Commerce and Indian Society-I

COMPILATION OF ESSENTIAL READINGS IN
COMMERCE AND
INDIAN SOCIETY—I
FOR 3RD SEMESTER STUDENTS
DEPARTMENT OF PROFESSIONAL STUDIES
CHRIST (DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY)
NAME: _______________________________________
REG. NO.:_______________ CLASS: ______________
This document is a compilation of edited excerpts from various publicly available

essays/ materials assembled from online sources (with citations) for the limited
purpose of academic engagement/ classroom discussions. It is not intended to be
reproduced or circulated for commercial exploitation. Students are recommended to
supplement these readings with other relevant materials on the topics covered.
SYLLABUS
Course description: First of the two-part inter-disciplinary course in economics, sociology, and
the Indian constitution, grounded in intersecting debates of contemporary significance. The
course is designed to broaden learners’ awareness and critical engagement with the political
economy of India as a function of its sociological and ideological underpinnings.
Learning Outcome: On completion of the course, learners will be able to:

1. Comprehend and employ basic critical vocabulary to engage with economic issues from a
socio-political perspective;
2. Recognise the structural and inter-sectional nature of socio-economic disparities in India
vis-à-vis the ideals of the Indian constitution;
3. Identify forms of gender discrimination and harassment at the workplace, along with their
social and legal implications;
4. Discuss caste as the organising principle of Indian society and the rationale for caste-based
reservations with a historical outlook;
5. Discern the ecological cost of prevalent consumption patterns, and discuss possible
measures of redressal; and
6. Critique the predominant discourse of economic development and market fundamentalism
with a brief introduction to alternate economic models and counter-narratives.
Level of Knowledge: Conceptual knowledge
UNIT TOPICS FOR MID-SEMESTER EXAMINATION PAGES

Unit 1 Introduction to Critical Terminology 1 – 14
(i) Social identity, otherness, discourse, human agency
(ii) Karl Marx: Base and superstructure, surplus value, alienation, false
consciousness
(iii) Louis Althusser: Ideology, repressive/ ideological state apparatuses
(iv) Antonio Gramsci: Cultural hegemony, subaltern
(v) Guy Debord: Society of the Spectacle (in brief)
Unit 2 Structural Socio-Economic Disparities in India 15 – 32

(i) Imagining India: Preamble to the Constitution; fundamental rights;
constitutional democracy, federalism, and majoritarianism
(ii) Social stratification and social mobility: endogamy, sanskritisation
and westernisation, caste and class in Indian society
(iii) Crisis of wealth and income inequality in India
(iv) Structural inequality and intersectionality: various systemic and
overlapping forms of socio-economic inequality, psychological costs
of marginalisation
Unit 3 Commerce and Gender 33 – 53
(i) Gendered workplaces: participation of women and sexual minorities
(ii) Forms of discrimination: pink-collar jobs, pay gap, sticky floor/ glass
ceiling/ glass escalator, pregnancy discrimination, boys’ club culture
(iii) Benevolent sexism and unpaid work: domestic labour, child care,
etc.
(iv) Maternity and menstrual leave: legal position and key debates
(v) Sexual harassment at the workplace: nature of consent, key
provisions of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace
(Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, #MeToo movement
(vi) Visual text: Philadelphia (1993); homophobia, relevant provisions of
the HIV and AIDS (Prevention and Control) Act
UNIT TOPICS AFTER MID-SEMESTER EXAMINATION

Unit 4 Commerce and Caste 54 – 73
(i) Untouchability, physical violence, and Prevention of Atrocities Act
(ii) Other forms of exclusion: access to occupations/ jobs, education,
justice, public spaces/ utilities, worship, media, culture, sport
(iii) Historical perspectives on caste: Ambedkar vs. Gandhi
(iv) Caste-based reservations: need for affirmative action, ‘meritocracy’
vs. privilege, social backwardness vs. economic backwardness,
Mandal commission, ‘creamy layer’, private sector participation
(v) Recent debates and movements based on caste identity
Unit 5 Commerce and Ecology 74 – 101

(i) Consumerism/ conspicuous consumption and the role of advertising
(ii) Environmental crises in India: air/ water/ soil contamination, urban
planning and encroachment, depletion of green cover/ biodiversity
(iii) Visual text: Erin Brockovich (2000)
(iv) Case studies: Coca Cola in Palakkad, Chennai floods, Sterlite
Copper in Thoothukudi, endosulfan poisoning, killing of tigress
Avni, illegal mining
(v) Anthropocentrism and cruelty: animal testing, dairy industry
(vi) Eco-industrial development and sustainability: waste disposal; green
tax, green banking, carbon credits, green bonds; urban minimalism
Unit 6 Counter-Narratives: Exploring Alternate Economic Models 102 – 116

(i) Beyond GDP and stock markets: indices of social development,
Gross National Happiness Index
(ii) Criticisms of free market economics/ market fundamentalism
(iii) Forms of state interventionism: socialism and communism in India
(iv) Social entrepreneurship and co-operative societies in India
(v) Globalisation vs. internationalism: excerpts from
K. Satchidanandan’s Future of Our Past: Towards a Critique of
Globalisation and Culture Industry
(vi) Visual text: Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009)
UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL TERMINOLOGY
Social Identity Theory

By: Saul McLeod (2008) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html
Henri Tajfel’s greatest contribution to psychology was social identity theory. Social identity is
a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s).
Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team, etc.) which
people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense
of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.
In order to increase our self-image, we enhance the status of the group to which we belong.
For example, England is the best country in the world! We can also increase our self-image
by discriminating and holding prejudiced views against the out-group (the group we don’t
belong to). For example, the Americans, French etc. are a bunch of losers!
Therefore, we divided the world into “them” and “us” through a process of social
categorisation (i.e. we put people into social groups).
This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them). Social identity theory states that the
in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image.
The central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will
seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image.
Prejudiced views between cultures may result in racism; in its extreme forms, racism may
result in genocide, such as occurred in Germany with the Jews, in Rwanda between the Hutus
and Tutsis and, more recently, in the former Yugoslavia between the Bosnians and Serbs.
Henri Tajfel proposed that stereotyping (i.e. putting people into groups and categories) is
based on a normal cognitive process: the tendency to group things together. In doing so we
tend to exaggerate:
1. the differences between groups
2. the similarities of things in the same group.
We categorise people in the same way. We see the group to which we belong (the in-group) as
being different from the others (the out-group), and members of the same group as being
more similar than they are. Social categorisation is one explanation for prejudiced attitudes
(i.e. “them” and “us” mentality) which leads to in-groups and out-groups.
Tajfel and Turner (1979) proposed that there are three mental processes involved in
evaluating others as “us” or “them” (i.e. “in-group” and “out-group”). These take place in a
particular order.
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The first is categorisation. We categorise objects in order to understand them and identify
them. In a very similar way, we categorise people (including ourselves) in order to understand
the social environment. We use social categories like black, white, Australian, Christian,
Muslim, student, and bus driver because they are useful. If we can assign people to a category
then that tells us things about those people, and as with the bus driver example, we couldn’t
function in a normal manner without using these categories, i.e. in the context of the bus.
Similarly, we find out things about ourselves by knowing what categories we belong to. We
define appropriate behaviour by reference to the norms of groups we belong to, but you can
only do this if you can tell who belongs to your group. An individual can belong to many
different groups.
In the second stage, social identification, we adopt the identity of the group we have
categorised ourselves as belonging to. If for example you have categorised yourself as a
student, the chances are you will adopt the identity of a student and begin to act in the ways
you believe students act (and conform to the norms of the group). There will be an emotional
significance to your identification with a group, and your self-esteem will become bound up
with group membership.
The final stage is social comparison. Once we have categorised ourselves as part of a group
and have identified with that group, we then tend to compare that group with other groups. If
our self-esteem is to be maintained our group needs to compare favourably with other groups.
This is critical to understanding prejudice, because once two groups identify themselves as
rivals, they are forced to compete in order for the members to maintain their self-esteem.
Competition and hostility between groups is thus not only a matter of competing for
resources like jobs but also the result of competing identities.
Just to reiterate, in social identity theory, group membership is not something foreign or
artificial which is attached onto the person; it is a real, true, and vital part of the person.
Otherness
By: Zuleyka Zevallos (2011) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://othersociologist.com/otherness-resources
The idea of “otherness” is central to sociological analyses of how majority and minority
identities are constructed. This is because the representation of different groups within any
given society is controlled by groups that have greater political power. In order to understand
the notion of the Other, sociologists first seek to put a critical spotlight on the ways in which
social identities are constructed. Identities are often thought as being natural or innate—
something that we are born with—but sociologists highlight that this taken-for-granted view
is not true.
Rather than talking about the individual characteristics or personalities of different

individuals, which is generally the focus for psychology, sociologists focus on social
identities. Social identities reflect the way individuals and groups internalise established
social categories within their societies, such as their cultural (or ethnic) identities, gender
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identities, class identities, and so on. These social categories shape our ideas about who we
think we are, how we want to be seen by others, and the groups to which we belong.
Sociologists set out to study how societies manage collective ideas about who gets to belong
to “our group” and which types of people are seen as different—the outsiders of society.
Zygmunt Bauman writes that the notion of otherness is central to the way in which societies
establish identity categories. He argues that identities are set up as dichotomies: “Woman is
the other of man, animal is the other of human, stranger is the other of native, abnormality the
other of norm, deviation the other of law-abiding, illness the other of health, insanity the
other of reason, lay public the other of the expert, foreigner the other of State subject, enemy
the other of friend”.
The concept of the Other highlights how many societies create a sense of belonging, identity,
and social status by constructing social categories as binary opposites. This is clear in the
social construction of gender in western societies, or how socialisation shapes our ideas about
what it means to be a “man” or a “woman”. There is an inherently unequal relationship
between these two categories. Note that these two identities are set up as opposites, without
acknowledging alternative gender expressions. In the early 1950s, Simone de Beauvoir
argued that, “Otherness is a fundamental category of human thought. Thus it is that no group
ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself”.
Dichotomies of otherness are set up as being natural and so often times in everyday life they
are taken for granted and presumed to be natural. But social identities are not natural—they
represent an established social order—a hierarchy where certain groups are established as
being superior to other groups. Individuals have the choice (or agency) to create their
identities according to their own beliefs about the world. Yet the negotiation of identity
equally depends upon the negotiation of power relationships. As Andrew Okolie puts it:
“Social identities are relational; groups typically define themselves in relation to others. This
is because identity has little meaning without the ‘other’. So, by defining itself, a group
defines others. Identity is rarely claimed or assigned for its own sake. These definitions of
self and others have purposes and consequences. They are tied to rewards and punishment,
which may be material or symbolic. There is usually an expectation of gain or loss as a
consequence of identity claims. This is why identities are contested. Power is implicated here,
and because groups do not have equal powers to define both self and the other, the
consequences reflect these power differentials. Often notions of superiority and inferiority are
embedded in particular identities.”
Social institutions such as the law, the media, education, religion and so on hold the balance
of power through their representation of what is accepted as “normal” and what is considered
Other. British sociologist Stuart Hall argues that visual representations of otherness hold
special cultural authority. In western countries with a colonial history, like the UK, Australia
and the USA, whether difference is portrayed positively or negatively is judged against the
dominant group—namely white, middle-to-upper class, heterosexual Christians, with cis-men
being the default to which Others are judged against.
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Discourse
By: Nicki Lisa Cole (2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070
Discourse refers to how we think and communicate about people, things, the social
organisation of society, and the relationships among and between all three. Discourse
typically emerges out of social institutions like media and politics (among others), and by
virtue of giving structure and order to language and thought, it structures and orders our lives,
relationships with others, and society. It thus shapes what we are able to think and know any
point in time. In this sense, sociologists frame discourse as a productive force because it
shapes our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, identities, interactions with others, and our
behaviour. In doing so, it produces much of what occurs within us and within society.
Sociologists see discourse as embedded in and emerging out of relations of power, because
those in control of institutions—like media, politics, law, medicine, and education—control
its formation. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work
together to create hierarchies. Some discourses come to dominate the mainstream (dominant
discourses), and are considered truthful, normal, and right, while others are marginalised and
stigmatised, and considered wrong, extreme, and even dangerous.
Take, for example, the relationship between mainstream media (an institution) and the
anti-immigrant discourse that pervades U.S. society. In discussions of immigration reform,
the most frequently spoken word was “illegal”, followed by “immigrants”, “country”,
“border”, “illegals”, and “citizens”.
Taken together, these words are part of a discourse that reflects a nationalist ideology
(borders, citizens) that frames the U.S. as under attack by a foreign (immigrants) criminal
threat (illegal, illegals). Within this anti-immigrant discourse, “illegals” and “immigrants” are
juxtaposed against “citizens”, each working to define the other through their opposition.
These words reflect and reproduce very particular values, ideas, and beliefs about immigrants
and U.S. citizens—ideas about rights, resources, and belonging.
The power of discourse lies in its ability to provide legitimacy for certain kinds of knowledge
while undermining others, and in its ability to create subject positions, and, to turn people
into objects that that can be controlled. In this case, the dominant discourse on immigration
that comes out of institutions like law enforcement and the legal system is given legitimacy
and superiority by their roots in the State. Mainstream media typically adopts the dominant
State-sanctioned discourse and showcases it by giving airtime and print space to authority
figures from those institutions.
The dominant discourse on immigration, which is anti-immigrant in nature, and endowed

with authority and legitimacy, create subject positions like “citizen”—people with rights in
need of protection—and objects like “illegals”—things that pose a threat to citizens. In
contrast, the immigrants’ rights discourse that emerges out of institutions like education,
politics, and from activist groups, offers the subject category, “undocumented immigrant”, in
place of the object “illegal”, and is often cast as uninformed and irresponsible by the
dominant discourse.
Concepts like “looting” and “rioting” have been used in mainstream media coverage of
uprisings. When we hear words like this, concepts charged full of meaning, we deduce things
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about the people involved—that they are lawless, crazed, dangerous, and violent. They are
criminal objects in need of control.
A discourse of criminality, when used to discuss protestors, or those struggling to survive the
aftermath of a disaster, structures beliefs about right and wrong, and in doing so, sanctions
certain kinds of behaviour. When “criminals” are “looting”, shooting them on site is framed
as justified. In contrast, when a concept like “uprising” is used, or “survival”, we deduce very
different things about those involved and are more likely to see them as human subjects,
rather than dangerous objects.
Because discourse has so much meaning and deeply powerful implications in society, it is
often the site of conflict and struggle. When people wish to make social change, how we talk
about people and their place in society cannot be left out of the process.
Human Agency
Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/agency-definition-3026036
Agency refers to the thoughts and actions taken by people that express their individual power.
The core challenge at the centre of the field of sociology is understanding the relationship
between structure and agency. Structure refers to the complex and interconnected set of social
forces, relationships, institutions, and elements of social structure that work together to shape
the thought, behaviour, experiences, choices, and overall life courses of people. In contrast,
agency is the power people have to think for themselves and act in ways that shape their
experiences and life trajectories. Agency can take individual and collective forms.
While social structure shapes individuals, individuals (and groups) also shape social
structure. After all, society is a social creation—the creation and maintenance of social order
require the co-operation of individuals connected through social relationships. So, while the
lives of individuals are shaped by the existing social structure, they nonetheless have the
ability—the agency—to make decisions and express them in behaviour.
Individual and collective agency may serve to reaffirm social order by reproducing norms and
existing social relationships, or it may serve to challenge and remake social order by going
against the status quo to create new norms and relationships. Agency might take the form of
demanding respect from teachers and administrators, doing well in school, or even
disrespecting teachers, cutting classes, and dropping out. While the latter instances might
seem like individual failings, in the context of oppressive social environments, resisting and
rejecting authority figures that steward oppressive institutions have been documented as an
important form of self-preservation, and thus, as agency. Simultaneously, agency in this
context may also take the form of staying in school and working to excel, despite the social
structural forces that work to impede such success.
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Marxism and Ideology

By: Mary Klages (Edited excerpts)
Source: http://www.Colorado.EDU/English/ENGL2012Klages/1997marxism.html
Marxism is a set of theories, or a system of thought and analysis, developed by Karl Marx in
the 19th century in response to the western industrial revolution and the rise of industrial
capitalism as the predominant economic mode. Like feminist theory, Marxist theory is
directed at social change; Marxists want to analyse social relations in order to change them,
in order to alter what they see are the gross injustices and inequalities created by capitalist
economic relations.
In addition to being a kind of philosophy, Marxism is also a way to understand history. In this
sense, Marxism belongs to a kind of historicism called historical materialism, which shows
that history, or social change, occurs via human forces, and not because of God, destiny, or
some unknown non-human force that shapes events. Historical materialism is “materialist”
because it is interested in how humans have created material culture, i.e. tools, objects, the
material things that we use to live our lives every day, and in how this material culture has
formed the basis for historical change.
The historical materialist view of history thus holds that the moving forces of social
organisations—the forces that make change, that make “history”—are people and their tools,
and the work that people do with these tools; the tools are often referred to as “instruments of
production” or as “forces of production”. Historical materialism also says that human labour
(people and how they use their tools) always has a social character. People live in social
groups, not in isolation, and they always organise their social groups in some way
(e.g. having some form of “government”). What every social group organises, according to
the historical materialist perspective, is how people work with their tools, or, in other words,
how human labour, and forces of production, operate. The organisations that shape how
people use their tools (the forces of production) are called the “relations of production”. The
relations of production (how people relate to each other, and to their society as a whole,
through their productive activity) and the forces of production (the tools, and methods for
using tools, and the workers available to use these tools) together form what historical
materialism calls a mode of production.
As a historian, Marx identifies five basic historical developments or changes in the mode of
production: the primitive community, the slave state, the feudal state, capitalism, and
socialism. We won’t go into detail about this history, but let’s look at a couple of examples. In
a slave state, some people are owned and some are the owners; the owned people are the ones
that labour, and the owners reap the benefit of that labour. Within the slave “mode of
production”, the organisation of labour and productivity governs virtually all facets of social
organisation, even those not directly related to labour, such as religion or even aesthetics. The
southern United States in the first half of the 19th century stand as a good example of Marx’s
idea of a slave state: it’s easy to see how all aspects of southern culture, including religious
beliefs and art, upheld and justified the slave system that was at the heart of the southern
economy.
Marx sees capitalism as a mode of production emerging from feudalism (which is how labour
and life were organised during the medieval period in Europe). He focuses on capitalism as
an unequal mode of production, one which exploits workers, just as the slave state exploited
slaves. According to Marx, this inequality is a fundamental aspect of capitalism, and needs to
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be changed. Eventually, Marx says, the internal tensions and contradictions of capitalism will
destroy capitalism, and capitalism will evolve into socialism. Socialism, for Marx, is the end
result of all this economic evolution/ history: socialism would be a utopian mode of
production, and would then just remain forever (without evolving into something else). This
would pretty much be the end of history, or change, as we have known it.
This leads us to a third dimension of Marxism. Marxism is an economic theory or doctrine,

an analysis of how capitalism as an economic system operates. It’s based on an analysis of
how the forces and relations of production work. In a factory, for instance, a worker performs
labour on raw materials, and thus transforms those raw materials into an object; in the
process, the labourer adds something to the raw materials so that the object (raw material +
labour) is worth more than the original raw material. What the labourer adds is called
“surplus value” in Marxist theory. While the labourer is paid for the work he or she does,
that payment is figured in terms of “reproduction”, of what the labourer will need in order to
come back the next day (i.e. food, rest, shelter, clothes, etc.), and not in terms of what value
the labourer added to the raw material. The goal of capitalist production is to sell the object
made, with its surplus value, for more than the cost of the raw materials and the reproduction
of the labourer. This excess in value (in price) comes from the surplus value added by the
labourer, but it is “owned” by the capitalist; the factory owner gets the profit from selling the
object, and the labourer gets only the cost of his/ her “reproduction” in the wages s/he earns.
These relations of production, where the labourer does the work and the owner gets the profit
from the surplus value created by the labourer, create two social classes, according to Marx:
the proletariat, which consists of the workers who have to sell their labour power in order to
survive, and the owners of the means of production, or capitalists. There is also a third class
in the capitalist mode of production, a middle class, called the bourgeoisie, who do not sell
their labour power directly, but who provide services (for the labourers and the capitalists)—
merchants, doctors, teachers, etc.—and who identify themselves with the capitalists, and
uphold their interests, rather than with the proletariat.
For Marxists, history—or social change—thus occurs through the struggle between the two
classes, the proletariat and the capitalists. (The bourgeoisie mostly get counted with the
capitalists in terms of identification, even though the bourgeoisie don’t own the means of
production and don’t get the profits created by surplus value).
From these economic relations comes a crucially important concept in Marxist thought: the
idea of alienation. There are two aspects to the Marxist idea of alienation. The first is that
labour which produces surplus value is alienated labour. The labour put into an object
becomes part of the capitalist’s profit, and thus no longer belongs to the labourer. In addition
to alienating the labourer from his or her labour power, capitalism also forces the worker to
become alienated from him or herself. When a worker has to sell her/ his labour power, s/he
becomes a commodity, something to be sold in the marketplace like a thing; the worker who
is a commodity is thus not fully human, in the philosophical sense, since s/he cannot exercise
free will to determine her/ his actions. The worker who is forced to exist as a commodity in
the labour market is alienated from her/ his humanness; in selling one’s labour, that labour
becomes alienated, something separate from or other than the labourer, something divided
from the person that produces it.
The double alienation of the proletariat, and their exploitation by the capitalists, form the
basic contradictions of capitalism which produce the dialectic (the struggle between workers
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and owners, labour and capital) which produces social change, or history, and which will
eventually synthesise into socialism.
From Marx’s economic doctrines comes an analysis of how the capitalist system specifically
functions; from historical materialism comes a model of how social organisations are
structured, which is relevant to all cultures, whether capitalist or not. According to the
Marxist view of culture, the economic relations—forces and relations of production, or
modes of production—are the primary determining factor in all social relations: everything
that happens in a society is in some way related to, and determined by, the mode of
production, also called the economic base (or just “base”). This idea, that the economic
organisation of a social group is primary and determinant, is a fundamental premise of
Marxist thought.
The economic base (the relations and forces of production) in any society generates other
social formations, called the superstructure. The superstructure consists of all other kinds of
social activities or systems, including politics, religion, philosophy, morality, art, and science.
All of these aspects of a society are, in Marxist theory, determined by (i.e. shaped, formed, or
created by) the economic base. Thus a central question for a lot of Marxist theory is how does
the economic base determine superstructure? How, for instance, does the feudal mode of
production produce or determine the religious beliefs and practices current during the
medieval period?
Another way of asking this question is to look at the relations between economic base and a
particular aspect of superstructure, which Marxists name ideology. Ideologies are the ideas
that exist in a culture; there are several kinds of religious ideologies, for example, and
political ideologies, and aesthetic ideologies, which articulate what, and how, people can
think about religion, politics, and art, respectively. Ideology is how a society thinks about
itself, the forms of social consciousness that exist at any particular moment; ideologies supply
all the terms and assumptions and frameworks that individuals use to understand their culture,
and ideologies supply all the things that people believe in, and then act on.
For Marx, ideology, as part of the superstructure generated by an economic base, works
to justify that base; the ideologies present in a capitalist society will explain, justify, and
support the capitalist mode of production. The example of 19th-century US is useful: the
economic base of that society was slavery, and all productive labour and economic relations
were structured by the master/ slave relation; all superstructures, such as organised religion,
local and national politics, and art, worked to uphold slavery as a good economic system.
According to Frederich Engels (co-writer of the “Communist Manifesto”), ideology functions

as an illusion; ideologies give people ideas about how to understand themselves and their
lives, and these ideas disguise or mask what’s really going on. In Engels’ explanation,
ideologies signify the way people live out their lives in class society, giving people the terms
for the values, ideas, and images that tie them to their social functions, and thus prevent them
from a true understanding of the real forces and relations of production.
Ideology is thus an illusion which masks the real/ objective situation; an example of this
would be an ideology that tells you, as a worker, that the capitalists are really working in your
interest, which disguises or hides the “objective” reality that the capitalists’ interests are
opposed to the workers’ interests. (Another example might be a politician, whose rhetoric in
speeches—whose ideology—tries to persuade you that he’s concerned with your tax
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situation, and this ideology keeps you from seeing how he’s really only interested in
protecting corporate tax shelters). Anyway, Engels says that the illusions created by ideology
create false consciousness in people, who believe the ideological representations of how the
world works and thus misperceive, or don’t see at all, how the world really/ objectively
works (i.e. in terms of the mode of production and the class divisions that mode of production
creates). Workers, for Engels, are deluded by various kinds of ideology into thinking they’re
not exploited by the capitalist system, instead of seeing how they are.
Louis Althusser
By: Mary Klages (Edited excerpts)
Source: http://www.Colorado.EDU/English/ENGL2012Klages/2althusser.html
Louis Althusser, a French Marxist philosopher, is interested in why subjects are obedient,
why people follow the laws, and why there isn’t a revolt/ revolution against capitalism. His
view of ideology and ideologies comes out of his understanding of the relations between
State and subject (between government and citizens).
The State, for Althusser, is the kind of governmental formation that arises with capitalism; a
State is determined by the capitalist mode of production and formed to protect its interests. It
is historically true (whether you are a Marxist or not) that the idea of nations as discrete units
is coterminous with capitalism. It is also possible that democracy, as an ideology and/ or a
governmental form is also coterminous with capitalism, as democracy gives the “illusion”
that all people are equal and have equal power, but masks relations of economic exploitation.
Althusser mentions two major mechanisms for insuring that people within a State behave
according to the rules of that State, even when it’s not in their best interests (in regards to
their class positions) to do so. The first is what Althusser calls the RSA, or Repressive State
Apparatuses, that can enforce behaviour directly, such as the police, and the criminal justice
and prison system. Through these “apparatuses” the State has the power to force you
physically to behave. The second mechanism Althusser investigates is which he calls ISAs, or
Ideological State Apparatuses. These are institutions which generate ideologies which we as
individuals (and groups) then internalise, and act in accordance with. These ISAs include
schools, religions, the family, legal systems, politics, arts, sports, etc. These organisations
generate systems of ideas and values, which we as individuals believe (or don’t believe).
Althusser examines how we come to internalise, to believe, the ideologies that these ISAs
create and thus misrecognise or misrepresent ourselves as unalienated subjects in capitalism.
Althusser’s first premise or thesis is that “Ideology is a ‘representation’ of the Imaginary

