservations, in favour of historically depressed and socially backward sections of society. While electoral calculations and considerations of political power have become important for the ruling elites, social conflicts are getting exacerbated among groups of beneficiaries, potential claimants and those who perceive themselves to be the losers in the process. It is argued that a new national consensus has to be worked out in a democratic way to provide a rational basis for future reservation policy.