Relationship of Individuals to their Real conditions of existence”. He begins his explanation
of this pronouncement by looking at why people need this imaginary relation to real
conditions of existence. Why not just understand the real?
The first answer to this question, Althusser says, comes from the 18th century, and the idea
that ideology comes from priests and despots. This is basically a conspiracy theory, which
says that a handful of powerful men fooled the populace into believing these (falsified)
representations/ ideas about the world. The second (and, from the Marxist perspective, the
correct) answer is that the material alienation of real conditions predisposes people to form
representations which distance (alienate) them from these real conditions. In other words, the
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material relations of capitalist production are themselves alienating, but people can’t quite
deal with the harsh reality of this, so they make up stories about how the relations of
production aren’t so bad; these stories, or representations, then alienate them further from the
real (alienating) conditions. The double distancing involved here, or the alienation of
alienation, works like an analgesic, a pill, to keep us from feeling pain of alienation; if we
didn’t have these stories, we’d know the alienation of the real relations of production, and
we’d probably revolt—or go nuts.
These ideas about representation and reality assume that what is reflected in the imaginary
representation of the world found in ideology is the “real world”, or real conditions of
existence. Althusser says that ideology doesn’t represent the real world per se, but human
beings’ relation to that real world, to their perceptions of the real conditions of existence. We
probably can’t know the real world directly; what we know are always representations of that
world, or representations of our relation to that world. Ideology then is the imaginary version,
the represented version, the stories we tell ourselves about our relation to the real world.
So the “real world” becomes, not something that is objectively out there, but something that
is the product of our relations to it, and of the ideological representations we make of it—the
stories we tell ourselves about what is real become what is real. That’s how ideology
operates. In more Marxist terms, what ideology does is present people with representations of
their relations to relations of production, rather than with representations of the relations of
production themselves.
Marxism originally formulated ideology as an illusionary representation of the relations of

people to real conditions. For example: my real condition, as a professor, is that of a “cultural
worker”, someone paid to perform intellectual labour in teaching. My salary is not nearly as
large as that of a doctor, lawyer, movie star, or athlete (not even in minor league baseball!).
What might be considered my “exploitation”, or my “real” economic conditions, are
“masked” with an ideology—that teaching and being a college professor is of high
moral/ social value, if not of high economic value, that the rewards of teaching are
immaterial, that I get social status and respect (instead of money) for being the repository of
knowledge, etc. That’s one notion of ideology: it keeps me happy, thinking that I am really an
important person, when the real conditions of my economic existence show how relatively
unimportant I am. I buy into that ideology (that being a professor is important), and am
therefore willing to tolerate my exploitation (and my alienation from the products of my own
mental labour, i.e. the surplus intellectual value I create in you) by believing that I get “other”
rewards besides money for doing this job.
Althusser says, by contrast, that my ideology is an illusion, but it’s an illusion, or an

imaginary understanding, not of the relations of production themselves, but of my relation to
them. Thus I think I’m cool because I’m not working in a factory, and I think I’m smarter
than factory workers because I assume that factory workers aren’t very bright, or they
wouldn’t be working in factories. The relations of production here are in assuming that
factory workers lack education (that relations of production have structured a relationship
between job and education); my relation to that relation of production is to feel superior to it.
That’s what Althusser says is ideology.
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Antonio Gramsci
Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-hegemony-3026121
The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony,
which refers to domination or rule maintained through ideological or cultural means. It is
usually achieved though social institutions, which allow those in power to strongly influence
the values, norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and behaviour of the rest of society.
Cultural hegemony functions by framing the worldview of the ruling class, and the social and
economic structures that embody it, as just, legitimate, and designed for the benefit of all,
even though these structures may only benefit the ruling class. This kind of power is distinct
from rule by force (coercion), as in a military dictatorship, because it allows the ruling class
to exercise authority using the “peaceful” means of ideology and culture (consent).
Gramsci argued that consent to the rule of the dominant group is achieved by the spread of
ideologies—beliefs, assumptions, and values—through social institutions such as schools,
churches, courts, and the media, among others. These institutions do the work of socialising
people into the norms, values, and beliefs of the dominant social group. As such, the group
that controls these institutions controls the rest of society. Cultural hegemony is most strongly
manifested when those ruled by the dominant group come to believe that the economic and
social conditions of their society are natural and inevitable, rather than created by people with
a vested interest in particular social, economic, and political orders.
In his essay “The Intellectuals”, Gramsci described the power of ideology to reproduce the
social structure through institutions such as religion and education. He argued that society’s
intellectuals, often viewed as detached observers of social life, are actually embedded in a
privileged social class and enjoy great prestige. As such, they function as the “deputies” of
the ruling class, teaching and encouraging people to follow the norms and rules established
by the ruling class. Gramsci elaborated on the role the education system plays in the process
of achieving rule by consent, or cultural hegemony, in his essay “On Education”.
In “The Study of Philosophy”, Gramsci discussed the role of “common sense”—dominant

ideas about society and about our place in it—in producing cultural hegemony. For example,
the idea of “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps”, the idea that one can succeed economically
if one just tries hard enough, is a form of “common sense” that has flourished under
capitalism, and that serves to justify the system. In other words, if one believes that all it
takes to succeed is hard work and dedication, then it follows that the system of capitalism and
the social structure that is organised around it is just and valid. It also follows that those who
have succeeded economically have earned their wealth in a just and fair manner and that
those who struggle economically, in turn, deserve their impoverished state. This form of
“common sense” fosters the belief that success and social mobility are strictly the
responsibility of the individual, and in doing so obscures the real class, racial, and gender
inequalities that are built into the capitalist system.
In sum, cultural hegemony, or our tacit agreement with the way that things are, is a result of
socialisation, our experiences with social institutions, and our exposure to cultural narratives
and imagery, all of which reflect the beliefs and values of the ruling class.
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Source: http://histheory.tripod.com/subaltern.html
Subaltern, meaning “of inferior rank”, is a term adopted by Antonio Gramsci to refer to
those groups in society who are subject to the hegemony of the ruling classes. Subaltern
classes may include peasants, workers, and other groups denied access to “hegemonic”
power. Since the history of the ruling classes is realised in the State, history being the history
of states and dominant groups, Gramsci was interested in the historiography of the subaltern
classes. He claimed that the history of the subaltern classes was just as complex as the history
of the dominant classes, although the history of the latter is usually that which is accepted as
“official” history. For him, the history of subaltern social groups is necessarily fragmented
and episodic, since they are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they
rebel. Clearly they have less access to the means by which they may control their own
representation, and less access to cultural and social institutions. Only “permanent” victory
(that is, a revolutionary class adjustment) can break that pattern of subordination, and even
that does not occur immediately.
Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle”

By: Tiernan Morgan and Lauren Purje (2016) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://hyperallergic.com/313435/an-illustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-
of-the-spectacle
Guy Debord’s best-known work, The Society of the Spectacle examines the “Spectacle”, a
term for the everyday manifestation of capitalist-driven phenomena; advertising, television,
film, and celebrity.
Debord describes the spectacle as capitalism’s instrument for distracting and pacifying the
masses. The spectacle takes on many more forms today than it did during Debord’s lifetime.
It can be found on every screen that you look at. It is the advertisements plastered on the
subway and the pop-up ads that appear in your browser. It is the listicle telling you “10 things
you need to know about ‘x.’” The spectacle reduces reality to an endless supply of
commodifiable fragments, while encouraging us to focus on appearances. For Debord, this
constituted an unacceptable “degradation” of our lives.
The book essentially reworks certain Marxist concepts for the film, advertising, and
television age. Debord argues, “The Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social
relation among people, mediated by images”. He observed that the spectacle actively alters
human interactions and relationships. Images influence our lives and beliefs on a daily basis;
advertising manufactures new desires and aspirations. The media interprets (and reduces) the
world for us with the use of simple narratives. Photography and film collapses time and
geographic distance—providing the illusion of universal connectivity. New products
transform the way we live.
Debord’s notions can be applied to our present-day reliance on technology. What do you do
when you get lost in a foreign city? Do you ask a passer-by for directions, or consult
Google Maps on your smartphone? Perhaps Siri can help. Such technology is incredibly
useful, but it also engineers our behaviour. It reduces our lives into a daily series of
commodity exchanges. If Debord were alive today, he would almost certainly extend his
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analysis of the spectacle to the internet and social media. Debord would no doubt have been
horrified by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, which monetise our
friendships, opinions, and emotions. Our internal thoughts and experiences are now
commodifiable assets. Did you tweet today? Why haven’t you posted to Instagram? Did you
“like” your friend’s photos on Facebook yet?
To be clear, Debord did not believe that new technology was, in itself, a bad thing. He
specifically objected to the use of perceptual technologies for economic gain. The spectacle,
which is driven by economic interest and profit, replaces lived reality with the
“contemplation of the spectacle”. Being is replaced by having, and having is replaced by
appearing. We no longer live. We aspire. We work to get richer. Paradoxically, we find
ourselves working in order to have a “vacation”. We can’t seem to actually live without
working. Capitalism has thus completely occupied social life. Our lives are now organised
and dominated by the needs of the ruling economy.
The proliferation of images and desires alienates us, not only from ourselves, but from each
other. Debord references the phrase “lonely crowds” to describe our atomisation. Referring to
the Marxist concept of false-consciousness, Debord describes how the spectacle conceals the
“relations among men and classes”. The spectacle functions as a pacifier for the masses, a
tool that reinforces the status quo and quells dissent.
Debord defines two primary forms of the spectacle—the concentrated and the diffuse. The
concentrated spectacle, which Debord attributes to totalitarian regimes, is implemented
through the cult of personality and the use of force. The diffuse spectacle, which relies on a
rich abundance of commodities, is typified by wealthy democracies. The latter is far more
effective at placating the masses, since it appears to empower individuals through consumer
choice. The diffuse spectacle of modern capitalism propagates itself by exploiting the
spectator’s lingering dissatisfaction. Since the pleasure of acquiring a new commodity is
fleeting, it is only a matter of time before we pursue a new desire—a new “fragment” of
happiness. The consumer is thus mentally enslaved by the spectacle’s inexorable logic: work
harder, buy more.
In his 1988 follow-up text, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, Debord also examines
the phenomenon of celebrity culture. Debord observes that fame “has acquired infinitely
more importance than the value of anything one might actually be capable of doing”. He is
particularly contemptuous of celebrities, branding them the “enemy of the individual”. As
embodiments of the spectacle, celebrities necessarily “renounce all autonomous qualities in
order to identify [themselves] with the general law of obedience to the course of things”.
Their individuality is sacrificed in order to become a figurehead of the profit-driven system.
After all, celebrities not only peddle commodities, but are commodities themselves. They
serve as projections of our false aspirations. For Debord, this makes them less than human.
The book’s critical longevity can be partly attributed to Debord’s refusal to describe the
spectacle’s form. By focusing instead on the spectacle’s ever-shifting qualities, Debord
encourages the reader to scrutinise the world around them. It is for this reason that the book is
routinely celebrated for its prescience. A contemporary reader can readily apply Debord’s
analysis to the fracturing of the media industry, the rise of the internet, or to the use of social
media.
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Although The Society of the Spectacle is recognised as an incisive indictment of the

consumerist experience, readers may well reject Debord’s assertion that capitalism has
inherently degraded our social lives. After all, how can society produce new services and
products without some form of industrialisation? On this particular point, Debord is
unrelenting, arguing that capitalism—having already served our most basic survival needs
(the means to food, shelter, etc.)—relies on fabricating new desires and distractions in order
to propagate itself and maintain its oppression over the working classes.
Ask yourself—what compels us to buy the latest tech gadget? Why do we spill our feelings
out on Facebook, in posts that are archived on servers deep underground? Which is more
important, the expression of the feeling itself, or the knowledge that it will be documented
and seen by others? Why do we incessantly take selfies, or record our every moment for
posterity? Are we afraid of being a nobody—of being on “the margin of existence?” If you’re
concerned with how you appear, then are you really living? Even now, almost 50 years after
its original publication, The Society of the Spectacle reads as if it were written for our time.
PAGE 14 OF 116
UNIT 2: STRUCTURAL SOCIO-ECONOMIC DISPARITIES IN INDIA
Preamble to the Constitution of India

By: Hemant Singh (2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/preamble-of-the-constitution-
1434782225-1
The Preamble to the Constitution of free India is a beautifully worded prologue. It contains
the basic ideals, objectives, and philosophical postulates the Constitution of India stands for,
providing justifications for constitutional provisions. The Preamble was amended by the 42nd
Constitutional Amendment Act in 1976.
The key words in the Preamble are

explained below:
Sovereign: The Preamble proclaims

that India is a Sovereign State.
“Sovereign” means that India has its
own independent authority and it is not
a dominion or dependent state of any
other external power. The Legislature
of India has the powers to enact laws in
the country subject to certain
limitations imposed by the
Constitution.
Socialist: Socialism means the

achievement of socialist ends through
democratic means. India has adopted
“democratic socialism”. Democratic
socialism holds faith in a mixed
economy where both private and public
sectors co-exist side by side. It aims to
end poverty, ignorance, disease, and
inequality of opportunity.
Secular: The term secular in the

Constitution of India means that all the
religions in India get equal respect, protection, and support from the State. Articles 25 to 28
in Part III of the Constitution guarantee freedom of religion as a fundamental right.
Democratic: The term “democratic” indicates that the Constitution has established a form of
government which gets its authority from the will of the people expressed in an election. The
Preamble resolves India to be a democratic country. It means that the supreme power lies
with the people. In the Preamble, the term “democracy” is used for political, economic, and
social democracy. The responsible representative government, universal adult franchise, one
vote one value, independent judiciary, etc. are the features of Indian democracy.
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Republic: In a republic, the head of the State is elected by the people directly or indirectly. In
India, the President is the head of the State. The President of India is elected indirectly by the
people, through their representatives in the Parliament and the State Assemblies. Moreover, in
a republic, the political sovereignty is vested in the people rather than a monarch.
Justice: The term “justice” in the Preamble embraces three distinct forms: social, economic,
and political, secured through various provisions of the fundamental rights and directive
principles. Social justice in the Preamble means that the Constitution wants to create a more
equitable society based on equal social status. Economic justice means equitable distribution
of wealth among the individual members of the society so that wealth is not concentrated in
few hands. Political justice means that all citizens have equal right in political participation.
The Constitution provides for universal adult suffrage and equal value for each vote.
Liberty: Liberty implies absence of restraints or domination on the activities of an individual,

such as freedom from slavery, serfdom, imprisonment, despotism, etc. The Preamble provides
for liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith, and worship.
Equality: Equality means absence of privileges or discrimination against any section of the
society. The Preamble provides for equality of status and opportunity to all Indians. The
Constitution strives to provide social, economic, and political equality in the country.
Fraternity: The Preamble seeks to promote a feeling of brotherhood among the people,
assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the nation.
In 1976, the Preamble was amended (only once till date) by the 42nd Constitutional
Amendment Act. Three new terms, “Socialist”, “Secular”, and “Integrity”, were added to the
Preamble. The Supreme Court held this amendment valid. In 1973, the Supreme Court also
held that the Preamble is a part of the Constitution and can be amended under Article 368 of
the Constitution.
Fundamental Rights
Fundamental rights, contained in Part III of the Indian Constitution, are limitations on State
action and are basically enforceable against the State and not private persons, barring a few
exceptions. ‘State’ in this context refers to the Government and Parliament of India, as well
as the legislature of all the states and any authority, local or other authorities, within the
territory of India or under the control of the Government (Article 12).
Violation of a fundamental right will entitle a citizen or a person (in certain cases) to seek
constitutional remedy in a court of law (Article 32). While most rights are available against
the State, there are a few that can be enforced against other individuals as well,
e.g. prohibition on the practice of untouchability, right against trafficking in human beings,
employment of children below 14 years of age in any hazardous employment, etc. There are
seven categories of Fundamental rights which are covered from Articles 12-35.
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Article Fundamental Right

General
12 Definition
13 Laws inconsistent with or in derogation of the fundamental rights
Right to Equality
14 Equality before law
15 Prohibition of discrimination by the State on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex,
or birthplace
- Prohibition of discrimination by anyone on the above grounds with regard to
access to shops, public restaurants, hotels, places of public entertainment, or
the use of wells, tanks, bathing ghats, roads, and places of public resort
- Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special
provision for women and children, or for the advancement of any socially and
educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the
Scheduled Tribes or any “economically weaker sections” (inserted in 2019)
16 Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment
- Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any provision for
reservations in favor of any backward class of citizens which, in the opinion
of the State, is not adequately represented in the services under the State
17 Abolition of untouchability
18 Abolition of titles
Right to Freedom
19 Protection of certain rights (subject to reasonable restrictions)
- Freedom of speech and expression
- Freedom to assemble peaceably and without arms
- Freedom to form associations or unions
- Freedom to move freely throughout the territory of India
- Freedom to reside and settle in any part of the territory of India
- Freedom to practice any profession/ carry on any occupation/ trade/ business
20 Protection in respect of conviction for offences
21 Protection of life and personal liberty
- Right to privacy - Right against handcuffing
- Right to pollution free environment - Right against custodial violence
- Right to live with human dignity - Right to shelter
- Right to livelihood - Right to information
- Right against sexual harassment - Right against torture
- Right against solitary confinement - Right to fair trial
- Right to free legal aid - Right to health
- Right to speedy trial
21A Right to education
22 Protection against arrest and detention in certain cases
Right against Exploitation
23 Prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour
24 Prohibition of employment of children in factories, etc.
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Right to Freedom of Religion

25 Freedom of conscience and free profession, practice, and propagation of religion
26 Freedom to manage religious affairs—subject to public order, morality, and
health, every religious denomination or any section thereof shall have the right:
- to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes
- to manage its own affairs in matters of religion
- to own and acquire movable and immovable property
- to administer such property in accordance with law
27 Freedom as to payment of taxes for promotion of any particular religion
28 Freedom as to attendance at religious instruction or religious worship in certain
education institutions
Cultural and Educational Rights
29 Protection of interests of minorities
- Any section of the citizens in India having a distinct language, script or
culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same
- No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution
maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of
religion, race, caste, language, or any of them
30 Right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions
Right to Constitutional Remedies
32 Remedies for enforcement of rights conferred by this Part
33 Power of Parliament to modify the rights conferred by this Part in their
application to Forces, etc.
34 Restriction on rights conferred by this Part while martial law is in force
35 Legislation to give effect to the provisions of this Part
Constitutional Democracy
Source: http://www.civiced.org/resources/publications/resource-materials/390-
constitutional-democracy
Democracy is government of, by, and for the people. It is government of a community in
which all citizens, rather than favoured individuals or groups, have the right and opportunity
to participate. In a democracy, the people are sovereign. The people are the ultimate source of
authority. In a constitutional democracy, the authority of the majority is limited by legal and
institutional means so that the rights of individuals and minorities are respected. This is the
form of democracy practiced in India. Constitutional democracy is the antithesis of arbitrary
rule. It is democracy characterised by:
Popular sovereignty: The people are the ultimate source of the authority of the government
which derives its right to govern from their consent.
Majority rule and minority rights: Although “the majority rules”, the fundamental rights of
individuals in the minority are protected.
Limited government: The powers of government are limited by law and a written or
unwritten constitution which those in power obey.
PAGE 18 OF 116
Institutional and procedural limitations on powers: There are certain institutional and
procedural devices which limit the powers of government. These may include:
(i) Separated and shared powers: Powers are separated among different agencies or
branches of government. Each agency or branch has primary responsibility for certain
functions such as legislative, executive, and judicial functions. However, each branch
also shares these functions with the other branches.
(ii) Checks and balances: Different agencies or branches of government have adequate
power to check the powers of other branches. Checks and balances may include the
power of judicial review, the power of courts to declare actions of other branches of
government to be contrary to the constitution and therefore null and void.
(iii) Due process of law: Individual rights to life, liberty, and property are protected by the
guarantee of due process of law.
(iv) Leadership succession through elections: Elections insure that key positions in
government will be contested at periodic intervals and that the transfer of governmental
authority is accomplished in a peaceful and orderly process.
India’s Asymmetric Federalism

Source: https://www.civilsdaily.com/news/explained-indias-asymmetric-federalism/
Nations are described as “federal” or “unitary”, depending on the way in which governance is
organised. In a unitary setup, the Centre has comprehensive powers of administration and
legislation, with its constituent units having little autonomy. In a federal arrangement, the
constituent units are identified on the basis of region or ethnicity, and conferred varying
forms of autonomy or some level of administrative and legislative powers.
The Constitution of India provides for a division of powers between the Union (Centre) and
states. It divides all subjects into three lists: Union List, State List, and Concurrent List. The
Union List describes the subjects under the control central government, the State List
describes the subjects under the jurisdiction of states, and the Concurrent List describes the
subjects which are under the joint jurisdiction of the Centre and the states. The subjects which
do not fall in these lists, i.e. residuary subjects, have been given to the Centre.
In India, Parliament also has the power to admit new states, create new states, alter their
boundaries and their names, and unite or divide the states. Further, in fiscal matters, the
power of the states to raise their own resources is limited, and there is a good deal of
dependency on the Centre for financial assistance. Hence, even though the states are
sovereign in their prescribed legislative field, and their executive power is co-extensive with
their legislative powers, it is clear that the powers of the states are not coordinate with the
Union. This is why the Constitution of India is often described as quasi-federal.
While the main forms of administrative units in India are the Centre and the states, there are
other forms, too, set up to address specific local, historical, and geographical contexts.
Besides the Centre and the states, the country has Union Territories with a legislature and
PAGE 19 OF 116
Union Territories without a legislature. Further, just as the Centre and the states do not have
matching powers in all matters, there are some differences in the way some states and other
constituent units of the Indian Union relate to the Centre. This creates a notable asymmetry
in the way Indian federalism works.
For example, the Sixth Schedule to the Constitution contains provisions for the
administration of tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram. These
autonomous districts/ regions are administered by District Councils and Regional Councils.
Such Councils can make laws with respect to allotment, occupation, and use of land, and
management of forests other than reserve forests and water courses. Besides, they can
regulate social customs, marriage and divorce, and property issues.
Majoritarianism
Multiple Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-majoritarian_difficulty
Majoritarianism is the assertion that a majority (categorised by religion, language, social

class, or some other identifying factor) of the population is entitled to a certain degree of
primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that can affect everyone. This view
has come under growing criticism, and democracies have increasingly included constraints on
what the parliamentary majority can do, in order to protect citizens’ fundamental rights.
Since majoritarianism is a belief that the majority community should be able to rule a country
in whichever way it wants, it is sometimes referred to by its opponents as the “tyranny of the
majority”, where a majority class rules over a minority class. On the other hand, pluralists or
multiculturalists advocate greater consideration for the rights of minorities within a society,
as protection against the racism and xenophobia of the majority.
Majoritarianism is based on the view that a democracy can be defined by only its procedural
aspects. However, it is often argued that substantive rights must be protected to truly have
a democracy. Under this view, when judges enforce such substantive rights, such as those
agreed upon in a constitution, the judges are actually engaged in furthering democracy.
Majoritarianism should not be confused with the decision-making process called majority
rule, which selects alternatives based on the support of a simple majority, that is, more than
half the votes. Similarly, it should not be confused with the concept of a majoritarian electoral
system, which is an electoral system that usually gives a seat to the party with a relative
majority of votes, i.e. when a candidate polls more votes than any other, even if not more than
half of all votes cast. A parliament elected by this method may be called a majoritarian
parliament, such as the Parliaments of the United Kingdom and India.
PAGE 20 OF 116
Social Stratification and Social Mobility

By: Puja Mondal (Edited excerpts)
Source: http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/social-stratification-meaning-types-
and-characteristics-sociology-2446-words/6199
In all societies, people differ from each other on the basis of their age, sex, and personal
characteristics. Human society is not homogeneous but heterogeneous. Apart from natural
differences, human beings are also differentiated according to socially approved criteria.
Socially differentiated men are treated as unequal from the point of view of enjoyment of
social rewards like status, power, income, etc. That may be called social inequality. The term
social inequality simply refers to the existence of socially created inequalities.
Social stratification is a particular form of social inequality. All societies arrange their
members in terms of superiority, inferiority, and equality. Stratification is a process of
interaction or differentiation whereby some people come to rank higher than others. A society
in which divisions of social classes exist is known as a stratified society.
Social stratification occurs when individuals and groups are ranked, according to some
commonly accepted basis of valuation in a hierarchy of status levels based upon the
inequality of social positions. Social stratification means division of society into different
strata or layers. It involves a hierarchy of social groups. Members of a particular layer have a
common identity.
Social stratification is based upon a variety of principles. Two major types of stratification in
India are caste and class. Caste is a hereditary endogamous social group in which a person’s
rank and its accompanying rights and obligations are ascribed on the basis of his birth into a
particular group. (Endogamy is the practice of marrying within a specific social group, caste
or ethnic group, rejecting those from others as unsuitable for marriage or other close personal
relationships.) In class stratification, on the other hand, a person’s position depends to a
varying extent on achievement and the ability to take advantage of one’s inherent
characteristics and inherited wealth.
As the term suggests, social stratification is “social”, i.e. socially created. Further, such social
stratification is consequential. It determines one’s chances of survival and of good physical
and mental health, access to housing, opportunities for education, chances of obtaining
justice, marital conflict, separation and divorce, etc.
In this context, social mobility refers to the movement of a person from one position to
another within the social structure. It means a change in social status. The greater the chances
of social mobility, the more open the structure. In India, the rate of mobility is naturally low
as compared to other countries in the world, because of feudalistic agriculture being the
predominant economic system, and the continuity of the caste system. Caste as a major type
of social stratification does not facilitate social mobility since it is based on birth and is
purely an ascribed status. Class, on the other hand, is a more open system, with relatively
fewer barriers to mobility.
Like caste and class, gender is another kind of social stratification. Gender cuts across the
broad hierarchies of caste and class, and refers to the range of characteristics pertaining to,
and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these
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characteristics may include biological sex (i.e., the state of being male, female, or an intersex
variation), sex-based social structures (i.e., gender roles), or gender identity. Traditionally,
people who identify as men or women or use masculine or feminine gender pronouns are
using a system of gender binary whereas those who exist outside these groups fall under the
umbrella terms non-binary or genderqueer. Some cultures have specific gender roles that are
distinct from “man” and “woman”, such as the “hijras” of South Asia. These are often
referred to as third genders.
Gender as a basis of stratification has consequences for all individuals in terms of their roles,
positions, constraints, etc., also determining economic relationships. As a universal basis of
stratification, it plays an important role in shaping institutions and practices in every society.
India ranks 76th among 82 countries on WEF’s Social Mobility Index

By: Arnika Thakur (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.fortuneindia.com/macro/india-ranks-76th-on-wefs-social-mobility-
index/104011
India ranked 76th among 82 countries on the social mobility index of the World Economic
Forum (WEF) on account of its poor performance in improving the quality of and access to
education and health. It has one of the highest figures of workers in vulnerable employment,
too. The WEF’s Global Social Mobility Report 2020 said that India has a lot of room for
improvement in providing equal shared opportunity.
The WEF assessed countries on parameters such as health, education, technology, work, and
social protection and inclusive institutions. Based on low life expectancy and low health
access and quality performance, India scored 54.6 on the health pillar, and 41.1 on education
access and 31.3 on education quality and equity. In terms of prevalence of malnourishment,
India was the worst performer. India ranked 76th on the health access and quality index,
harmonised learning outcomes index, and the fixed-broadband Internet subscriptions index.
In terms of work opportunities, India has the second-highest level of workers in vulnerable
employment in the ranking (76.2%), and a low female labour participation rate (29.8% of the
male labour participation), says the report. India also needs structural reforms to be able to
provide fair wages, and its social protection net is very low as compared to its regional
peers. India’s overall social expenditure is very low at 2.68% of GDP. “The combination of
these factors is detrimental to the social mobility of its population,” says WEF.
Low social mobility is also both the cause and consequence of rising inequalities and has
adverse consequences for social cohesion and inclusive growth, says the WEF. It will also
have a profound effect on future generations as large gaps between parents will result in
bigger gaps in access to education and opportunities for children. “The social and economic
consequences of inequality are profound and far-reaching: a growing sense of unfairness,
precarity, perceived loss of identity and dignity, weakening social fabric, eroding trust in
institutions, disenchantment with political processes, and an erosion of the social contract,”
said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman, WEF.
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Sanskritisation and Westernisation

By: Manzoor Elahi (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.academia.edu/3218832/Sanskritisation_Westernisation_and_Modernisat
ion
The term sanskritisation was introduced into Indian sociology by Prof. M.N. Srinivas. The
term refers to a process whereby people of lower castes collectively try to adopt upper-caste
practices and beliefs (imitation) as a preliminary step to acquire higher status. This indicates a
process of cultural mobility that took place in the traditional social system. Mobility in
sanskritisation results only in “positional changes” for particular castes or sections of castes,
and need not necessarily lead to a “structural change”, i.e. while individual castes move up or
down, the structure as such remains the same. Economic betterment is not a necessary
pre-condition to sanskritisation, nor does economic development necessarily lead to
sanskritisation. However, sometimes a group (caste/ tribe) may start by acquiring political
power and this may lead to economic development and sanskritisation.
The British rule produced radical and lasting changes in Indian society and culture. The
British brought with them new technology, institutions, knowledge, beliefs, and values. These
have become another source of social mobility for individuals as well as groups. It is in this
context that M.N. Srinivas also introduced the term westernisation to explain the changes
that have taken place in Indian society and culture due to western contact through the British
rule. It entails the introduction of new institutions and also fundamental changes in old
institutions such as schools, the army, civil services, and law courts.
Westernisation includes, according to Srinivas, “certain value preferences” such as

humanitarianism, which implies an active concern for the welfare of all human beings,
irrespective of caste, economic position, religion, age, and sex. However, increase in
westernisation does not retard the process of sanskritisation. Both go on simultaneously, and
to some extent, increase in westernisation accelerates the process of sanskritisation. For
example, the postal facilities, railways, buses, and newspaper media render more organised
religious pilgrimages, meetings, caste solidarities, etc., possible as compared to the past. On
the other hand, westernisation opened up the doors to western knowledge in India, brought
the opportunity of education for all, highlighted evil social practices, attracted the attention of
social reformers, and taught many Indians the value of liberty and freedom.
Caste and Class in India

By: Sitaram Yechury (1997) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.cpim.org/content/caste-and-class-indian-politics-today
At the outset, it is necessary to debunk a common fallacy that attempts to pit caste versus
class. Vested interests often advise communists that since they believe in class divisions in
society, caste ought not to engage their attention. Such a mechanical distinction between caste
and class is not only a vulgar simplification but divorced from Indian reality.
The caste stratification of our society is something that has come down to us from centuries.
Despite all the refinements and changes within castes and between castes that have taken
place over the years, the basic structure, in so far as the oppression of the Dalits or the
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backward castes is concerned, remains. It is within this social stratification that the class
formation in India is taking place. Capitalism is still developing in India and the process of
the development of society divided into modern capitalist classes is taking place constantly
within the existing caste stratification.
The question therefore, is not one of class versus caste. It is the formation of classes under
modern capitalism within the inherited caste structure. To a large extent, the most
exploited classes in our society constitute the most socially oppressed castes. And, to that
extent, the struggle against class exploitation and the struggle against social oppression
complement each other. These sections as it were, are subject to dual oppression.
It is this complementarity that not only needs to be recognised but on the basis of that
recognition, it must follow that an important task before our country today is the integration
of the struggle against class exploitation with the struggle against social oppression. It is only
through such integration that the firm unity of the toilers can be forged and strengthened in
order to advance towards people’s democracy.
Rising Wealth and Consumption Inequality in India

By: Sourabh Gupta (10 December 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/study-throws-light-on-
rising-wealth-consumption-inequality-in-india/articleshow/67019490.cms
Wealth and consumption inequality in India is rising, with the gap between the forward and
other castes becoming wider over the years, according to a World Inequality Database study
supervised by Thomas Piketty, an expert on wealth and income gaps. The author,
Nitin Kumar Bharti of the Paris School of Economics, has estimated that the wealth share of
the rich—top 10% of the population—has risen from 45% in 1981 to 68% in 2012. Moreover,
the historical inequality in wealth along caste lines has not been corrected even though the
situation of every caste has improved over time.
Economic ranking mirrors caste hierarchy: Scheduled Castes (SCs)/ Scheduled Tribes (STs)
are way below the overall average; Other Backward Classes (OBCs)/ Muslims are closer to
the overall average but lower than Forward Castes (FCs). 50% Brahmins, 31% Rajputs,
44% Banias, and 57% Kayasths fall in the richest class. Only 5% STs, 10% SCs, 16% OBCs,
and 17% Muslims are in the richest category.
Wealth heavily concentrated at the top: The top 1% of the population owns 30% of the total
wealth, which is 50% of the total wealth of the top decile. The bottom 50% of the population
own 8% of the total wealth, which highlights the “weak base” of society. The middle 40%
own 35% of total wealth.
Spending gap is also widening: The top 10% consume 28–32% while the consumption share
of the bottom 50% is around 21%, and of the middle 40%, the share is around 40%. In
comparison with the wealth share of the top 10%, consumption distribution is more equitable.
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Forward castes dominate top 10%: SC/ ST/ Muslims have a lower population share in
higher/ middle wealth deciles and a higher population share in lower deciles. OBCs are
distributed in the same share across all deciles. FCs are over-represented in higher deciles.
Facts about Inequality in India

By: Oxfam India (24 January 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.oxfamindia.org/blog/15-shocking-facts-about-inequality-india
1. India added 17 new billionaires last year, raising the number to 101 billionaires.
2. Indian billionaires’ wealth increased by INR 4,891 billion—from INR 15,778 billion to
over INR 20,676 billion. INR 4,891 billion is sufficient to finance 85% of the all states’
budgets on health and education.
3. 73% of the wealth generated last year went to the richest 1%, while 67 crore Indians who
comprise the poorest half of the population saw 1% increase in their wealth.
4. In the last 12 months, the wealth of this elite group increased by INR 20,913 billion. This
amount is equivalent to total budget of the Central government in 2017-18.
5. 37% of India’s billionaires have inherited (family) wealth. They control 51% of the total
wealth of billionaires in the country.
6. There are only 4 women billionaires in India and 3 of them inherited family wealth.
7. Between 2018 till 2022, India is estimated to produce 70 new millionaires every day.
8. The number of billionaires has increased from only 9 in 2000 to 101 in 2017.
9. 51 billionaires out of the total 101 are 65 years or above and own INR 10,544 billion of
total wealth. If we assume that in the next 20 years, at least INR 10,544 billion will be
passed on to the inheritors and on that if a 30% inheritance tax is imposed, the
government can earn at least INR 3,176 billion. INR 3,176 billion is sufficient to finance
six crucial services—medical and public health, family welfare, water and sanitation,
housing, urban development, and labour and labour welfare in all states.
10. Over the next 20 years, 500 of the world’s richest people will hand over $2.4 trillion to
their heirs—a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.
11. In countries like India and the Philippines, at least one in every two workers in the
garment sector are paid below the minimum wage.
12. It would take 941 years for a minimum wage worker in rural India to earn what the top
paid executive at a leading Indian garment company earns in a year.
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13. It would take around 17.5 days for the best paid executive at a top Indian garment
company to earn what a minimum wage worker in rural India will earn in their lifetime
(presuming 50 years at work).
14. It would cost around INR 326 million a year to ensure 14,764 minimum wage workers in
rural India are paid a living wage. This is about half the amount paid out to wealthy
shareholders of a top Indian garment company.
15. The top 10% of India’s population holds 73% of its wealth.
Source: https://www.oxfamindia.org/knowledgehub/workingpaper/inequality-kills-india-
supplement-2022
The India Supplement 2022—Inequality Kills—reveals that when 84% of households in the
country suffered a decline in their income in a year marked by tremendous loss of life and
livelihoods, the number of Indian billionaires grew from 102 to 142.
During the pandemic (March 2020 to November 2021) the wealth of billionaires increased
from INR 23.14 lakh crore to INR 53.16 lakh crore. More than 4.6 crore Indians meanwhile
are estimated to have fallen into extreme poverty in 2020 (nearly half of the global new poor
according to the United Nations). The stark wealth inequality in India is a result of an
economic system rigged in favour of the super-rich over the poor and marginalised.
Understanding “Structural” Inequality

The following is an excerpt titled “Purity in America” from Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens: a
Brief History of Humankind” (https://www.dancollinsandapiano.com/purity-in-america)
From the 16th to the 18th century, the European conquerors imported millions of African
slaves to work the mines and plantations of America. They chose to import slaves from Africa
rather than from Europe or East Asia due to three circumstantial factors. Firstly, Africa was
closer, so it was cheaper to import slaves from Senegal than from Vietnam.
Secondly, in Africa there already existed a well-developed slave trade (exporting slaves
mainly to the Middle East), whereas in Europe slavery was very rare. It was obviously far
easier to buy slaves in an existing market than to create a new one from scratch.
Thirdly, and most importantly, American plantations in places such as Virginia, Haiti, and
Brazil were plagued by malaria and yellow fever, which had originated in Africa. Africans
had acquired over the generations a partial genetic immunity to these diseases, whereas
Europeans were totally defenceless and died in droves. It was consequently wiser for a
plantation owner to invest his money in an African slave than in a European slave or
indentured labourer. Paradoxically, genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into
social inferiority: precisely because Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans,
they ended up as the slaves of European masters! Due to these circumstantial factors, the
burgeoning new societies of America were to be divided into a ruling caste of white
Europeans and a subjugated caste of black Africans.
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But people don’t like to say that they keep slaves of a certain race or origin simply because
it’s economically expedient. Like the Aryan conquerors of India, white Europeans in the
Americas wanted to be seen not only as economically successful but also as pious, just and
objective. Religious and scientific myths were pressed into service to justify this division.
Theologians argued that Africans descend from Ham, son of Noah, saddled by his father with
a curse that his offspring would be slaves. Biologists argued that blacks are less intelligent
than whites and their moral sense less developed. Doctors alleged that blacks live in filth and
spread diseases—in other words, they are a source of pollution.
These myths struck a chord in American culture, and in western culture generally. They
continued to exert their influence long after the conditions that created slavery had
disappeared. In the early 19th century imperial Britain outlawed slavery and stopped the
Atlantic slave trade, and in the decades that followed, slavery was gradually outlawed
throughout the American continent. Notably, this was the first and only time in history that
slaveholding societies voluntarily abolished slavery. But, even though the slaves were freed,
the racist myths that justified slavery persisted. Separation of the races was maintained by
racist legislation and social custom.
The result was a self-reinforcing cycle of cause and effect, a vicious circle. Consider, for
example, the southern United States immediately after the Civil War. In 1865, the
13th Amendment to the US Constitution outlawed slavery and the 14th Amendment
mandated that citizenship and the equal protection of the law could not be denied on the basis
of race. However, two centuries of slavery meant that most black families were far poorer and
far less educated than most white families. A black person born in Alabama in 1865 thus had
much less chance of getting a good education and a well-paid job than did his white
neighbours. His children, born in the 1880s and 1890s, started life with the same
disadvantage—they, too, were born to an uneducated, poor family.
But economic disadvantage was not the whole story. Alabama was also home to many poor
whites who lacked the opportunities available to their better-off racial brothers and sisters. In
addition, the Industrial Revolution and the waves of
immigration made the United States an extremely fluid society,
where rags could quickly turn into riches. If money was all that
mattered, the sharp divide between the races should soon have
blurred, not least through intermarriage.
But that did not happen. By 1865 whites, as well as many

blacks, took it to be a simple matter of fact that blacks were
less intelligent, more violent and sexually dissolute, lazier, and
less concerned about personal cleanliness than whites. They
were thus the agents of violence, theft, rape, and disease—in
other words, pollution. If a black Alabaman in 1895
miraculously managed to get a good education and then
applied for a respectable job such as a bank teller, his odds of being accepted were far worse
than those of an equally qualified white candidate. The stigma that labelled blacks as, by
nature, unreliable, lazy, and less intelligent conspired against him.
You might think that people would gradually understand that these stigmas were myth rather
than fact and that blacks would be able, over time, to prove themselves just as competent,
law-abiding, and clean as whites. In fact, the opposite happened—these prejudices became
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more and more entrenched as time went by. Since all the best jobs were held by whites, it
became easier to believe that blacks really are inferior. “Look,” said the average white
citizen, “blacks have been free for generations, yet there are almost no black professors,
lawyers, doctors, or even bank tellers. Isn’t that proof that blacks are simply less intelligent
and hard-working?” Trapped in this vicious circle, blacks were not hired for white-collar jobs
because they were deemed unintelligent, and the proof of their inferiority was the paucity of
blacks in white-collar jobs.
The vicious circle did not stop there. As anti-black stigmas grew stronger, they were
translated into a system of “Jim Crow” laws and norms that were meant to safeguard the
racial order. Blacks were forbidden to vote in elections, to study in white schools, to buy in
white stores, to eat in white restaurants, to sleep in white hotels. The justification for all of
this was that blacks were foul, slothful, and vicious, so whites had to be protected from them.
Whites did not want to sleep in the same hotel as blacks or to eat in the same restaurant, for
fear of diseases. They did not want their children learning in the same school as black
children, for fear of brutality and bad influences. They did not want blacks voting in
elections, since blacks were ignorant and immoral. These fears were substantiated by
scientific studies that “proved” that blacks were indeed less educated, that various diseases
were more common among them, and that their crime rate was far higher (the studies ignored
the fact that these “facts” resulted from discrimination against blacks).
By the mid-twentieth century, segregation in the former Confederate states was probably
worse than in the late 19th century. Clennon King, a black student who applied to the
University of Mississippi in 1958, was forcefully committed to a mental asylum. The
presiding judge ruled that a black person must surely be insane to think that he could be
admitted to the University of Mississippi. Nothing was as revolting to American southerners
(and many northerners) as sexual relations and marriage between black men and white
women. Sex between the races became the greatest taboo and any violation, or suspected
violation, was viewed as deserving immediate and summary punishment in the form of
lynching. The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist secret society, perpetrated many such
killings. They could have taught the Hindu Brahmins a thing or two about purity laws.
With time, the racism spread to more and more cultural arenas. American aesthetic culture
was built around white standards of beauty. The physical attributes of the white race—for
example, light skin, fair and straight hair, a small upturned nose—came to be identified as
beautiful. Typical black features—dark skin, dark and bushy hair, a flattened nose—were
deemed ugly. These preconceptions ingrained the imagined hierarchy at an even deeper level
of human consciousness. Such vicious circles can go on for centuries and even millennia,
perpetuating an imagined hierarchy that sprang from a chance historical occurrence. Unjust
discrimination often gets worse, not better, with time. Money comes to money, and
poverty to poverty. Education comes to education, and ignorance to ignorance. Those
once victimised by history are likely to be victimised yet again. And those whom history has
privileged are more likely to be privileged again.
Most socio-political hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis—they are nothing but the
perpetuation of chance events supported by myths. That is one good reason to study history.
If the division into blacks and whites or Brahmins and Shudras was grounded in biological
realities—that is, if Brahmins really had better brains than Shudras—biology would be
sufficient for understanding human society. Since the biological distinctions between
different groups of Homo sapiens are, in fact, negligible, biology can’t explain the intricacies
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of Indian society or American racial dynamics. We can only understand those phenomena by
studying the events, circumstances, and power relations that transformed figments of
imagination into cruel—and very real—social structures.
Intersectionality
By: Ragini Srikrishna (15 June 2017) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://yourstory.com/2017/06/intersectionality-identity
Visualise this: two men apply for a job in the IT sector. One is from a premier institute and
the other from a no-name college. The second man may not even get called for an interview.
If he does, though, but is not fluent in English, he’ll likely find himself discriminated against.
Now, if this were a woman applying for the same job, not only would the no-name institute
and her lack of language fluency impede her but gender would add a whole new dimension.
If she happened to be a Muslim woman, stereotypes and prejudices about her religion would
only further add to her workplace discrimination. To top that, even being able to rent an
apartment to secure this city job would be next to impossible.
This Muslim woman from a tier-2 town and a no-name institute faces discrimination at more
than one level. The term “intersectionality” refers to such multiple levels of intersecting or
overlapping identities. Researchers have argued that intersectional discrimination isn’t
merely additive but multiplicative.
Given the prevalence of western culture, it is likely easy even for Indians to understand the
intersectional issues a black gay woman faces. Her identity isn’t defined by her race (black),
gender (woman), or sexuality (gay) alone, but by their intersection. Does intersectionality
even arise in India and if so is it relevant? In India, caste, class, gender, and certainly religion
play a big role when it comes to one’s identity and therefore give rise to intersectionality.
While we’ve seen activism relating to rights and non-discrimination on the basis of caste or
sexuality alone, we haven’t recognised or certainly publicly addressed the issues arising from
intersectionality, especially when they propel discrimination.
India, in many ways, remains a patriarchal society or a “man’s world”, as people put it.
Women have been struggling just to step away from their historically assigned identities—
always in relation to a man—daughter, mother, and wife. Yet, aside from these main
identities, women face multiple levels of discrimination for identities that are not explicitly
acknowledged—for instance, religion, caste, class, and sexuality. India is yet to fully explore
the intersections of these other identities women possess.
With a steady growth of women’s empowerment in India, there is still a need for a bottom-up
analysis of women’s issues. Research has shown the trend of a growing rural and urban split
over the last couple of decades—whether politically or culturally there is a divergence
between cities and small towns. Understanding women’s issues at the grassroots level is
fundamental to empowering all women.
Two horrid events, the infamous Delhi rape case and the more recent New Year molestation
at Bengaluru’s Brigade Road, have had a silver lining of helping women transcend all
boundaries of intersectionality. Women across region, religion, class, and caste boundaries
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and even many male allies, were united on the matter of women’s safety. However, there
appears to be little awareness and even less visible co-operation among women on the much
wider range of intersectional issues they face.
We can’t afford to wait for external events such as these molestation cases or an accidental
alignment of interests to address intersectionality. All of us need to begin talking about
intersectionality or the multiple identities we possess—in public and private forums. We need
to adapt it and make it our own in the Indian context by using it as yet another lens to
examine our culture and daily actions. Most importantly, we need to act both individually and
as groups to transform talk into policy. Even in recent times, we have had multiple instances
of successfully evolving such a national consensus, whether on the use of plastic
(environmental), tobacco (public health), or even transgender identity (government policy).
This last week, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) sent a notice to assess the
impact of a rule it passed last year. The rule mandated that a certain fraction of directors of
listed companies have to be women directors. Corporate boardroom representation, a widely
recognised issue for professional women, is making limited progress. Similarly, issues such
as wage parity, or venture funding for women entrepreneurs are garnering some attention.
While all of these are issues that professional women face, how in tune are these professional
women with the struggles of their compatriots—those not in white-collar or professional
jobs? How often do those of us who push for gender parity in pay and presence in the corner
offices or board rooms discuss or even wonder about the issues that Dalit or Muslim
women—professional or otherwise—face due to matters of intersectionality?
Retweeting Brahminical Patriarchy

By: G. Sampath (22 November 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/retweeting-brahminical-
patriarchy/article25560534.ece
Imagine a celebrity Indian CEO going to the United States and having himself photographed
with women of colour while holding a poster that said, “Smash racist patriarchy”. And then,
imagine white Americans coming down on him like a tonne of bricks, accusing him of
inciting hatred and violence against white Americans. Sounds absurd? Good. Now imagine
him actually apologising to the American public for wanting to end racist patriarchy. Sounds
even more absurd? Well, this, or at least a version of this, has actually happened. Not in the
la-la land of Donald Trump, but right here, in the world’s largest democracy.
Recently, the Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, on a visit to India, had an informal discussion with a
group of Indian women journalists, activists, and writers about their experience on Twitter. In
the course of the meeting, he was gifted a poster by one of the participants. It said, “Smash
Brahminical Patriarchy”. When a group photograph of Mr. Dorsey posing with that poster
surfaced on Twitter, it became an immediate target of outraged trolling. Both Mr. Dorsey and
the organisation he heads were angrily accused of inciting hatred and violence against a
“minority”, namely, Brahmins.
The furious tweets spanned the whole gamut of indignation from A to B. Mr. Dorsey was
accused of being a “Brahmin-hating, racist bigot”. He was accused of propagating hatred
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towards “people who constitute 5% or less” of India’s population. Many compared the
sentiment expressed in the poster to anti-Semitism, asking if he would dare pose in the U.S.
with a placard advocating hatred of Jews. A serving civil servant even deemed it “a fit case
for registration of a criminal case for attempt to destabilise the nation”. Mr. Dorsey’s
apoplectic critics wanted an immediate apology. And they got it, too.
While Twitter clarified that the content of the poster was “not a statement from Twitter or our
CEO”, the company’s legal and policy head put out a tweet saying, “I’m very sorry for this.
It’s not reflective of our views. We took a private photo with a gift just given to us—we
should have been more thoughtful. Twitter strives to be an impartial platform for all. We
failed to do that here and we must do better to serve our customers in India.” This public
apology was tweeted out in its wordy entirety not once, not twice, not three times, but eight
times. The whole episode raises two simple questions: What was wrong with that poster? And
what is wrong with Twitter? The first is disposed of easily enough: nothing. Someone patient
enough to carefully poke through the mass of outrage piled up against Mr. Dorsey and his
poster might discern the vague outlines of an argument, which essentially boils down to
Brahminical patriarchy coming to the defence of Brahminical patriarchy.
First of all, “Brahminism” refers not to members of the Brahmin community but to the
oppressive social order of caste. This social order, as has been well established by feminist
historians such as Uma Chakravarti, is premised on two hierarchies that are inter-connected
(intersectionality): gender hierarchy and caste hierarchy. The former accords women an
inferior social status vis-à-vis men, while the latter accords Brahmins a superior social status
vis-à-vis all other varnas, or caste groups. Also, it is through male control of female sexuality
that what Ms. Chakravarti calls “caste purity, the institution unique to Hindu society”, is
preserved and reproduced over time. Hence, in the Indian context, it makes little sense to
issue a call to arms against patriarchy without also referencing the Brahminical roots of this
patriarchy, which is precisely what that poster did.
As for the usage of the term “Brahminical”, it is either mischievous or ignorant to claim that
it only refers to Brahmins, and therefore, the poster constituted hate speech. The father of the
Indian Constitution and icon of anti-caste politics, B.R. Ambedkar, defined the term thus: “By
Brahmanism I do not mean the power, privileges, and interests of the Brahmans as a
community. By Brahmanism I mean the negation of the spirit of Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity. In that sense it is rampant in all classes and is not confined to the Brahmans alone,
though they have been the originators of it.”
The term, then, has been in currency for a long time as a descriptor of a social order marked
by the graded inequality of caste. Therefore, this sudden eruption against it makes no sense
except as a reactionary backlash against the steady mainstreaming of anti-caste politics on
social media. Given that caste remains a powerful determinant of status and life chances in
Indian society, such a backlash is perhaps not entirely surprising. But what is, is the alacrity
with which a powerful multinational firm, with pretensions to liberal values, chose to pander
to feudal sentiment. It makes one wonder what, if anything, Mr. Dorsey and his organisation
learned from their closed door interaction with Indian women journalists about their
experiences on Twitter. Whatever it was, the need to support Indian women against caste
oppression and patriarchy wasn’t a part of it.
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The Psychological Costs of Marginalisation

By: Divya Kannan (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.whiteswanfoundation.org/article/the-psychological-costs-of-
marginalization
Marginalised individuals or groups often feel or are made to feel less important and less
respected than those who hold more status, power, privilege, and opportunity in society. They
may be considered outside of the “mainstream” way of thinking and behaving.
Marginalisation includes but is not limited to caste, religion, mental health status, physical
ability, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, weight, age, and race.
Being seen and treated as less than or exclusionary in some way has a long-lasting impact on
the mental health of an individual.
Individuals who face marginalisation are also more vulnerable to the effects of stress. The
prevalence of exposure to trauma is high among those that are marginalised, and coping with
this stress becomes an arduous task due to the potential risk of exploitation and/ or exclusion.
On an emotional and psychological level, individuals can feel isolated from the social fabric
of their larger communities and can feel a sense of paranoia, which is a function of how they
might be perceived and treated by others. They can feel invisible, as though their concerns are
not significant enough to be heard, and self-doubt and frustration are common psychological
responses. Some marginalised groups are also at higher risk for suicide and self-harm.
This process of marginalisation can, unfortunately, start young. Sometimes it is difficult for
me to contain my horror when a nine-year-old boy in my office, who is bullied due to his
weight, can rattle off a bunch of names that his peers call him because he is bigger than them
in size. He is too young to understand why his friends are mean to him, but not too young to
question his self-worth and feel inadequate during PE class due to the social misfit that he is
made out to be on a daily basis. The good news is that he is sitting in my office, and therefore
receiving the help he needs at the time that he needs it. This is not the case for many, who
hide behind the shame of marginalisation for years, as it goes unnoticed and ignored.
As you can imagine, a lot needs to be done. To start with, the many systems (individuals,
families, schools, offices, law, and governance) that work to secure the rights of children,
students, employees, and citizens, also have the responsibility of educating themselves on
recognising the many vulnerable groups, including those with mental health difficulties. This
recognition can help reduce that feeling of isolation and invisibility, and those with individual
differences can attempt to temper their experiences of rejection with hope and cautious
optimism that someone in their immediate environment is noticing them, maybe even
listening.
The worst we can do is not notice, or notice and do nothing. It’s important that we try to
model intersectionality, where we understand that the many aspects of an individual’s identity
including their health status, race, age, sexuality, etc., do not exist separately from each other
but intersect to create a complex identity. Understanding these connections is the key to being
able to identify barriers to growth, better health, and opportunity, from which we can begin to
develop solutions that are not one-size-fits-all.
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UNIT 3: COMMERCE AND GENDER
Women in the Workforce

By: Devika Kher (23 January 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://thewire.in/labour/why-having-more-women-in-the-workforce-is-good-for-the-
economy
A key challenge facing India’s economy is the job crisis. Between 2011 and 2015, the
unemployment rate in India rose from 3% to 5%, and is estimated to have further increased to
7% by the end of 2018. Making matters worse, only 4.3 million jobs have been created per
year since 2012, even though 12 million people enter the workforce every year.
While the dire condition of employment in India has only recently gained attention in the
national discourse, the problem had existed for at least two decades. The only difference is of
the gender of the unemployed. As opposed to 79% men, only 27% of Indian women were a
part of the workforce in 2017. The female labour force participation rate (FLFPR) in India
declined from 34.8% to 27% in the two decades before 2013, according to a World Bank
report. This further fell to 20.3% in 2019, compared with 30.5% in Bangladesh and 33.7% in
Sri Lanka. According to World Bank estimates, India has one of the lowest female labour
force participation rates in the world. Meanwhile, as per a McKinsey report, men have been
employed in 90% of the 36 million additional jobs created in India since 2015.
The causes behind the disparity are commonly attributed to the gender pay gap or the lack of
safety in the workplace. In addition to factors like a decline in job creation and skills
mismatch that affects the entire labour force in the country, women also face unique
challenges that convolute the problem further. These challenges include:
(i) Lack of agency: Women do not have the freedom or support to make decisions
regarding their education or career. This limits their ability to pursue independent
choices and cater to the demands of their jobs. Often, the lack of agency results in them
quitting the workforce or opting for positions below their qualifications.
(ii) Occupation segregation: Owing to the limitations set by their families and society in
general, women are educated and skilled in certain specific sectors like the beauty
industry, teaching, etc. As a result, while women dominate these sectors, it further
excludes them from other opportunities. The increased competition to work in these
limited sectors also leads to reduction in wages, and limited career growth.
(iii) Socio-economic status of the women: The economic and social background plays an
essential role in defining the education and job prospects available to women. In most
situations, women from low economic backgrounds have limited access to education
and training but are allowed to work to add to the household income. However, women
from affluent families are allowed to pursue education at their will but do not have a
similar freedom with respect to pursuing a career.
Keeping in mind the complexities leading to the drop in FLFPR and the decline in the job
creation, the obvious question is why do we need women in the workforce? In July last year,
The Economist did a cover story on how India is losing 235 million employees because of the
gap between the male and female labour force participation rates.
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This additional number of working population, as per the International Monetary Fund’s
(IMF) chief Christine Lagarde, would make India 27% richer. Two ways in which women in
the workforce can help the economy are by increasing the consumption and therefore the
production in the economy, and by creating additional jobs in the household economy.
India is a consumer-based economy—its growth is largely driven by the consumption of

goods and services within the economy. A rise in consumption stimulates demand for goods
and services leading to a hike in their supply and the creation of new jobs. With more women
earning, there would be an increase in the spending capabilities at both the individual and the
household level. This would expand the supply of goods and services, creating an impetus for
more jobs.
In order to encourage more women to join the workforce, we need to create policy changes
that incentivise their participation. Promoting pay parity and creating a safe environment at
the workspace are basic steps that need to be taken in order to increase the FLFPR.
Another advantage of having more women in the workforce is that it helps create jobs in the
household economy. One of the most common arguments against letting women work is that
it would hamper the household economy predominately managed by them. Right from
cooking and cleaning to stocking food and managing assets at home, women oversee varied
tasks to maintain a functioning household, often referred as unpaid housework. Based on the
calculation by the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics, unpaid household work
and childcare was worth one trillion pounds ($1,289 billion) in 2016. However, instead of
creating market value for such jobs by outsourcing them, these tasks are managed primarily
by women across economic groups in the country.
A large number of women stepping out of their houses would increase household income and
create opportunities for jobs in household care like cleaning, cooking etc. Along with
increasing the number of women in the workforce, it would also provide scope to market
unpaid housework and allow the economy to capture the value generated by these activities.
With the estimated 11 million job losses in 2018, it is evident that we need policies that
would provide a substantial stimulus for growth. Instead of ignoring the shrinking FLFPR,
we can be working on solving the problem so as to save the rest of the economy.
Gender Discrimination at the Workplace

Multiple Sources:
- https://www.equalrights.org/legal-help/know-your-rights/sex-discrimination-at-work
- https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/gender-wage-gap-highest-
in-india-women-are-paid-30-less-than-men-ilo-118112701048_1.html
Gender discrimination at the workplace refers to the unfavourable treatment of workers based
on their gender or because they do not conform to traditional roles of femininity or
masculinity. It can occur at all stages of employment, from job descriptions to dismissal, as
demonstrated by the following examples.
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Hiring: X applies for a job as a sales executive. Although X has experience and excellent
qualifications, she is not hired because some of the company’s long-time clients are more
comfortable dealing with men.
Condition of Employment: X wants to be a fire-fighter. The department is taking applicants,

but the job description states that all candidates must be able to lift 100 pounds. X believes
such a feat is not necessary to carry out the duties of a fire-fighter, and serves instead to keep
women from applying.
A pink-collar worker refers to someone working in the care-oriented career field or in jobs
historically considered to be women’s work. This may include jobs in the beauty industry,
nursing, teaching, secretarial work, or child care.
Dismissal: X is told that she is laid off due to company cutbacks and reorganisation.
However, men in the same position and/ or with less seniority keep their jobs.
Promotion: X works as a sales clerk at a retail store for ten years but has been repeatedly
denied the opportunity to advance. Men with less experience, some of whom she trained
and/ or supervised, receive the promotions instead.
A glass ceiling is a metaphor used to represent an invisible barrier that keeps a given
demographic from rising beyond a certain level in a hierarchy. A parallel phenomenon
called the glass escalator is also occurring, in how more men are joining fields that were
previously occupied mainly by women, such as nursing and teaching, and within these job
fields, the men are riding right past women and going straight to the top, similarly to if
they were on an escalator and a woman was taking stairs.
Job Classification: X works at a large shipping company where employees hold several
different job classifications. X notices that most of the sorting jobs, which are low-paid and
offer little opportunity for promotion, are held by women, while most of the better-paying
office positions are held by men.
Sticky floors can be described as the pattern that women are, compared to men, less likely
to start to climb the job ladder.
Benefits: X is required to use her sick and vacation leave to take time off for her pregnancy
because her employer does not provide leave for pregnancy, but does provide such leave to
employees with other temporarily disabling health conditions. A male co-worker was on
leave for six months because he had a heart attack and he was able to access the benefits
under the disability plan.
Pregnancy discrimination is a type of employment discrimination that occurs when
expectant women are fired, not hired, or otherwise discriminated against due to their
pregnancy or intention to become pregnant.
Pay: X works her way up from the position of line cook to sous chef. After her promotion, a
second sous chef is hired. He has similar training and work experience, but she finds out that
he is being paid more than her.
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Women are paid the most unequally in India, compared to men, when it comes to hourly
wages for labour. On average, women are paid 34% less than men, the Global Wage
Report 2018-19 by the International Labour Organization (ILO) has found. This gap in
wages, known as the gender wage gap, is the highest among the 73 countries studied.
Sexual Harassment: X’s boss is the vice president of the company. He repeatedly makes
unwelcome comments about her body and routinely puts his arm around her waist when
discussing work-related matters. She tells him his behaviour makes her uncomfortable and
asks him to stop. He says, “Maybe you are too uptight for this job. I probably should never
have hired you.” X is now afraid of losing her job if she doesn’t “loosen up”.
Gender Identity: X applies and is hired for a position at a new company. Before beginning at
the job, they inform their employer that they are undergoing a gender transition and will be
presenting as a woman instead of as a man. The new employer then informs X that the job is
no longer available due to budget constraints. X later finds out that another person was hired
for the position.
Sex Stereotyping: X is a woman working in the sales department of a major retail chain. She
has short hair and dresses in trousers most days. Although she meets deadlines and sales
quotas, she receives poor performance evaluations, which include comments about her lack
of femininity and “aggressive” nature. Men with similar personality traits and equally or less
impressive sales records to her own receive above average performance evaluations and are
promoted more quickly.
A Boys’ Club Culture

By: Liz Elting (27 July 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizelting/2018/07/27/how-to-navigate-a-boys-club-
culture/#1489b79e4025
Corporate culture is often less accessible to women for very clear historical reasons: the
modern workplace was built around the assumption of a nuclear family with a working father
and a stay-at-home mother, and for as much as our society has changed, that model is still
assumed in most workplaces. The result is a culture that excludes all but a specific type of
employee and isn’t actually good for anyone (in which the only way to excel is to work all
hours because the employee presumably has a wife at home keeping the fire lit and the kids
fed).
Beyond that though, beyond the expectations that model lets companies maintain, there is
also another, though not entirely unrelated, kind of obstacle for women in the workplace: the
formation of what we call boys’ clubs: those informal social networks of male friendships.
They’re a death knell for women wherever they encounter them; they promote from within
and provide networking and professional mentoring opportunities that are simply not
available to anyone who isn’t a part of them. And since so many such clubs are also havens
for toxicity, relying on a degree of sexist humour and objectification for their camaraderie,
women are rarely admitted.
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Boys’ clubs function because they offer a valuable asset: solidarity. It’s the old version of a
high school clique, and like all cliques, their worth is entirely dependent on how they can
control access. Everything they offer in the way of professional advancement—mentorship,
support, promotion—is dependent on that access, which the boys’ club doles out and revokes
capriciously.
Part of what makes boys’ clubs so exclusive is how they choose to operate: within
traditionally male spaces like country clubs, golf courses, sports events, and even saunas and
strip clubs, places where women are generally not likely to be invited. Someone will identify
a potential recruit and invite them out for a round of golf, for example, where they discuss the
employee’s future and the opportunities they can help them access (there’s that pesky word
again: access). But female employees, however, are as a class just as deserving of
mentorship, sponsorship, and opportunity as their male counterparts.
Benevolent Sexism
By: Jacqueline Yi (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://wp.nyu.edu/steinhardt-appsych_opus/the-role-of-benevolent-sexism-in-
gender-inequality
An unmistakable form of systematic oppression is hostile sexism, which is defined as any

antagonism toward women who challenge male power. Large corporations and government
offices are spaces frequently dominated by men. A woman competing against a man for a
high-ranking position in one of these institutions may face hostile sexism because she is
viewed as a threat to the status quo of male authority. However, women are also faced with a
more understated type of prejudice called benevolent sexism, in which women are
stereotyped as affectionate, delicate, and sensitive. Those who hold benevolent sexist beliefs
conceptualise women as weak individuals who need to be protected and provided for.
Although these traits and attitudes seem to encompass behaviours that favour women,
benevolent sexism is just as oppressive as hostile sexism.
Because those who accept benevolent sexist ideas typically perceive women as incompetent
outside of domestic roles, men see themselves as superior to women and treat them in a
patronising manner. Women do not interpret these condescending behaviours as acts of
prejudice, but as protective and caring actions. Men, on the other hand, fail to recognise their
benevolent sexist acts as oppressive, and often become fixated on fulfilling their traditional
gender roles as the providers.
One of the mechanisms through which benevolent sexism contributes to gender inequality is
stereotyping. Men and women are stereotyped with opposing strengths and weaknesses. Men
are given agentic stereotypes, such as being independent, ambitious, and competitive. They
are viewed as highly competent, and therefore, well-suited for high-status workplace
positions. In contrast, women are assigned communal stereotypes, such as having
nurturing, interdependent, and considerate characteristics, which are suitable for the
duties of a proper wife and mother. While these domestic roles are important to society,
they enforce the idea that women are subservient to men, as well as incompetent and
incapable without their financial support. However, since the content of women’s communal
PAGE 37 OF 116
stereotypes can be perceived as positive, it is difficult to recognise how they justify

oppressive gender roles.
Benevolent sexism has conditioned some women to physically, mentally, and emotionally
rely on male partners or family members, making it extremely difficult for them to resist this
oppressive ideology. While women who do not fit traditional gender stereotypes are punished
with hostile sexism, women who adhere to these stereotypes, which are rooted in benevolent
sexism, are rewarded with adoration. Thus, certain women do not feel the need to challenge a
complementary view of societal gender roles. Through endorsing benevolent sexism, society
is less likely to challenge the rampant gender inequality that exists today.
Unpaid Labour and the Invisibilisation of Women’s Work

By: Vineet John Samuel (8 March 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/economy/unpaid-work-women-and-the-burden-
of-unpaid-labour-63035
In mainstream understandings of an economy’s welfare, the central figures of discussion are a

country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as well as employment figures. GDP is a
“monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced within a
country for a particular period of time”, while the employment figures calculate the number
of citizens engaged in some form of employment for a particular number of days within a
year. A 2009 report commissioned by then French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated that
because GDP is “treated as a measure of economic well-being”, it “can lead to misleading
indicators about how well-off people are and entail the wrong policy decisions”.
The centrality of these indicators to discussions on economic welfare, means that often, good
GDP growth figures and low unemployment rates are taken as signs that the country is
prospering and that all its citizens are sharing in this prosperity. However both of these
metrics can prove to be deceptive indicators, as they often conceal as much as they reveal,
and good growth and employment figures may not necessarily mean assured welfare for all.
The traditional Indian imagination of a household almost takes it for granted that certain jobs
within the household are to be performed only by women. These tasks can include domestic
upkeep, cooking, cleaning and childcare, while a broader definition would also include the
hours of emotional labour that goes into holding families together and putting up with
patriarchal constructions of what women are expected to tolerate and expect.
However, regardless of the hours of the day women put in to this domestic labour, the work is
often dismissed as daily chores and not accounted for in either the GDP or the employment
metrics. Since the work done at home doesn’t necessarily generate products and services for
the market, economists often ignore it in their calculations and the result is that a massive
portion of the work done by women goes unrecognised as labour and is treated as a duty.
“While much of this imbalance is explained by the discrepancy in care-giving and unpaid
work, institutional and policy inertia, outdated organisational structures, and discrimination,
one additional explanatory factor is the skills differentials in the types of degrees women and
men seek out in their education,” says the World Economic Forum (WEF).
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In India, this phenomenon is at its worst, with women putting in 352 minutes a day into
domestic work while men put in only 51.8. While to the common observer, this might not
seem like a problem, the fact that 49% of women in a country of 1.3 billion people don’t have
their work accounted for in the annual GDP, throws up several problems.
The proportion of “unpaid work per day is far higher for women than men globally, while in
case of India on average 66% of women’s work is unpaid,” says the WEF. According to the
Census in 2011, people engaged in household duties have been treated as non-workers, even
when 159.9 million women stated that “household work” was their main occupation. In a
report, the International Monetary Fund also suggested that if women’s participation in the
economy was raised to that of men, then India could grow its GDP by 27%.
While the global value of unpaid domestic labour by women hovers around 13%, in India, the
number is almost 40% of its current GDP. In recognising this labour as genuine work, the
benefit to India in terms of its GDP figures is almost self-evident, more importantly however,
is its potential at the level of families for women’s empowerment around the country.
Recognition is one of the most central processes in empowerment, and for more than
150 million women in the country, the recognition of their primary occupation as genuine
work, that contributes not only to the family but to the welfare of the nation as a whole, is
such that it gives them a claim to equality within the patriarchal Indian household that only
recognises the work done by men.
Second, it moves us towards a more holistic understanding of labour that isn’t purely tied to
the exchange value of a service on the market, and recognises an extremely intimate form of
labour that has proved essential to keeping the unit of the family intact and functional.
Third, once recognised as work, this arena of unpaid domestic labour that is dominated
almost entirely by women can become one where women can demand some degree of parity
in terms of the time and energy expended on it. Without the recognition of unpaid women’s
labour as genuine work, the building block of this argument goes missing and recognition
becomes fundamental to this call for gender justice.
Aishwarya Jawalgekar sums it up best in Feminism in India: “Empowerment cannot be found

by simply rejecting the unpaid domestic work women have been shouldering for decades in
favour of working outside the homes. Because when women step out of the house to work,
the question of ‘who will do the housework’ still remains. And because domestic work is still
gendered, the responsibility eventually falls on women themselves. This promotes ideas like
women aren’t competent workers, or that they have other priorities beyond their work.”
A double burden (also called double day, second shift, and double duty) is the workload of
people who work to earn money, but who are also responsible for significant amounts of
unpaid domestic labour. In couples where both partners have paid jobs, women often spend
significantly more time than men on household chores and caring work, such as
childrearing or caring for sick family members. This outcome is determined in large part
by traditional gender roles that have been accepted by society over time.
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Maternity Leave in India

Multiple sources:
- https://www.india-briefing.com/news/maternity-leave-india-law-benefits-10294.html
- https://www.ungender.in/ungender-change-in-maternity-benefits-after-labour-code-
2020/
In 2017, India amended its law with regards to maternity benefits for women who have
worked for at least 80 days in the establishment. The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act
increased the duration of maternity leave from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for two surviving
children. In case a woman has more than two children, the leave is limited to 12 weeks only.
Some of the other important provisions of the Act include the following:
(i) A woman who adopts a child below three months or commissioning mothers can avail
maternity leave for up to 12 weeks (from when the child is handed over to the parent).
(ii) Depending on the nature of work, a new mother can now choose to work from home.
(iii) Every establishment with 50 or more employees is required to provide for crèche
facilities within a prescribed distance, which the women-employees can visit four times
during the day, including the regular rest interval.
(iv) Additional four weeks’ leave in case of illness supported by a doctor’s opinion.
(v) Employers must devise a non-discriminatory performance appraisal system
acknowledging such absences of female employees.
(vi) Employers must ensure that no woman works during the six weeks immediately
following the day of her delivery or her miscarriage. It is also illegal for an employer to
discharge or dismiss a woman employee on account of such absence.
(vii) Employers must not employ a pregnant woman employee to do any work of an arduous
nature or work that involves long standing hours.
To claim leave prior to expected delivery (up to 8 weeks), the employee should give a notice
in writing stating the date of absence from work and a certificate of pregnancy. The employer
is obliged to make payment in advance for this period. Following the date of delivery, the
employee must also send another notice with a certificate of delivery. Notably, the remaining
payment must be transferred within 48 hours. During the maternity period, women employees
are entitled to full wages.
In 2020, the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 was subsumed by a new Code of Social Security,
with some changes. From the day the Code comes into force, women working in various
establishments will have to seek the above maternity benefits under the Code of Social
Security, 2020 instead of the erstwhile law. Changes under the new Code include:
(i) A legal requirement to establish the identity of a woman seeking maternity benefits
through an Aadhaar number;
(ii) An enhancement in the punishment applicable in case an employer contravenes the
provisions to imprisonment for up to a term of six months or a fine of up to Rs. 50,000,
or both; and for a repeat offence, imprisonment for a term of two to three years and a
fine of Rs. 3,00,000; and
(iii) Permitting only the aggrieved woman and the government-appointed inspector-cum-
facilitator to approach a competent court to take cognizance of any offence under the
law (earlier, any office-bearer of a registered trade union of which an aggrieved woman
is a member or a registered voluntary organisation could file a complaint).
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India Needs a Menstrual Leave Policy

By: Urvashi Prasad (7 June 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/india-needs-a-menstrual-leave-
policy/article24105589.ece
The Menstruation Benefit Bill tabled by a Member of Parliament from Arunachal Pradesh
earlier this year triggered widespread debate on the need for India to put in place a system of
paid leave for all working women every month.
Several countries have introduced a menstrual leave provision for their employees. As early
as 1947, Japan passed a law allowing women with debilitating periods to take days off.
Similarly, in South Korea, women were granted menstrual leave from the year 2001 onwards.
Companies like Nike have also adopted similar policies.
While not commonly known, in India, the Bihar Government has been offering two days of
period leave to women employees since 1992. Women can decide which two days of the
month they would like to take off without having to provide any justification for doing so. In
the recent past, a handful of private companies like the Mumbai-based media firm,
Culture Machine, have also started offering menstrual leave.
Those who are not in favour of the policy argue that it will only prejudice employers against
hiring women and lead to their alienation at work. They also believe that most women are
capable of functioning at full capacity even during their periods and for the handful of
women who do suffer debilitating symptoms, the existing sick leave option is adequate. Some
have even cited the example of Serena Williams who won a major tournament while she was
pregnant highlighting that women do not need any “special” treatment. Another concern that
has been voiced on social media is that menstrual leave policies might discriminate against
men as women would get additional days off every year.
While one can certainly argue against the need for a period leave policy, the problem with
these arguments is that they only perpetuate age old biases and do little to take the gender
equity discourse forward in a constructive and balanced manner.
Firstly, just because some women can pull off remarkable feats their examples should not be
used to discredit the experiences of other women. For instance, some studies have shown that
women are indeed better multi-taskers than men. This, however, does not mean that as a
society we should expect every woman to be able to multi-task with ease or make her feel
inferior if she is unable to do so.
Secondly, those who are biased against hiring women do not need additional excuses. After
all, women continue to be laid off for demanding the implementation of maternity
entitlements. So, should we do away with maternity leave as well? Just about anything can be
a pretext for patriarchal discrimination or oppression. In a factory in Kerala, female workers
were allegedly strip searched by their supervisors to identify the “culprit” who had left a used
sanitary napkin in the lavatory.
Third, the fact is that women are biologically different. This is precisely why maternity leave
is more common than paternity leave. Also, while it is true that periods are debilitating only
for some women, the numbers are not insignificant. For instance, according to the Clinical
Evidence Handbook published by the BMJ Publishing Group, UK, 20% of women suffer
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from symptoms like cramps, nausea, fever, and weakness which are debilitating enough to
hamper their daily activities. Several women also experience reduced emotional control and
decreased concentration. Further, estimates of the Endometriosis Society India suggest that
over 25 million women suffer from endometriosis, a chronic condition in which period pain
is so bad that women nearly pass out from it. While numbers are important, we must
appreciate that in a civilised society even one woman should not have to prove her
competence at the cost of her well-being or find ways of “controlling” her condition to avoid
being labelled as unstable.
Fourth, the reasoning that such a policy would discriminate against men is extremely illogical
because it conveniently overlooks the fact that women do not enjoy the discomfort caused by
periods. Moreover, women in India get paid much less than men, therefore even if they are
offered a few days of extra leave, it would not compensate for their substantially lower
wages.
Thus, it would be worthwhile developing a policy that allows women the flexibility to take
time off for periods should they need to while also providing them with options like working
from home. Flexibility is important because women’s experience of menstruation varies
widely. Of course, merely designing such a policy is meaningless. For its implementation to
be effective, it must be introduced alongside measures to increase the participation of women
in the workforce and make our workplaces more gender sensitive. For instance, we also need
to ensure access to separate toilets for men and women with facilities for disposal of sanitary
napkins in all workplaces.
Menstruation is a perfectly natural biological process, not a disease or a disability. However,

it can range from a slightly discomforting to a severely debilitating experience for women.
Therefore, instead of requiring women to adjust to workplaces designed for men, we need to
transform our workplaces to be inclusive and sensitive to the needs of all employees.
Why Many Women in Maharashtra’s Beed District have no Wombs

By: Radheshyam Jadhav (11 April 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/agri-business/why-half-the-women-
in-maharashtras-beed-district-have-no-wombs/article26773974.ece
“You will hardly find women with wombs in these villages. These are villages of womb-less
women,” says Manda Ugale, gloom in her eyes. Sitting in her tiny house in Hajipur village, in
the drought-affected Beed district of Maharashtra’s Marathwada region, she struggles to talk
about the painful topic.
Women in Vanjarwadi, where 50% of the women have had hysterectomies, say that it is the
“norm” in villages to remove the uterus after having two or three children. The majority of
these women are cane cutters and migrate to the sugar belt of western Maharashtra during the
cane cutting season; with the drought intensifying, the number of migrants multiplies. “The
mukadam (contractor) is keen to have women without wombs in his group of cane cutters,”
says Satyabhama, another cane-cutter.
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Lakhs of men and women from the region migrate to work as cane cutters between October
and March. Contractors draw up contracts with the husband and wife counted as one unit.
Cane cutting is a rigorous process and if the husband or wife takes a break for a day, the
couple has to pay a fine of INR 500 per day to the contractor for every break. Menstrual
periods hinder work and attract fines. The answer, in Beed, is to go in for a hysterectomy so
the women no longer have them.
“After a hysterectomy, there is no chance of menstrual periods. So, there is no question of

taking a break during cane cutting. We cannot afford to lose even a rupee,” says Satyabhama.
Contractors say that during menstrual periods, women want a break for a day or two and
work is halted. “We have a target to complete in a limited timeframe and hence we don’t want
women who would have periods during cane cutting,” said Dada Patil, a contractor. Patil
insists that he and other contractors don’t force the women to have a surgery; rather, it is a
choice made by their families. Interestingly, the women said that the contractors give them an
advance for a surgery and that the money is recovered from their wages.
Achyut Borgaonkar of Tathapi, an organisation that has conducted a study on this issue, said:
“In the cane cutter community, menstrual periods are considered a problem and they think
surgery is the only option to get rid of it. But this has a serious impact on the health of the
women as they develop a hormonal imbalance, mental health issues, gain weight etc. We
observed that even young girls at the age of 25 have undergone this surgery.”
Bandu Ugale, Satyabhama’s husband and a cane cutter himself, explains the logic behind the
practice. “A couple gets about INR 250 after cutting a tonne of sugarcane. In a day, we cut
about 3-4 tonnes of cane and in an entire season of 4-5 months a couple cuts about 300 tonnes
of sugarcane. What we earn during the season is our yearly income as we don’t get any work
after we come back from cane cutting,” says Ugale. “We can’t afford to take a break even for
a day. We have to work even if we have health problems. There is no rest and women having
periods is an additional problem,” he explains.
Septuagenarian Vilabai says that the life of a cane cutter woman is hellish. She hints that
there is repeated sexual exploitation of women by contractors and their men. “Cane cutters
have to live in cane fields or near sugar mills in a tent. There are no toilets. It becomes even
more difficult for a woman if she has periods in these conditions,” says the old woman. Many
women in villages in this parched landscape said private medical practitioners prescribe a
hysterectomy surgery even if they complain of normal abdominal pain or a white discharge.
Why Workplace Sexual Harassment is about Power

By: Abhaya Tatavarti (3 April 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/why-workplace-sexual-harassment-about-
power-99415
A common myth about sexual harassment at the workplace, like other forms of sexual
violence, is that it is an act of lust or love. Feminist research has shown that sexual
harassment is about power and that it is an iteration of power over others. As Anita Hill, who
famously spoke out publicly about sexual harassment at the workplace, says, it is an abuse of
power and should be treated as such. It is used as a tool to control and sustain power
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inequalities. Changing social relations and workplace dynamics demand that dominant or
privileged identities must make space for historically excluded and oppressed groups. One of
the ways to resist inclusion and maintain the status quo is sexual harassment. As sexual
harassment is a result of unchecked power, let us examine a few modes of power and
privilege in the Indian workplace.
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act,
2013 is rooted in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW) and the Vishaka Guidelines of 1997. The Vishaka judgement was a result
of the alleged brutal retaliation that Bhanwari Devi faced for doing her job. Five men from
the dominant Gujar community in Bhateri, Rajasthan gang-raped her for attempting to stop a
child-marriage between two powerful Gujar families. It was part of her job, as a sathin under
the Women Development Programme, to deter child marriages in her community. The
incident of Bhanwari Devi reflects various intersections of power; she was a woman of an
oppressed caste and she was gaining power in her community. It was an expression of power
against her caste and gender identity. Rape was used as a retaliatory measure for daring to
challenge both a strongly held belief and a powerful family.
According to sociological and psychological research, sexual harassment is a result of

unequal power structures. In awareness workshops, one often gets asked, “Why does the law
only protect women?” As sexual harassment is a result of power imbalances, in society we
see that power is unevenly distributed amongst men and women. Because of this, perpetrators
often tend to be men, and survivors often tend to be women or gender non-conforming
individuals. Of course, there are exceptions to this, but data and research shows that women
are disproportionately affected by sexual harassment at workplaces. While a gender-neutral
law would be more reflective of various gender identities and inclusive of the LGBTQIA+
community’s experiences, it is also specifically aimed to rebalance a patriarchal inequality.
For example, Jackson Katz’s viral chart about the precautions men and women take every day
against sexual assault revealed the pervasive disparity that exists in their daily lives.
When we enter the workplace, we often unwittingly reproduce societal inequalities. Even
today, workplaces and institutions tend to be largely homogenous. Not only do workplaces
lack diversity, but senior leadership is also overwhelmingly homogenous; last year India
ranked fifth lowest in the number of women in leadership positions. Caste, class, gender,
and sexual identity are some other diversity markers that are poorly represented in
workplaces. Lack of representation in senior leadership, combined with a lack of diversity in
workforces reinforces skewed power relations. According to Professor Ben Voyer, research
shows that those who are already predisposed to committing sexual harassment are further
emboldened by power. In an article exploring the link between #MeToo and the workplace
gender pay gap, he asserts that “management experts and executives say, harassment can be a
direct side effect of a workplace that slights women on everything from pay to promotions,
especially when the perception is that men run the show and women can’t speak up.”
Another unique aspect of the Indian workplace is the culture of deference. We are taught as
children to defer to authority and to never talk back. This manifests in deeply hierarchical
organisations, and feeds into impunity for those in power. It creates what is known as a
“power gap”, defined by Sam Adeyami as “the gap created by hierarchical leadership [that]
results in followers not providing feedback or questioning the leader”. In the context of
sexual harassment, wide power gaps could lead to hostile work environments that begin at the
top and trickle down to the entire work culture. What Susan Fowler described in her
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workplace at Uber is a classic example of this. It is important to create checks and balances
for leadership and to encourage respectful dissent. Large power gaps make perpetrators feel
like they can get away with their actions and people will feel like they cannot speak up.
As organisations, it is important to address sexual harassment holistically. One way to do this

is by mitigating power inequalities, e.g. actively discussing power inequalities in awareness
sessions about sexual harassment, conducting senior leadership conversations, holding
manager sensitisations, creating flatter organisational structures to reduce the power gap, and
having discussions about consent and power.
Rethinking Consent
By: Lelia Gowland (10 April 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a19600743/consent-romantic-
relationships-at-work-monica-lewinksy
Can a 22-year-old authentically consent to a sexual and romantic relationship with a boss
who wields power over her career and is decades her senior? Monica Lewinsky used to think
so, but now she isn’t sure. In a recent essay, she reassesses what she had previously
maintained was a consensual relationship with Bill Clinton. Due to their vast power
differential, she writes, “I’m beginning to entertain the notion that in such a circumstance the
idea of consent might well be rendered moot”.
In this #MeToo moment, society has dedicated tremendous focus to unwanted sexual
advances. But we’ve spent less time addressing the complexity of consent—who has the
power to give it, and what we should do about it.
After recently interviewing several women who accused powerful men of harassment, one
found that in each instance, the men had also engaged in “consensual” sexual relationships
with other women who worked for or with them, and were decades their junior. In at least
two of these situations, when the young women wanted to end things, they were fearful of the
repercussions. That these relationships were shrouded in secrecy made the women more
vulnerable to coercion and more difficult for them to seek help from friends and advisors.
Looking at how the American military handles sexual assault cases can help us understand
the relationship between power and consent. In 1997, Staff Sergeant Delmar Simpson was
accused of the sexual assault and rape of trainees at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
Of six victims, four testified that they neither asked him to stop nor explicitly refused his
advances, and one stated that he could not have known she did not want to have sex with him.
These interactions were considered rape for one primary reason: rank. Simpson’s hat and
badge were submitted into evidence as symbols of his “force” and their “fear”.
Simpson was sentenced to 25 years. Some argue that this punishment was excessive and
racially biased (Simpson is black), while others contend that it didn’t go far enough—that he
could have gotten a harsher punishment for rape in civilian courts. The judge, Colonel Paul
Johnston, noted that the power dynamics within the military create a “unique situation of
dominance and control” because soldiers in training “are conditioned to follow drill
sergeant’s orders”. Within a year of the Simpson case, the United States Army revised its
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policy to explicitly forbid romantic and sexual relationships between soldiers of different
ranks. In today’s American army, with rare exception, it is impossible for a subordinate to
legally consent to sex with someone of higher rank.
Critics argue that this policy is paternalistic, taking away a person’s ability to give consent.
But it’s necessary, as service members give up free will and individuality, and the expectation
becomes “obedient and disciplined performance” in service of military readiness.
In civilian life, as one talks with HR leaders, employment lawyers, and experts in human
sexuality, one wonders if this is where we’re headed—a culture where companies strive to
codify hierarchies and eliminate intimacy and connection in the workplace. What are the
implications of these types of policies? Considering that we spend many of our waking hours
with colleagues and that about 10% of us meet our spouses at work, it’s unrealistic to assume
that mere policies will prevent workplace relationships. Furthermore, it’s reductive to frame
all these relationships as unhealthy. Still, they often are.
Many sexual harassment scandals stem from abuses of power—which makes them inherently
problematic—and the problems that can result extend beyond the individuals engaging in
sexual activity. When leaders enter into romantic or sexual relationships with
subordinates, the risks are significant: actual or perceived coercion or favouritism,
undermining of team dynamics, and damage to organisational culture.
The solution isn’t to proscribe asexuality in the workplace through a “zero tolerance” policy
that prohibits office relationships. Such a policy would likely breed resentment and stoke the
sexual shame and secrecy that is, at least in part, at the root of the current unhealthy sexual
climate. Rather than forbidding sexual relationships at work, companies should consider
policies that require colleagues to disclose relationships. Transparency and disclosure can
safeguard against many of the issues that concern us most regarding abuse of power and
organisational culture. Let’s say we work together and start dating. If our relationship is
disclosed, you have to step out of meetings about my performance and compensation, and I
can no longer report to you. You’ll have to be more deliberate to avoid any perception of
preferential treatment. It also means that I’ll have greater protections and a support system if
the relationship ends poorly.
While the army’s policy is too strict for civilians, the risks of abuse of power and the potential
for coercion increase in office relationships and needs to be addressed. Required disclosure
and transparency of office relationships will not be a panacea, nor will any single policy
change. Navigating gender, sexuality, and power at work is complex and nuanced, and it
requires a similarly nuanced approach.
Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and

Redressal) Act, 2013
Source: https://www.indiafilings.com/learn/sexual-harassment-workplace
The preamble to the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and
Redressal) Act, 2013 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”) states: “sexual harassment results
in violation of the fundamental rights of a woman to equality under articles 14 and 15 of the
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Constitution of India and her right to life and to live with dignity under Article 21 of the
Constitution and right to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or
business which includes a right to a safe environment free from sexual harassment”.
Definition of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace
Sexual harassment includes any one or more of the following unwelcome acts or behaviour
(whether directly or by implication):
(i) physical contact and advances;
(ii) a demand or request for sexual favours;
(iii) making sexually coloured remarks;
(iv) showing pornography; or
(v) any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature.
The following, among other circumstances, if it occurs or is present in relation to or

connected with any act or behaviour of sexual harassment may amount to sexual harassment:
(i) implied or explicit promise of preferential treatment in her employment;
(ii) implied or explicit threat of detrimental treatment in her employment;
(iii) interfering with her work or creating an intimidating or offensive or hostile work
environment for her; or
(iv) humiliating treatment likely to affect her health or safety.
Duties and Responsibilities of All Employers
(i) Provide a safe working environment at the workplace which shall include safety from
persons coming into contact at the workplace;
(ii) Constitute an “Internal Complaints Committee”; where the offices or administrative
units of the workplace are located at different places or divisional or sub-divisional
level, the committee shall be constituted at all administrative units or offices;
(iii) Display at any conspicuous place in the workplace, the penal consequences of sexual
harassment; and the order constituting the Internal Committee;
(iv) Organise workshops and awareness programmes at regular intervals for sensitising the
employees with the provisions of the Act and orientation programmes for the members
of the Internal Committee;
(v) Provide necessary facilities to the Internal Committee or the Local Committee, as the
case may be, for dealing with the complaint and conducting an enquiry;
(vi) Assist in securing the attendance of respondent and witnesses before the Internal
Committee or the Local Committee, as the case may be;
(vii) Make available such information to the Internal Committee or the Local Committee, as
the case may be, as it may require having regard to the complaint made;
(viii) Provide assistance to the woman if she so chooses to file a complaint in relation to the
offence under the Indian Penal Code or any other law for the time being in force;
(ix) Cause to initiate action, under the Indian Penal Code, 1860 or any other law for the
time being in force, against the perpetrator, or if the aggrieved woman so desires, where
the perpetrator is not an employee, in the workplace at which the incident of sexual
harassment took place; and
(x) Monitor the timely submission of reports by the Internal Committee.
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Formation and Powers of the Internal Complaint Committee
The Internal Committee must consist of the following members, nominated by the employer:
(i) A Presiding Officer who shall be a woman employed at a senior level at the workplace
from amongst the employees;
(ii) Not less than two members from amongst employees preferably committed to the cause
of women or who have had experience in social work or have legal knowledge; and
(iii) One member from amongst NGOs or associations committed to the cause of women or
a person familiar with the issues relating to sexual harassment.
The committee must have at least one-half of the total members as women at all times. The
Presiding Officer and every member can hold office for a period not exceeding three years.
A committee constituted under the Act will have the same powers as vested in a Civil Court
under the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 when trying a suit in respect of the following:
(i) Summoning and enforcing the attendance of any person and examining him on oath;
(ii) Requiring the discovery and production of documents; and
(iii) Any other matter which may be prescribed.
The committee could recommend to the employer the following actions:

(i) Transfer the aggrieved woman or the respondent to any other workplace;
(ii) Grant leave to the aggrieved woman up to a period of three months.
(iii) Take action for sexual harassment as a misconduct under the service rules;
(iv) Deduct from the salary or wages of the respondent such sum as it may consider
appropriate to be paid to the aggrieved woman or to her legal heirs; or
(v) Grant such other relief to the aggrieved woman as may be prescribed.
Filing a Compliant
A written complaint on sexual harassment at the workplace must be made by the aggrieved
woman within a period of three months from the date of occurrence of an incident; in case of
a series of incidents, within a period of three months from the date of last incident. The
committee also has the powers to extend the time-limit for reporting by not more than
three months if it is satisfied that the circumstances were such which prevented the employee
from filing a complaint within the three-month period. The Act also lists prescribed persons
who may file a complaint on behalf of an aggrieved woman if she is unable to make a written
complaint by herself on account of her physical or mental incapacity, or death.
False or Malicious Complaint
Where the committee arrives at a conclusion that the allegation against the respondent is
malicious or the aggrieved woman or any other person making the complaint has made the
complaint knowing it to be false or the aggrieved woman or any other person making the
complaint has produced any forged or misleading document, it may recommend to the
employer to take action against the woman or the person who has made the complaint, in
accordance with the provisions of the service rules applicable to her or him, or in such
manner as may be prescribed. However, a mere inability to substantiate a complaint or
provide adequate proof need not attract action against the complainant under this provision.
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#MeToo: A Moment of Rupture

By: Paromita Chakrabarti (22 October 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/metoo-sexual-harassment-
workplace-tanushree-dutta-women-safety-a-moment-of-rupture-5411704
In the weeks since the #MeToo survivor accounts surfaced on social media calling out men in
powerful positions in the media and the entertainment industry for their sexual misconduct
and breach of trust, most conversations with friends and female colleagues have been about
how triggering the accounts of these incidents have been for all of us. Like most migrant first
or second-generation workers in cities that we have come to embrace as home, each of us has
experiences that we wish were never our burden to bear.
These experiences, however, make for excellent cautionary tales—the deep dark wood and
the ogre that you must avoid; except, far too often, the ogre proves to be a wily adversary. He
comes not in the guise of a stranger, but as a mentor; a boss; a friend you trust; a co-worker
who you get along fabulously with; a man you interviewed; a man with a legacy. A man who
could, with a gesture or an act, reduce your self-worth to nought.
The rules of social engagement have changed in new India. What hasn’t is the deeply
entrenched sexism in our cultural fabric that refuses to recognise consent as a wide-ranging
arc and women as equal partakers in it. For that would require, as a basic premise, a
recognition of the other as an adult whose language of desire, agency, and comfort needs
to be engaged with, negotiated, and respected. Our post-liberal approach to the interaction
between the sexes is still shackled by outdated moral codes, where even woke men view
gender as a power project: women either need to be rescued—“beti bachao”—or fit into slots
that make it easier for men to reduce them into types.
Yet, this time, women are refusing to toe the line. In the year since The New York Times’s
investigation outed Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator, and, an Indian law student
published a crowd-sourced list of academics accused of sexual misconduct, a dam seems to
have burst, taking with it the onus to suffer alone, and, in silence. For far too long, the joke’s
been on women. For far too long, they have identified as tired.
Women are finally speaking up and they are angry. Their language of dissent is still
formulating, still being shaped by the scars they bear, sharpened by fury, shame, or revulsion,
but they are no longer afraid. For far too long, they have been told how to live their lives.
They have been told to adjust, ignore, compromise—at home, in public spaces and at
workplaces. They have been told by leaders that “boys will be boys” so the onus of their
safety is on them. What sort of work entails hours so disruptive? A drink with a colleague; an
office party after work? Was the skirt too short, the smile too inviting? They have been put in
their place in the name of power, politics, she-meant-yes-even-though-she-said-no, or,
hey-she-asked-for-it; sometimes, for ambition or inexperience. Actually, they have been put
in their place for you-name-it-and-for-it.
A new sisterhood is squaring up to the challenges of the bro culture and asking for
accountability. They are holding each other’s hands and telling themselves: “We have been
there, too. We believe.” A sisterhood can achieve unusual things. It can take on a (former)
minister or a woke artist, a celebrated filmmaker or an actor accused of being complicit in the
sexual assault of a female colleague. To know that there are others behind you ready to take
up the baton should you falter or be browbeaten by the unequal power dynamics is a gift
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made possible by the struggles of women who have preceded us at the workplace without the
safety valve of the Vishaka guidelines, an ICC, or hope of redressal.
It is now time to extend this solidarity and embrace women outside urban workplaces, in
smaller cities and unorganised sectors, where the quantum of exploitation is far more severe
and the mechanism of redressal almost non-existent. For this, now, is our moment of rupture,
our hour of reckoning—“our country moving closer to its own truth and dread”.
Homophobia, Biphobia, Transphobia

Source: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/sexual-orientation-gender/sexual-
orientation/what-homophobia
Homophobia is the fear, hatred, discomfort with, or mistrust of people who are lesbian, gay,
or bisexual. Biphobia is fear, hatred, discomfort, or mistrust, specifically of people who are
bisexual. Similarly, transphobia is fear, hatred, discomfort with, or mistrust of people who are
transgender, genderqueer, or don’t follow traditional gender norms. Homophobia can take
different forms, including negative attitudes and beliefs about, aversion to, or prejudice
against bisexual, lesbian, and gay people. It’s often based in irrational fear and
misunderstanding, or rooted in conservative religious beliefs.
Homophobic people may use mean language and name-calling when talking about lesbian
and gay people. Biphobic people may tell bisexual people that it’s “just for attention”, or that
they’re inherently cheaters. In more extreme forms, homophobia and biphobia can cause
people to bully, abuse, and inflict violence. LGBTQ+ people may also experience
discrimination from religious institutions, companies, or the government, e.g. same-sex
couples not being allowed to marry, getting legally fired just for being LGBTQ+, or not being
allowed into certain housing.
Inclusive Workplace for PwD and LGBTQ+ Employees

By: Rashmi Ramesh and Nishtha Sabharwal (24 November 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/india-inc-is-not-
creating-inclusive-workplace-for-lgbt-employees-people-with-
disabilities/articleshow/66778071.cms
For Shyam Balasubramanian, life is tougher than most of his colleagues at the chip-designing
firm in Chennai where he is working. Reason: his sexuality. Balasubramanian, a transman,
says the management is extremely supportive, but that doesn’t stop the teasing and bullying
he has to face from elsewhere over his sexual identity. “I’ve been teased and bullied through
school and college, and for the most part of my professional life,” says Balasubramanian,
who has been working for nine years. “All this bullying makes connecting with my peers
very tough. Something as simple as gaining knowledge becomes hard because people refuse
to talk to me and share information.”
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Indian companies are increasingly taking steps to make the workplace more diverse and
inclusive, but much of these activities is about recruiting more women, that too often for
supporting, and not leadership, roles. People with disabilities (PwD) and LGBTQ+ (lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/ questioning, and other sexualities) communities usually
find little space in HR strategies, although there are exceptions. Despite the Supreme Court
making gay sex legal, people are frowned upon for their sexual orientation.
Workplaces have come a long way on diversity and inclusion (D&I) compared with what
they were even five years ago, but they still have much more to cover, says Rashmi Vikram,
senior manager at Community Business, a not-for-profit that looks to tackle workplace
inequality and promote social inclusion. “While gender diversity has been a key driver for
D&I, many other streams like PwD and LGBTQ+ still have a long way to go.”
Findings from a 2018 TimesJobs survey highlight the general attitude at the Indian
workplace. As high as 57% of the participants responded in the negative to a statement that
their companies openly recruited LGBTQ+ and candidates with disabilities. More than 55%
said they still experienced bias at the workplace, including over gender, ethnicity, and sexual
orientation. This is despite most companies having formal policies in place to stop
discrimination and harassment at the workplace and some even having dedicated diversity
officers to drive change. According to Nirmala Menon, founder of Interweave Consulting, the
primary role of such D&I professionals is to create and sustain a safe, respectful space for
employees, and enable a work environment where everyone can bring their whole and best
selves to work. But, at times, the executives who are supposed to ensure equity at workplace
are found to be at fault themselves.
In September, IT firm Tech Mahindra sacked its chief diversity officer, after an internal
investigation found that she had discriminated against and harassed a former employee over
his sexual orientation. It isn’t unusual to face such harassment at the workplace over one’s
sexual identity, says Balasubramanian. “I’ve heard derogatory comments from my peers on
how I look, my sense of style, and how I generally live my life.”
But changes are happening, say diversity experts. The speed of that, though, is slow, as
organisations often need to first bring in a change to the work culture at their offices, and
sensitise staff about even unconscious or unintended bias, before openly inducting employees
from the LGBTQ+ communities. Another impediment is that they may also have to create
enabling infrastructure, such as separate toilets, for employees from the LGBTQ+ and
PwD communities.
“Every employee should go through a mandatory sensitisation programme. Usage of right

pronouns, respecting preferred gender identity, comfort to use their restroom of choice (if
there is no gender-neutral restroom), immediate escalation matrix if any homophobia is
experienced, and a zero-tolerance policy are very important,” said June A, programme
manager at Solidarity Foundation. “As more inclusive measures, the company can provide
easy accommodation options, insurance coverage for SRS (sex reassignment surgery),
and same-sex partner benefits. Companies have to practice equity, not just equality.”
Solidarity Foundation recently joined Capgemini and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) to
organise a workshop to help companies take forward actionable points to strengthen
transgender inclusion. Srikanth Suvvaru, chair of RBS India Rainbow Network and head of
candidate attraction and engagement at RBS, said the bank initiated inclusivity policies
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because the management wanted it to be a place where people could bring their true selves to
work. “We worked on policies that would bring in inclusivity for all our employees, showed
public support by participating in pride parades, and educated and sensitised people on what
it means to belong to the LGBTQ+ community, and what challenges they face within the
corporate space,” Suvvaru said. RBS was the first company in India to publicly extend
medical benefits to same-sex partners and give surrogacy leave irrespective of the
partner’s gender.
Kolkata’s Medica Superspecialty Hospital is not only hiring members from the transgender
community, but also helping skill them. “Medica has a tie-up with a vocational institute
providing training to people from the community. Depending on the requirement and demand
in the sector, we look at possible hires from the institute. We are also approaching NGOs and
associations to let them know about our inclusive recruitment policy,” said Sudhanshu Roy,
president (group HR) at Medica. The hospital recently hired two paid interns from the
transgender community as operation-theatre technicians. Jyothsna Hirode, who has been
working in the field of D&I for more than a decade, suggests unbiasing workshops—these
help participants stand in the shoes of those who are excluded—as a step for sensitisation
toward inclusion. Unwavering support from the leadership is a must.
If there are discussions ongoing around hiring women and also people from the LGBTQ+
community, the marginalisation faced by persons with disabilities has been stark for many
years now. The challenge, experts believe, is that it requires a lot more conscious decisions by
organisations to make employees and infrastructure, including training and skilling,
more PwD-friendly. Many organisations don’t even have PwD-friendly toilets. According to
the TimesJobs survey, 25% of employees think their organisation’s management is not
committed to meeting the needs of employees with impairments or disabilities. Even the IT-
ITES industry, which is in the forefront for fostering changes to workplace culture, is lagging
when it comes to PwD hiring. A Nasscom study had found the representation of people with
disabilities in the industry headcount at a paltry 1%.
Experts say it is imperative for today’s organisations to be diverse. “Every organisation is at

the risk of facing disruption, and the best way for you to safeguard yourself is by making sure
that your organisation has the ability to look at every issue from different perspectives, rather
than just have clones who all come from the same backgrounds, the same experiences, and
will mostly have the same viewpoints,” says Ronesh Puri, MD of headhunting firm
Executive Access.
While that may be the case, many companies in India find it difficult to articulate a
compelling business case for why they are focusing on a specific D&I approach, says Vikram
of NGO Community Business. “We observed that some companies may have started to focus
on it because it is a current business trend, the ‘right thing’ to do or because it is mandated by
the firm’s global headquarters,” she says. “As a result of not always having a clear business
case, for some companies, D&I has become an initiative or event-based intervention rather
than a well-developed strategy linked to business goals.” This is probably the area where
more change is required for wholesome and true inclusion to happen at our workplace.
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HIV AIDS (Prevention and Control) Act, 2017

Dated: 11 September 2018 (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/hiv-aids-prevention-and-control-act-
heres-all-you-need-to-know-about-the-landmar/316390
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
(AIDS) Act, 2017 (hereinafter referred to as “the Act”) is a crucial piece of legislation that
can be instrumental in ensuring equal rights to persons affected by HIV and AIDS in getting
treatment, and admission in educational institutions and jobs.
India is a signatory to the Declaration of Commitment on HIV and AIDS (2001). The
declaration aims to address the problems of HIV and AIDS in all its aspects and to secure a
global commitment to enhancing coordination and intensification of national, regional, and
international efforts to combat it in a comprehensive manner. The Act is a step to give effect
to the Declaration with intention to “protect and secure the human rights of persons who are
HIV-positive, affected by HIV and AIDS, and vulnerable to the said virus and syndrome”.
The Act has 14 chapters dealing with different aspects for the protection and empowerment of
HIV-positive persons, from providing a safe working environment, prohibition of
discrimination, and appointment of an ombudsman, to strategies for reduction of risk, and
special provisions such as right of residence, living wills for guardianship, and testamentary
guardianship. Discrimination includes denial, termination, discontinuation, or unfair
treatment with regard to: (i) employment, (ii) educational establishments, (iii) healthcare
services, (iv) residing or rending property, (v) standing for public or private office, and
(vi) provision of insurance (unless based on actuarial studies).
Here are some salient features of the Act:
(i) No HIV test, medical treatment, or research will be conducted on a person without his
informed consent, and no person shall be compelled to disclose his HIV status for
obtaining employment or services, except with his informed consent or by a court order.
(ii) The legislation has provisions to safeguard the property rights of HIV positive people,
adding that every HIV infected or affected person below the age of 18 years has the
right to reside in a shared household and enjoy the facilities of the household.
(iii) The Act also prohibits any individual from publishing information or advocating
feelings of hatred against HIV positive persons and those living with them.
(iv) The Act seeks to prevent and control the spread of HIV and AIDS and creates
mechanisms for redressing the complaints of persons infected with HIV and AIDS.
Violation of the Act by publishing information about people living with HIV or advocating
hatred against them attracts imprisonment from three months to two years or a maximum fine
of INR one lakh, or both. As per the Act, governments shall also take measures to prevent the
spread of HIV or AIDS, provide anti-retroviral therapy and infection management for
affected persons, and facilitate access to welfare schemes, especially for women and children.
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UNIT 4: COMMERCE AND CASTE
Untouchability in Modern India

By: Radhamany Sooryamoorthy (March 2008) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240711506_Untouchability_in_Modern_In
dia
Dalits constitute about 170 million people, 17% of the Indian population. Over three-quarters
of them live in rural areas of India. This number is more or less equal to that of the
upper-caste Hindus in rural India who suppress, oppress, and subjugate Dalits relentlessly.
Dalit settlements are usually located west of the main village where the sun sets. The cultural
geography of the Indian village is laid out to assign to Dalit dwellings the lowliest and least
desirable areas such as those close to the most polluted areas.
Remaining poor, Dalits lack essential resources to accumulate wealth and are to be engaged
in low-paid and low-mobility occupations. This is called “occupational segregation”, a
consequence of their social segregation. Low-paid or underpaid jobs do not assure them
regular employment either. Compared to any other social group in India, Dalits have one of
the highest rates of unemployment in the country.
Untouchability against Dalits is firmly grounded in economic and political inequality and
consistently perpetuated by the ideology of Hinduism and its caste hierarchy. It is expressed
in a wide diversity of forms in the Dalit–non-Dalit relationship, which is shaped by both
material and non-material factors. Untouchability can be observed in three main spheres: the
secular public sphere, the religious-cultural and personal sphere, and the economic sphere.
Untouchability is extensive and practised mostly in the interpersonal and cultural-religious

spheres, such as discriminatory prohibitions on entry of Dalits into the homes of non-Dalits
(in 70% of the villages studied), on food sharing and temple entry, and ill-treatment of Dalit
women by non-Dalit women. In 30–40% of the villages, Dalits are refused entry to shops or
are seated separately in teashops and restaurants. They are not allowed to enter village shops
in at least one-third of the villages, or they cannot come close to a shop-counter but have to
stand away from it even if they are permitted to make a purchase. To avoid direct contact
with Dalits, commodities are kept on the ground for them to collect, where they also leave the
money. In more than a quarter of the villages, Dalits cannot enter police stations to register
their complaints or the public distribution outlets through which subsidised food is supplied.
When Dalits want to draw water from a public source, there are protests, fights, and the loss
of lives. Washermen and barbers either refuse to serve or discriminate against Dalits in about
47% of the villages. Dalits are not expected to wear footwear, but have to carry them in their
hands while using upper-caste neighbourhoods and thoroughfares; nor are they supposed to
unfold their umbrellas in the rain or in the hot sun. If they are on bicycles, they have to
dismount instantly. Dalit youth cannot wear sunglasses or fashionable clothes for fear of
being humiliated by reprisals, beatings and violence.
Entry to places of worship is the most contested arena of conflict and violence, given the
importance ascribed to religion in the lives of Indians. Any attempt to enter such premises
that are used by the upper caste triggers resistance that ultimately ends in caste flare-ups,
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violence, and deaths. In 64% of the villages this remains the case, with a few exceptions in
Kerala. Denial of access to public cremation/ burial grounds is normal in half the villages.
In the labour market, Dalits are offered the worst kinds of jobs that they do not want to do.
The caste system prescribes certain occupations for specific castes and the Untouchables
were always given the unclean occupations associated with death (removing carcasses) and
human waste (cleaning sewers, carrying headloads). This continues to be the practice in all
states, where Dalits manually, and often with bare hands, remove human waste from public
and private dry latrines. Alternative technologies for waste management are available but
because Dalits are there to do this work, it is perpetuated.
The case of Narayanamma, who works in the Anantpur municipality (a government

institution) in Andhra Pradesh, is both disgusting and demeaning to humanity. It is her daily
job to collect faeces with her broom on to a metal plate and then transfer it to her basket,
which she carries on her head. She says that the odour of faeces never leaves her body even
after washing or bathing. It remains in her hair, on her skin, in her clothes and the smell even
permeates the food she eats. People like Narayanamma have no option but to carry on with
similar occupations as they are powerless and unable to find alternative means. But the
youngsters, to escape from these menial jobs and the stigma attached to them, migrate to
towns and cities. In 80% of the villages in Tamil Nadu, only Dalits perform these unclean
occupations of removing carcasses, digging graves, and clearing garbage.
Dalits are paid less than the market wage or the non-Dalit wages (in 25% of the villages).
Delayed payments, receiving wages from a distance, or having them thrown at them to avoid
direct contact, physical abuse and violence at workplaces are common. Enterprising Dalits
who try to own and cultivate agricultural land are faced with the hostile and aggressive
attitude of the upper castes in the same way as when public land is used for building colonies
for them. In about one-third of the villages, Dalits cannot sell any goods in the local markets
and are excluded from the sale and purchase of essential commodities like milk (47% of the
villages). Dalits are denied space along with non-Dalit vendors, particularly when they are
selling the same products. These are the upper-caste techniques to profit from the
vulnerability of Dalits.
Women are the worst affected among Dalits even though they have relatively greater
autonomy in their homes than their upper-caste counter-parts. Women make up the majority
of landless labourers and scavengers. They are the “oppressed of the oppressed”. In addition
to the sufferings that Dalits in modern India are subjected to, Dalit women live under the
patriarchal power of both the upper-caste and their own men, while being exposed themselves
to specific forms of untouchability including sexual oppression. Women are always an easy
target for the upper caste; they are brutally raped and killed at the slightest provocation of
conflict. For the same job, women are paid less than men. Often they are given the hardest
work. In the workplace, a clear division between Dalit and non-Dalit women is obvious; they
sit and eat separately, and are careful not to touch any non-Dalit women because this might
spark a stream of verbal abuse and humiliation.
Dalit women report that non-Dalit women, as against non-Dalit men, are more rigid in
practising untouchability. Sharing their experiences, a few women in Kerala revealed that
while working in the households of the upper caste, they had to give in to upper-caste men’s
sexual urges. In Bihar, while Dalit women sell bamboo products from door to door,
upper-caste men waylay them and propose a price not for their goods but for sexual favours.
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Ironically, pollution due to contact is not an issue at all when Dalit women are exploited for
the sexual needs of the upper caste. Women in Tamil Nadu and Kerala are used to adopting a
humble demeanour: bending their heads, speaking in a low voice, and posing in submission,
before the upper caste. Like their men, Dalit women face restrictions on entering public
places like temples, hotels, eating places, and shops. In the political realm too, their presence
is deliberately prevented. Elected Dalit women are excluded from caste councils and village
panchayats. On those rare opportunities of getting government employment, women are still
discriminated against by their colleagues and the public alike.
In some villages, notably in Kerala, signs of change are visible. Some Dalit women have
married upper-caste men. They are obtaining increased access to public spaces through their
participation in decentralised programmes. Participation in politics and protest movements is
a manifestation of the growing rejection of their subservient status.
Violence against Dalits is widespread and cruel. When Dalits are compelled to resist the
intolerable forms of untouchability, they face the risk of social and economic boycotts by the
upper caste. Instances of brutal acts of inhumanity (walking them naked in the street, forcing
them to eat excreta, raping their women, gouging out the eyes, and lynching) are regularly
reported from across the country. The number of reported cases (murder, rapes, grievous hurt,
kidnappings, and robberies against Dalits), which shows only the tip of the iceberg, is rising
year after year. Separate empirical studies also concur with this extensive nature of atrocities
perpetrated by the upper caste against Dalits in the form of physical abuse, humiliation,
sexual exploitation, residential segregation, social boycott, and discriminatory treatment.
Dalits are quite aware that their position on the lowest rungs of the economic and social
hierarchy is due to the dominance of Brahmins and other upper castes. Resistance to the
injustices meted out to Dalits takes the form of passive resistance to militant retaliation. Dalit
movements time and again address these issues and raise them as human rights issues to get a
universal resonance. They compare their unending struggle with the struggle against
Apartheid in South Africa, and their imprisoned leaders with Nelson Mandela. Unfortunately,
Dalit movements in Tamil Nadu, like many other political parties in India, are riven by
factionalism, personalism, and contradictions.
Being conscious of their position in the current social hierarchy, Dalits have sought ways and
means to upgrade their social standing. Shedding their caste identities and adopting
upper-caste and western names, similar to Srinivas’s concept of sanskritisation, form part of
their strategy in this regard. Consumerism too facilitates the equalisation of status and social
mobility. However, these attempts are not tolerated by the upper castes and those who control
power and resources. When Untouchables switched their traditional occupation in
Andhra Pradesh, they were abused and beaten. Migration from their native villages to cities,
towns and even the Gulf States and Asian countries where their original identity as a Dalit is
no more a burden or a stigma, offers them the freedom to choose the life and occupation of
their choice. Ambedkar’s call to “educate, organise, and struggle” has an unrelenting impact
on the minds of Dalits. As shown in studies, none of them questioned the need for educating
their children. Instead, they have high expectations for their children, hoping that they will
make their lives more liveable in the near future.
Dalit self-assertion and unity is expressed in their formation into groups and organisations.
These are found all over the country at state, district, and village levels, to foster the interests
of their women, men and youth. Formation of political parties and their active participation in
PAGE 56 OF 116
electoral politics have been influential in improving their living conditions. Dalit movements
today competently challenge the power of the dominant castes at the local level, and have
conscientised and politicised people to fight for their rights and dignity. But Dalit movements
are often reduced to voicing grievances rather than campaigning proactively for social
change. They struggle for human dignity, social inclusion, and equality of access to social
spheres that are enshrined in the Constitution. Alienated from resources including land,
the skills of Dalits are culturally demeaned. Land reforms have not brought them succour as a
majority of them do not own any land but depend on others for employment. Their struggles,
as in the case of Dalit movements in general, are therefore caught in the double bind of
poverty, which are both an inspiration for and a hindrance to active political participation.
Poverty perpetuates subordination and shuffles their collective efforts. Movements lack
adequate resources to carry on with their agenda.
Their belief in the Indian judiciary to redress their grievances is strengthening, as is evident
from their increased use of the justice system. Networks established in the police and
administration also work in their favour. This is a turnaround for them from the past, in which
their complaints against upper-caste people fell on deaf ears in the police or met with
violence. Being aware of the existence of laws that protect them from discrimination and
violence, Dalits are taking to peaceful legal means.
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989

Dated: 25 April 2018 (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://medium.com/@dalithistorynow/in-dalit-history-legal-protections-the-sc-st-
prevention-of-atrocities-act-1989-e3fb5cae3402
The preamble to the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (hereinafter referred to
as “the Act”) states that the Act is set up “to prevent the commission of offences of atrocities
against the members of SCs and STs, to provide for Special Courts for the trial of such
offences, and for the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of such offenses, and for matters
connected therewith or incidental thereto”. The Act prohibits the inflicting any of the
following on SC/ ST persons:
(i) Putting any inedible or obnoxious substance into the mouth.

(ii) Dumping excreta, sewage, carcasses, or other obnoxious substances on their premises.
(iii) Garlanding with footwear or parading naked or semi-naked.
(iv) Forcibly removing clothes from the person, tonsuring of head, removing moustaches,
painting face or body or any other similar act, which is derogatory to human dignity.
(v) Corrupting the water of any spring, reservoir, or other source used by them.
(vi) Obstructing from using common property resources of an area, or burial or cremation
ground, river, stream, spring, well, tank, cistern, water-tap, or other watering place, or
any bathing ghat, any public conveyance, any road, or passage.
(vii) Obstructing from mounting or riding bicycles or motor cycles or wearing footwear or
new clothes in public places or taking out wedding procession, or mounting a horse or
any other vehicle during wedding processions.
(viii) Obstructing from entering any place of worship which is open to the public or taking
out any religious, social, or cultural processions including jatras.
(ix) Threatening to impose social or economic boycott.
PAGE 57 OF 116
(x) Intentionally insulting or intimidating with the intent to humiliate.

(xi) Causing harm or mental agony on claims of practicing witchcraft/ being a witch.
(xii) Dedicating a woman to a deity as a devadasi.
(xiii) Intentionally touching a woman in a sexual manner without her consent.
(xiv) Using words, acts, or gestures of a sexual nature towards a woman.
(xv) Forcing “begar” or other forms of forced or bonded labour.
(xvi) Compelling to dispose or carry human or animal carcasses, or to dig graves.
(xvii) Forcing, employing, or permitting to do manual scavenging.
(xviii) Destroying crops or wrongfully occupying or cultivating any land owned by them, or
in their possession, or allotted to them.
(xix) Interfering with voting rights through violence or intimidation.
(xx) Wrongfully dispossessing from their land or premises or interfering with the
enjoyment of those rights, including forest rights, water, or irrigation facilities.
(xxi) Destroying, damaging, or defiling an object known to be held sacred/in high esteem.
(xxii) Falsely prosecuting or subjecting to false legal proceedings.
(xxiii) A public servant wrongfully causing an injury.
The Act mandates stringent standards for investigating complaints filed under it:
(i) The investigating officers should be police officers not below the rank of Deputy
Superintendent of Police with experience and ability to investigate such cases.
(ii) The investigation should be completed and a chargesheet filed within 30 days.
(iii) Anticipatory bail is never to be made available to persons accused of offences.
(iv) Where required, Special Courts are to be set up to them to ensure speedy trial.
(v) Exemplary punishment is required to be set at a scale much higher than under the IPC.
(vi) Neglect of official duties of public servants is deemed punishable.
(vii) Financial assistance and rehabilitation are to be mandatorily provided to victims.
(viii) Victims are required to be paid travel and maintenance allowances so that they are able
travel to court hearings and legal proceedings.
Despite the robust law, filing a complaint is often difficult, since victims experience
dismissal at police stations; the police co-operate with upper-caste perpetrators to file false
and vexatious counter-cases on victims and their families, or perpetrate further violence on
complainants; intimidation causes victims to take back their filed complaints. Besides, the
various stringent standards are often not implemented in practice. In India, a crime continues
to be committed against a Dalit every 15 minutes and at least six Dalit women are raped
every day. From 2007 to 2017, there has been a 66% increase in crimes against Dalits, and a
doubling in the number of rapes of Dalit and Adivasi women. And while chargesheets under
the Act are filed at an already low rate of 77%, the conviction rate is abysmal at only 15.4%.
Caste Violence and Discrimination in Urban India

By: Ashwini Deshpande (11 December 2017) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://thewire.in/caste/ugly-reality-caste-violence-discrimination-urban-india
We rarely imagine metropolitan cities, supposedly melting pots, as being sites of caste-based
crimes, as the urban arena is expected to dissolve and obliterate caste distinctions. Caste is
prima facie anonymous in urban India; urban (upper-caste) Indians would forcefully insist
PAGE 58 OF 116
that caste is either dead or dying, as forces of urbanisation, globalisation, and modernisation
are sweeping away antiquated social distinctions, and fostering a climate of “meritocracy”,
which recognises and rewards individual merit or ability on a level playing field.
In this context, the 2016 report of the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), which for the
first time has released separate figures for 19 metropolitan cities on crimes against SCs/ STs,
is enlightening. It provides data for three years (2014-2016) for 19 large cities, with
populations of over 20 lakhs each. The data compiles crimes that are reported and recorded.
Thus, any comparison of change or levels needs to be made with caution, as it might reflect
differences in reporting, and not in the actual incidence of crime. Nevertheless, these numbers
are indicative, and we can make some inescapable conclusions.
What is noteworthy about the caste violence data from the metropolitan cities is that it is not
negligible, indicating very clearly that caste consciousness is far from dead in urban India.
India’s “Silicon Valley” cities, poster children of modern, globalising India, temples of
cutting-edge information technology, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, reported 207 and 139
incidents respectively in 2016. Lucknow and Patna, with 262 and 241 cases respectively,
were at number one and number two spots in the incidence/ reporting ranking, respectively.
Second, it would be reasonable to view these figures as the tip of the iceberg, which means
that these numbers hide more than they reveal, as several caste-based crimes and atrocities
never get reported. The behemoth establishments of police and law enforcement appear
daunting even to the well-heeled, and pose almost insurmountable multi-faceted challenges
for the poor, poorly educated, stigmatised, marginalised, and those without powerful and
influential connections. Dalits and Adivasis combine all of these disadvantages and more.
Victims also often under-report caste-based hate crimes because of fear of reprisal, and/
or to avoid added humiliation that invariably accompanies a scrutiny of their complaints.
To fully appreciate what these figures reveal about caste consciousness in urban India, it is
useful to recollect the kinds of crimes covered under the Prevention of Atrocities Act. Further,
regardless of whether the inter-city and/ or yearly differences in these numbers reflect a
change in reporting or actual incidence, the fact remains that such horrific and often
gruesome expressions of hatred, against those who are regarded as untouchable and
marginalised, continue to happen in 2016, despite the existence of Article 17 of the
Constitution forbidding untouchability explicitly, and punishable under the law.
In her comprehensive analysis of district-level crime data from NCRB covering the decade of
2001-2010, Smriti Sharma finds that a rise in crimes against Dalits and Adivasis is directly
related to a lowering of gaps in their material standard-of-living vis-à-vis upper castes. That
is, districts with lower gaps between SCs/ STs and upper castes witness higher crimes against
SCs/ STs, accounting for several other factors that might explain these crimes. This empirical
analysis resonates with qualitative accounts of Dalits being attacked for their upward
mobility, real or presumed. This is a clear indication of dominant castes wanting to protect
their privilege over what they consider their turf.
Underneath the twin myths of caste anonymity and meritocracy in urban India, lies the ugly
reality of caste discrimination, which takes the form of residential segregation,
discrimination in labour markets, educational disparities, overt and covert instances of
untouchability, resulting in caste manifesting its vicious hold in all these arenas. The recent
India Human Development Survey data for 2011-12 shows that over 27% of Indians admit to
PAGE 59 OF 116
practicing untouchability, despite the practice being illegal. This proportion is highly likely to
be an underestimate. The absolutely abhorrent and abominable practice of manual scavenging
continues to be widespread, leaving more than 160 million individuals stigmatised for life.
Just 5% of Marriages in India are Inter-Caste

By: Prachi Salve and Saumya Tewari, IndiaSpend.com (13 May 2016) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://scroll.in/article/807948/just-5-of-marriages-in-india-are-inter-caste-says-
report
Christian-dominated Mizoram—87% of the population is Christian—has the most inter-caste

marriages in India, a nation where 95% of Indians marry within their caste, according to a
2016 report from the National Council of Applied Economic Research, a New Delhi-based
think-tank. Meghalaya and Sikkim followed Mizoram, with 46% and 38%, respectively, of all
marriages inter-caste, according to The Indian Human Development Survey, based on
nationwide surveys conducted in 2011-12.
The three north-eastern states were followed by Muslim-dominated Jammu and Kashmir
(35%), and Gujarat (13%). This data belies the perception that, with modernity and
economic progress, traditional barriers of caste have broken down.
The inter-caste marriage findings are from IHDS-2 (2011-12), a data set put together by the
University of Maryland and NCAER. A representative sample of 41,554 households
contacted for the study was spread across 33 states and union territories, in rural and urban
India. As many as 95% women surveyed said their husbands’ caste was the same as theirs.
This was the question NCAER used to determine the proportion of inter-caste marriages: “Is
your husband’s family the same caste as your native family?”
In Madhya Pradesh, almost all (99%) people were married in their own caste, followed by
Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, both at 98%. Indians are legally allowed to marry
outside their caste. A law on inter-caste marriage was passed more than 50 years ago, but
those who do are still threatened or attacked, often by their own families.
Upper Castes Dominate National Media

Dated: 22 March 2012 (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/upper-castes-dominate-
national-media-says-survey-in-delhi/article3115113.ece
In the first-ever statistical analysis of its kind, a survey of the social profile of more than 300
senior journalists in 37 Hindi and English newspapers and television channels in the capital
has found that Hindu upper-caste men who form 8% of the country’s population hold
71% of the top jobs in the national media. Women, non-upper castes, and Muslims are
grossly under-represented in relation to their share in the population.
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The survey notes that Dalits and Adivasis “are conspicuous by their absence among the
decision-makers. Not even one of the 315 key decision-makers belonged to the SCs or STs”.
If men and women are taken together, the share of upper-caste Hindus in the upper echelons
of the media is 85%. These castes account for 16% of the population. Brahmins alone, the
survey found, hold 49% of the top jobs in national journalism. If other forward castes like
Marathas, Patels, Jats, and Reddys are added, the total forward caste share stands at 88%.
In contrast, OBCs, who are estimated to constitute around 40% of the population, account for
an “abysmally low” 4% of top media jobs. In the English print media, OBCs account for just
1% of top jobs and in the Hindi print media 8%. Muslims too, the survey noted, are “severely
under-represented in the national media”: they account for only 3% among the key decision
makers in the national media, compared with 13.4% in the country’s population.
Muslims do better in the Hindi electronic media, forming 6% of key decision-makers. In the
English electronic media, the survey found there were no Muslims at the senior-most levels
in Delhi. Christians, however, are proportionately represented in the media (mainly in the
English media). Their share is about 4% compared with their population share of 2.3%.
Doubly disadvantaged sections, such as women OBCs or backward caste Muslims and
Christians, are nearly absent among the key decision-makers. The survey, for example, found
that there was not a single OBC woman among the 315 journalists enumerated.
Low Caste Diversity in Indian Judiciary

Multiple Sources:
- https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/kovind-rues-low-diversity-in-
judiciary/cid/1327950
- https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/for-last-six-years-no-
scheduled-caste-judge-sent-to-supreme-court-shortage-pending-cases-2825216
- https://www.livemint.com/Politics/iK7w9InnxqgsELzcf26HRN/How-the-Supreme-
Court-has-evolved-since-1950.html
In November 2017, President Ram Nath Kovind regretted the “unacceptably low”
representation of women, SCs, STs, and the OBCs among judges, particularly the higher
judiciary. He said the situation needed to be remedied without diluting quality. Ever since
former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan (India’s only Dalit chief justice) retired on
11 May 2010, no judge belonging to the SCs has been elevated to the Supreme Court. Also,
none of the current high court chief justices belong to the SCs, who comprise over 16% of the
country’s population. It is a similar story in the case of STs as well. During discussions in
Parliament in August 2014 just before the MPs passed the National Judicial Appointments
Commission Bill, there were questions about the inadequate representation of SCs, STs,
OBCs, and minorities in the higher judiciary. There were also demands for reservations for
these sections in the higher judiciary, which, however, didn’t find favour with the
government. While recent caste data is not available, American legal scholar George Gadbois,
author of Judges of the Supreme Court of India, found that between 1950 and 1989, there was
less than 3% SC/ ST representation in the Supreme Court, and 92% of judges were either
Brahmins or other forward castes.
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Bollywood Films are All about Upper-Caste Hindu Heroes

By: Shelly Walia (29 June 2015) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://qz.com/india/439701/bollywood-films-are-all-about-upper-caste-hindu-
heroes
A 2015 Bollywood film, Dil Dhadakne Do, dealt with the life of super-rich Punjabi Indians
and their first-world problems. High on picturesque offshore beauty, this Zoya Akhtar film
was described by critics as “shallow” and so far removed from India’s third-world reality that
it is difficult to care about the people in the film. But dismissing all such reviews, the
filmmaker in an interview said that “the Indian audience doesn’t want to watch poor people.”
Whether that’s true or not, India’s popular film industry definitely does not celebrate
diversity—and not just in terms of class, but also caste, religion, and gender.
A 2015 analysis of lead characters of more than 250 films released in 2013 and 2014 by
The Hindu revealed that only six lead characters belonged to a backward caste. The
Indian national daily collected information available publicly on characters as well as the
storyline of each of these films for its report. According to Box Office India, an online film
database, 184 films were released in 2013 and another 201 films in 2014. So, The Hindu’s
analysis covers about 65% of the combined Bollywood films released in two years.
In 2014, the films that dwelled upon caste were Manjunath, a real-life account of an Indian
Oil employee who was murdered for speaking out against a corrupt oil dealer; Highway,
which showcased a distraught criminal from the Gujjar community; and the biopic on India’s
pugilist Mary Kom whose lead character was a member of the Kom tribal community from
Manipur. In 2013, the films were Bandook, the story of a lower caste man’s rise to political
power, Revolver Rani, and Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela.
The most common character in Hindi films is also a Hindu, according to the same report.
Only very few roles are written keeping in mind a Christian, Muslim, or Sikh. In 2014, only
two films had lead characters who were Christian, three had Sikhs and nine had Muslims.
Meanwhile, as many as 66 lead characters were upper-caste Hindus, while the rest were
Hindus whose caste was not mentioned or was unknown.
Apart from this low representation of caste, class, and religion, there’s another category
where Bollywood lags behind: gender. For decades now, male stars get screen time and
lengthy monologues, while women are cast for item numbers in skimpy clothes. In a gender
test of 2014’s blockbuster films, nine out of ten movies failed what is known as the Bechdel
test—that a film casts at least two women, incorporates a scene or two where they interact
with each other, and they talk about something besides a man.
Underrepresentation in Men’s Cricket

By: Gaurav Bhawnani and Shubham Jain (26 July 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://thewire.in/caste/does-india-need-a-caste-based-quota-in-cricket
In the 86 years since India attained Test status, 290 different men have played test cricket for
India. However, only four belong to the SCs and STs. That’s four, instead of about 70, as it
should have been per the population proportion. This disparity cannot be dismissed as
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insignificant. Unfortunately, under-representation in Indian cricket has received scant

attention. A similar under-representation of black players in South Africa resulted in the
introduction of a quota for non-white players in the playing XI across all levels of the game.
The change of patronage from the princes to corporate houses post-independence resulted in
a decline in Dalit participation. These corporate patrons required cricketers to meet certain
educational qualifications so that they would be employable post their retirement from the
game. Consequently, opportunities in cricket, as in other private, corporate employment, were
shut to those who could not access education. Apart from the corporate patronage leading to
the decline in the number of Dalit cricketers, structural impediments can be seen from the
urban concentration of the game, the contrast with the women’s sport, as well as the
imbalance in the number of minority batsmen and bowlers.
The fact that the urban concentration of the game has an exclusionary impact can be seen
from a study of Muslims, another minority community in India that is underrepresented in
cricket. In 1970s-80s, about half of the Indian Test cricket team hailed from merely six cities:
Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. However, the share of these
six cities has steadily declined to less than 40% in recent years. This shift to smaller towns
has coincided with a significant increase in the number of Muslims playing for India. Muslim
representation has increased from about 4% between 1950s and 1990s to 12.5% this
millennium. That this is not merely a correlation but involves an aspect of causation can be
seen from the fact that only two of the eight Muslim players to have made their debuts in this
millennium come from the six traditional powerhouses of cricket. Moreover, most Muslim
cricketers come from families on the lower rungs of economic standing.
On the other hand, the Indian women’s team that made waves in 2017 by making it to the
finals of the World Cup had several women from “lower caste” backgrounds and did not
reflect the upper-caste homogeneity of its male counterpart. This also helps pinpoint that the
structure is the culprit. The women’s game in India survives on the patronage of the Indian
Railways, with 10 of the 15 member-squad being employed by them. Unlike corporate
patrons, the railways is a vast employer, hiring across qualification levels, providing for
reservations in employment, thus ensuring a more diverse employee pool.
70% of Education Loans Go to Upper-Caste Students

By: Pon Vasanth B.A. (2 December 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/nearly-70-of-education-loans-
goes-to-general-category-students/article30132832.ece
Around 70% of the education loans disbursed in the country appear to be going to
upper-caste students, data on a government-funded surety scheme for educational loans
furnished by Ministry of Human Resource Development in the Lok Sabha has indicated. The
data provided was on the Credit Guarantee Fund Scheme for Education Loans, through which
banks can avail surety from the National Credit Guarantee Trustee Company Limited for
loans sanctioned up to INR 7.5 lakh without any collateral.
The data available from financial year 2016-17 till December 2019 shows that of the 4.1 lakh
students who benefited under the scheme, 67% belonged to upper castes. Only 23% were
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from OBCs, 7% from SCs, and 3% from STs. Importantly, the size of the loan sanctioned to
upper-caste students tends to be higher than the amount sanctioned to other students. So
while 67% of the students were upper-caste, they availed 70% of the total loans.
Highlighting that the scheme covered only smaller loans sanctioned without collaterals,
Su. Venkatesan, Member of Parliament, Madurai, who obtained the data through a question in
the Lok Sabha, said, “These are loans availed by those from socio-economically backward
sections. If there is such a huge gap here, it clearly indicates a problem from a social justice
perspective.” M. Raj Kumar, a former banker from Namakkal, who runs Educational Loan
Awareness Movement, said the data clearly showed that education loans were available
predominantly to students from families who have better awareness and who could access
banks through their social networks because of their caste privilege.
Corporate Boards in India: Blocked by Caste?

By: D Ajit, Han Donker, Ravi Saxena (11 August 2012) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.epw.in/journal/2012/32/insight/corporate-boards-india.html
Caste is an important determinant of social, economic, corporate, and political power in

contemporary India. The near consensus in academic studies is that the less privileged caste
groups tend to be worse off than others in terms of outcome indicators such as education
level, employment, wages, consumption, etc, across India. Apart from the discrimination in
the hiring process, the wage differentials between lower and forward castes, and intolerance
and prejudice at work are matters of increasing concern.
Our study examines the caste-wise composition of Indian corporate boards as they are the
ultimate repository of corporate power. Our study examines the caste-wise composition of
corporate boards in India in 2010 in order to understand who controls corporate India. This
could provide evidence of its link with political power as many studies have shown the close
and profound influence of corporate India in political and economic decision-making.
The study is based on the OSIRIS database which provides information on about 4,000
Indian firms listed in the Indian and overseas stock exchanges. From the 4,000 odd Indian
firms in the OSIRIS database, we selected the top 1,000 companies based on size (total
assets) for 2010. These companies account for four-fifths of the market capitalisation of
companies listed in National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in 2010. The
study covers both private and public sector firms which are publicly listed.
The average board size of the top 1,000 companies in India was found to be nine members;
nearly 88% of them were insiders and 12% were independent directors. The distribution of
board members according to caste shows that nearly 93% were forward caste members;
46%, Vaishya and 44%, Brahmin. The OBCs and SCs/ STs have a meagre 3.8% and 3.5%
respectively. This clearly shows that the Indian corporate board consists of a small world
dominated by forward castes and lacks diversity.
In the corporate world, social networking plays an important role. Still, Indian corporate
boards belong to the “old boys club” based on caste affiliation rather than on other
considerations. It is difficult to fathom the argument that lack of merit is the cause for
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underrepresentation. Caste is an important factor in networking. The small world of

corporate India has interaction only within their caste kinship. This raises questions about the
possibility of interlocking of directors within the same caste among Indian companies.
Caste is Alive and Kicking in Corporate India: IIM-B Study

By: Manaswini Bhalla and Manisha Goel (15 April 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: http://www.forbesindia.com/article/iim-bangalore/the-caste-is-alive-and-kicking-in-
corpo-rate-india/53059/1
The importance of caste as a centrepiece of Indian social life comes alive during elections,
when we witness the dramatic spectacle of political parties jostling for the support of
different caste groups. Nevertheless, many urban Indians assume that the obsession of caste is
a domain of the rural and semi-urban areas. As individuals who grew up in a big
cosmopolitan city, when we observed in our research that caste and its influence is alive and
kicking even in elite corporate India, we too were surprised.
In a paper titled “Firms of a Feather Merge Together: Cultural Proximity and Firms
Outcome”, that we wrote with Michelle Zemel and Teja Konduri, we found that a large
percentage of mergers and acquisitions in India occur between businesses whose
directors belong to the same caste group. We considered a sample of over twelve hundred
M&A deals during 2000-2017 and found that of all deals where Brahmins had the maximum
representation on acquirer firms’ boards, nearly 50% were with target firms whose boards
were also dominated by Brahmins. The corresponding percentage was even larger for
Vaishyas, at 55%. Similarly, we found that Kshatriya and Shudra dominated firms acquired
targets with boards dominated by the same varnas.
The same pattern held if we instead considered jati, a narrower caste construct. For example,
firms whose boards were dominated by Agarwals predominantly acquired other firms with
Agarwal directors; Maheshwari-dominated firms predominantly acquired Maheshwari-
dominated firms; and so on. Careful analysis revealed that this is far from coincidental; firms
systematically seek out targets whose directors share caste identities with their own.
What’s more unsettling is that businesses are harmed by such deals. We find that stock
markets penalise mergers between firms of the same caste; the values generated for both
acquirer and target in same-caste deals are lower than in other deals. Aspects of negotiation
between the firms, such as the premium on the target firms’ book values that acquirers pay, or
the time they take to complete the deal, also do not improve. Further, if we look at the merged
firms’ performance one or two years after the deal, we find that in fact they do slightly worse
than firms that did not do same-caste deals.
Yet, such deals are rampant in corporate India. It is fair to ask then: why are they still
happening and who is benefitting from them? It turns out that directors who belong to the
dominant castes of the acquirer boards in such deals enjoy whopping jumps in their
compensation post the deal—upwards of 400% increases, on average. This increase is
disproportionate in comparison to the near doubling of compensations enjoyed by retained
directors not of the same caste. A larger fraction of them are also able to retain their enviable
director positions. This suggests that directors who care about caste tend to engage in
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M&A deals with other firms whose directors share their caste identities, to the
detriment of the firm, but to their own private advantage. One would expect that those
Indians who rise to the level of directors of large corporations would be able to shed the
biases of caste. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be true.
Historical Perspective: Ambedkar vs. Gandhi

By: Deepankar Gaurav (14 April 2016) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/dr-ambedkar-vs-mahatma-gandhi
The confrontation between Ambedkar and Gandhi had its beginnings in the Round Table
Conference of 1930-32. Ambedkar had gone earliest, as the prime representative of Dalits.
But when Gandhi finally decided to attend the second conference, he argued fervently that he
represented the Dalits, because they were an integral part of the Hindu fold, which he
represented. To Ambedkar, Dalits were not a part of Hindus but “a part apart”, a uniquely
oppressed people. They could accept, even welcome, the coming of independence and its
inevitable domination by Congress (i.e. by caste Hindus), but they needed “safeguards”.
Ambedkar himself had originally felt that with universal suffrage, reserved seats would be
sufficient. But universal suffrage was not given, and the issues at the conference revolved
around separate electorates. Gandhi was reconciled to giving these to Muslims; he had
already accepted their identity as a separate community. Not so for Dalits. When the Ramsay
MacDonald Award was announced giving separate electorates to Dalits, he protested with a
fast to death. And this brought him into direct confrontation with Ambedkar.
For Ambedkar, the problem was simple. If Gandhi died, in villages throughout India there
would be pogroms directed against Dalits and a massacre would unfold. Ambedkar
surrendered, and the Poona Pact formalised this with reserved seats for Dalits—more than
they would have had otherwise, but in constituencies now controlled by caste Hindus.
Ambedkar wrote, many years later, “There was nothing noble in the fast. It was a foul and
filthy act. The fast was not for the benefit of the Untouchables. It was against them and was
the worst form of coercion against a helpless people to give up the constitutional safeguards
[which had been awarded to them].” He felt that the whole system of reserved seats, then,
was useless. For years afterwards, the problem of political representation remained chronic.
Ambedkar continued to ask for separate electorates, but futilely. By the end of his life, he
gave these up also and looked to something like proportional representation. But the Poona
Pact remained a symbol of bitter defeat, and Gandhi from that time on was looked on as one
of the strongest enemies of the Dalits by Ambedkar and his followers.
Following the fast and the compromise made by Ambedkar, Gandhi formed what he came to
call the Harijan Sevak Sangh. Here again crucial differences arose. Ambedkar argued for a
broad civil rights organisation which would focus on gaining civic rights for Dalits—entry
into public places, use of public facilities, broad civil liberties—and he wanted it under
control of the Dalits themselves. Instead, Gandhi envisaged a paternalistic organisation,
controlled by caste Hindus working for the “upliftment” of Dalits. This flowed from his basic
theory, which saw untouchability as a sin of Hinduism—but not a basic part of Hinduism,
rather a flaw in it which could be removed; upper-caste Hindus should atone for this, make
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recompense, and take actions for the cleansing and upliftment of the Dalits. This included
programmes of going to clean up slums, preaching anti-alcoholism and vegetarianism, and so
forth. For Ambedkar, all of this was worse than useless. He condemned the Harijan Sevak
Sangh in strong language: “The work of the Sangh is of the most inconsequential kind. It
does not catch anyone’s imagination. It neglects most urgent purposes for which the
Untouchables need help and assistance. The Sangh rigorously excludes the Untouchables
from its management. The Untouchables are no more than beggars, mere recipients of
charity.” The result, he concluded, is that Dalits see the Sangh “as a foreign body set up by
the Hindus with some ulterior motive”. He concluded by saying that “the whole object of the
Sangh is to create a slave mentality among the Untouchables towards their Hindu masters”.
This debate about the Harijan Sevak Sangh had as its background a fundamental difference in
the very goals of Ambedkar and Gandhi. Ambedkar stood for the annihilation of caste. He
saw untouchability as a fundamental result of caste, and believed that there could be no
alleviation, no upliftment, and no relief from untouchability without the abolition of caste.
Gandhi was not simply a devoted Hindu, but also a fervent believer in his idealised version of
“varnashrama dharma”. He felt that what he considered to be the benign aspects of caste—its
encouragement of a certain kind of solidarity—could be maintained while removing
hierarchy and the extreme evil of untouchability. This was the essence of his reformism.
Thus, an increasingly bitter conflict grew between Ambedkar and Gandhi with the fast, the
Poona Pact, and the formation of the Harijan Sevak Sangh. This was followed by a conflict
over religion. Ambedkar had by now become thoroughly disillusioned with Hinduism. He
argued for conversion, and in 1936 made the historic announcement at Yeola that “I was born
a Hindu and have suffered the consequences of untouchability. I will not die a Hindu.” Two
days later, Gandhi held a press conference, calling Ambedkar’s decision “unbelievable….
Religion is not like a house or cloak which can be changed at will”. On 22 August 1936, he
wrote, “One may hope we have seen the last of any bargaining between Dr. Ambedkar and
savarnas for the transfer to another form of several million dumb Harijans as if they were
chattel”. This way of speaking became typical of him; he could not envisage the anger and
grief of the millions of Dalits who followed Ambedkar on this issue.
Gandhi did not see untouchables as individuals born into a particular community; rather as
somewhat unthinking members of an existing Hindu community; Hinduism he saw as their
“natural” religion; their task was to reform it; they should not leave it. Ambedkar in contrast
put the individual and his/ her development at the centre of his vision, and believed this
development was impossible without a new, true religion.
The final difference between the two was over India’s path of development itself. Gandhi
believed, and argued for, a village-centred model of development, one which would forsake
any hard path of industrialism but seek to achieve what he called “Ram Raj”, an idealised
harmonised traditional village community. Ambedkar, in contrast, wanted economic
development, and with it saw industrialisation as the basic prerequisite for the abolition of
poverty. He insisted that it be worker-friendly, not capitalistic; at times arguing for “state
socialism” (though he later would accept some forms of private ownership of industry),
remaining to the end of his life a democratic socialist. To him, villages were far from being an
ideal; rather they were “cesspools”, a cauldron of backwardness, tradition, and bondage.
Untouchables had to escape from villages, and India also had to reject her village past.
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Rationale for Caste-Based Reservations

By: Ajita Sharma (10 January 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://theleaflet.in/why-parliament-passing-the-10-quota-bill-against-economic-
backwardness-defeats-the-constitutional-mandate-of-reservation
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly debates emphasised that “there shall be
reservations in favour of certain communities which have not so far had a ‘proper look-in’
into so to say the administration”. The Supreme Court, in Indra Sawhney vs. Union of India
(1992), held that reservation is not aimed at economic upliftment or alleviation of poverty;
rather it is designed to give due share in the State power to those who have remained out of
it mainly on account of their social, and therefore, educational, and economic backwardness.
The policy of reservations is one of the measures to remedy the continuing evil effects of
prior inequities stemming from discriminatory practices against various classes of people,
which have resulted in their social, educational, and economic backwardness. It is intended to
off-set inequality and remove a manifest imbalance. It is a “compensatory discrimination…to
re-distribute resources and opportunities to those who enjoy the fewest advantages”.
Historically, reservations have been given to SCs, STs, and OBCs based only on their “social
backwardness”. Reservations extend back to the period of British rule, when it was codified
in law only for the “depressed classes” who were socially disadvantaged. These depressed
classes were then identified as the SCs, STs, and OBCs. But it was not the caste or tribe
which was the sole determinative factor of the reserved categories; it was also their
inter-generational vulnerability assigned at birth and proneness to political exploitation
due to their position in the caste system by the upper castes which led to stigma, lack of
access to resources, sustained financial incapacity, and no sharing in State power.
In light of the disadvantages perpetuated in India by the existence of the caste system, the
Constitution provided for reservations only to SCs, STs, and OBCs. For other vulnerabilities
such as religion, gender, place of birth, class etc., which resulted in social and educational
backwardness, the Constitution provided for other affirmative action measures.
Reservations solely on the basis of economic backwardness/ disadvantage have been held
by the Supreme Court to be not valid. Attaining an economically advantageous position in
society has not been able to eradicate caste-based discrimination. Caste discrimination and its
resultant socio-economic disadvantage is a more fundamental problem than just economic
disadvantage, and it’s the former that reservations have been constitutionally mandated to
address. Economic disadvantage is usually the consequence of vulnerability, and thus it is
that vulnerability which needs to be tackled for effective poverty alleviation, which is exactly
what the drafters of the Indian Constitution had understood to be the purpose of reservation.
In addition to reservation in education and employment to remedy the historical

disadvantage, massive and simultaneous social and political awareness programmes to
recondition Indian society are necessary to stop discrimination on the basis of caste. Till
discrimination doesn’t disappear, one cannot say that reservation has adequately tackled the
problems of the caste system in India.
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Reservations are Not Just about Quotas

By: Satish Deshpande (23 May 2016) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/reservations-are-not-just-about-
quotas/article7036459.ece
In the upper-caste imagination, reservation is indelibly branded as a welfare programme

giving handouts to a set of caste-marked “beneficiaries”. From this perspective, those who
receive this benefit—the “reserved category”—are deviant exceptions who fall outside the
normal or “general category” of caste-less citizens which constitutes the nation. It is this
caste-less nation that gives reservation to certain castes to compensate for the “historical
wrongs” done to them in the distant past, and to help them overcome their backwardness.
When reservation is understood in this way, we can make sense of objections such as: How
long will reservations continue? Why is caste and not economic need the criterion? And of
forms of protest, such as a symbolic polishing of shoes and sweeping of streets by youth
wearing stethoscopes or lab coats that reservation provokes from the upper castes.
From such a vantage point, it is impossible to see that the true origins of reservation lie in a
promise of good faith that forms the core of the social contract on which our nation is
founded. Reservation is a pre-Independence policy inaugurated by the Government of India
Act of 1935, which created the schedules listing SCs and STs. The policy itself is the
outcome of the Poona Pact between Gandhi and Ambedkar, in which the latter was forced to
withdraw the claim to a separate electorate in return for guaranteed representation in the
legislature and the broad assurance that the nation, represented by Gandhi and the Congress,
would do everything in its power to end untouchability and caste discrimination.
Thus, reservation is a fundamentally political promise made in acknowledgement of the fact

that caste literally excludes sizeable communities from Indian society. Since independence is
demanded in the name of the Indian nation, and since the modern nation is supposed to be an
egalitarian form of community, the Poona Pact is a compromise whereby the untouchables
agree to forego their demand for a nation (electorate) of their own and be part of the larger
nation in spite of their caste exclusion. In short, reservation is intended to be the response,
from a nationalist movement led by the upper castes, to the bitter truth in Ambedkar’s
poignant statement: “Gandhiji, I have no homeland”.
From this perspective, reservation cannot be equated to this or that welfare benefit, since it is
intended to be something incomparably larger—the promise of full citizenship. The degree
to which this promise is fulfilled automatically decides the duration of the policy. Reservation
should cease to exist from the day that discrimination, oppression, and gross inequalities
based on caste cease to exist, because all castes would then have full citizenship. Note that
such a policy is not about “historical wrongs” in the dim past, but about contemporary forms
of caste inequality, and that replacing caste with economic criteria misses the whole point
of caste discrimination that exists in varied forms across all classes.
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The Fallacy of “Merit”

By: Rainbow Murray (7 December 2015) (Edited excerpts; ‘gender’ replaced with ‘caste’)
Source: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/merit-vs-equality-argument
One of the sticks used to beat reservations with is the argument of meritocracy. The argument
is underpinned by three fundamental assumptions. The first is that admissions/ recruitment
without quotas are meritocratic. The second is that there is a clear, objective definition of
merit. And the third is that caste is an inherently unmeritocratic criterion for representation.
None of these assumptions is true, and hence the argument is fundamentally flawed.
Firstly, admissions/ recruitment without quotas are not meritocratic. Rather, they are based on
various privileges, including caste privilege, and an uneven playing field. It is rather insulting
actually to suggest that the reason why upper-caste Hindus dominate all echelons of power is
because they deserve to—because of their greater merit. This suggests, by inference, that
people from the lower castes are relatively absent in these spheres because they don’t deserve
to be there. If we are basing this assessment on inherent talent, then we are saying that the
upper castes are naturally superior to everybody else. That’s a pretty bold (casteist) assertion.
If we use justifications other than inherent talent, then we must ask ourselves whether we are
using good criteria, given that they serve to exclude large parts of our population based on
caste affiliation. This leads to my second point.
The criteria that we use to determine merit are problematic. Firstly, we don’t really know
what the criteria are. They vary depending on whom you ask. Secondly, they don’t
necessarily reflect what it actually takes to learn or do a job. If you look at the academic
definitions of merit for job recruitment, you get yet another understanding. We tend to focus
on objective criteria such as education, language skills, and prior experience. All of these may
be measures of achievement but more importantly, they are markers of social/ caste privilege.
One common denominator in our assessments of “quality” and “merit” is that we tend to base
these judgements on the status quo. The result is that we tip the playing field by favouring
criteria that have already advantaged the upper castes and will continue to do so. There is no
objective measure of merit. When we argue that any other under-represented group has less
“merit”, we are simply saying that they do not reproduce the status quo.
So when opponents of reservations argue in favour of merit, what they are defending is the
status quo. But when access to education and jobs is based on caste privilege, using criteria
that discriminate against individuals from underrepresented caste backgrounds, the status quo
undermines social justice. We need to reopen the talent pool to the whole of society and use
criteria that actually reflect the capacity to represent the needs of everyone.
The Mandal Commission

By: Arkoday Roy (Edited excerpts)
Source: http://www.legalservicesindia.com/article/535/Creamy-Layer:-The-Mandal-
Commission-View.html
The Mandal Commission in India was established in 1979 under Prime Minister Morarji
Desai with a mandate to “identify the socially or educationally backward”. It was headed by
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Indian parliamentarian Bindheshwari Prasad Mandal to consider the question of seat

reservations and quotas for people to redress caste discrimination, and it used eleven social,
economic, and educational indicators to determine “backwardness”. In 1980, the
commission’s report affirmed the affirmative action practice under Indian law whereby
SCs (15%), STs (7.5%), and OBCs (27%) were given exclusive access to a certain portion of
government jobs and slots in public universities, and recommended changes to these quotas,
increasing them to 49.5%.
The “Creamy Layer”

By: Shoaib Daniyal (6 October 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://scroll.in/article/896276/explainer-what-is-creamy-layer-and-why-applying-it-
to-caste-reservation-is-controversial
On 26 September 2018, the Supreme Court made a major change in how caste reservation is
structured, introducing the framework of the “creamy layer” to quotas. The “creamy layer”
is the generally small section of people that occupies the top of a marginalised community’s
socio-economic hierarchy. It would include the children of Supreme Court judges, senior
bureaucrats, and military officers above the rank of colonel belonging to that community. The
creamy layer test specifies that a candidate must be below a certain income ceiling in order to
avail of reservation in government jobs and educational institutions.
Originally, reservation for SCs, STs, and OBCs did not specify any income criteria. Neither
were any such riders introduced by central or state legislation. The sole basis of reservation
was caste. It was the Supreme Court which brought in the concept of the “creamy layer” in
1993 through its judgement in the Indra Sawhney case. The court said putting in the
framework of the “creamy layer” was in keeping with the basic structure of the Constitution
as it mapped to the principle of equality. “Exclusion of such socially advanced members,” it
argued, “will make the ‘class’ a truly backward class”.
The principle, however, only applied to the OBCs, not SCs and STs, who are acknowledged
as the country’s most backward communities. The latest judgement changes the equation,
prescribing the “creamy layer” test for all caste-based reservation. Mirroring earlier
judgements, the apex court argued that excluding the creamy layer will serve the cause of
equality since they “bag all the coveted jobs in the public sector and perpetuate themselves,
leaving the rest of the class as backward as they always were”.
This contention of the Supreme Court is disputed by many activists and experts. They point
out that far from seats being corned by a small clique, Dalits and Adivasis are so
disadvantaged it is difficult to even fill the seats reserved for them. In July 2018, for example,
the highly sought-after Delhi University did not manage to fill its reserved category seats.
This is true of government jobs as well. Placing further curbs to exclude the creamy layer will
serve no purpose other than that more valuable seats will go unfilled, the activists argue.
Many commentators have also argued that mandating an economic ceiling for reservation
misunderstands how caste works: Dalits and Adivasis face discrimination even if they are
well-off or educated.
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Private Sector Participation

By: Vikram Singh (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.sficec.org/14-current/342-social-justice-incomplete-without-
reservation-in-private-sector
Under the regime of neoliberal economic policies, the impact of reservations in the public
sector has reduced. The policy of liberalisation and privatisation has reduced the number of
employment opportunities in government services and public sector undertakings, which in
turn reduced job opportunities for the underprivileged sections, especially Dalits and
Adivasis. Governments at the Centre and in the states have imposed restrictions on creation
of new posts and new appointments for a long period. Moreover, governments are now
significantly making appointments on an ad-hoc or contract basis—both for high and low
level posts—in which the reservation roster is not followed.
To add to this, many government industries and public sector enterprises have already been
sold off through various forms of disinvestment and privatisation. Efforts are being made to
even surrender the high profit-making infrastructural public sector undertakings which are
called “Navaratnas” to private agencies. Privatisation of the largest employer in India, Indian
Railways, is already underway. Air India is also on the platter for private houses. Hence,
employment opportunities in the public sector are continuously shrinking. On the other hand,
the private sector does not follow any kind of reservation policy for recruitment. In such a
scenario, there is little meaning in reservations in the public sector. The private sector is
largely owned by upper-caste entrepreneurs. SC/ ST-owned enterprises tend to be smaller,
more rural than urban, and primarily single-employee units. Dalits and Adivasis find it very
difficult to be recruited in the private sector, particularly for higher posts, owing to rampant
discrimination. There is also a marked wage gap in the urban labour market despite having
laws mandating equal wages.
Under these conditions, where private actors play an active role in the market, where the
State is slowly withdrawing from the provision of basic services in the economy, and
caste-based discriminatory practices continue to exist, it is imperative to extend reservations
to private sector institutions as well. It is also important to note that reservations in the private
sector do not mean reservations for floor work or manual work only, but at all levels.
The private sector enjoys various fiscal concessions granted by the government to enhance
industrial growth. It also uses public resources, including capital from public sector banks
and financial institutions. Therefore, it is only reasonable that it participate in the affirmative
action policies proposed by the Constitution. It is the need of the hour to raise the demand of
reservations in India’s private sector too.
Recent Agitations: Marathas, Jats, and Patels

By: Sanjay Kumar and Pranav Gupta (20 September 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.livemint.com/Politics/qCpXFNPbjMeSZxqc5Z67wJ/
AreMarathasJatsandPatelseconomicallyweak.html
For the past few years, youth from numerous peasant castes across the country have been
agitating for reservation. While the 19-day fast of the Patel leader, Hardik Patel, failed to
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move the Gujarat government, the demand for reservations for Marathas kept the
Maharashtra government on tenterhooks. Even Jats in Haryana have threatened to resume
their agitation demanding OBC status. But does data support their claim of backwardness?
An analysis of data suggests that the agitating castes (Patels, Marathas, and Jats) fare just as
well as upper castes in terms of affluence, but lag behind in education. But apart from
education, there is very little to differentiate the peasant castes from the upper castes. In some
respects, these castes have traditionally enjoyed greater dominance than any other caste group
in their states. One arena in which this dominance is quite marked is politics.
Numerous leaders from these groups have been elected as chief ministers. In Haryana, there
have been six Jat chief ministers, who have collectively held the position for more than three
decades. In Maharashtra, there have been 14 Maratha chief ministers who have held the seat
for more than four decades. Before Vijay Rupani, there have been four Patel chief ministers
in Gujarat, including his predecessor Anandiben Patel. The electoral dominance is also visible
in their substantial presence in the legislative assemblies of these states.
These agitations shall continue to pose a challenge for policy makers in the country,
irrespective of their short-term political fallout. Many fear that giving in to their demands and
extending the OBC status to the middle caste groups could draw the ire of existing OBCs.
The other challenge is the possibility of a domino effect with other upper-caste groups and
dominant sub-castes (or jatis) also demanding quotas for the economically weaker sections.
Latest 10% Quota May Not Pass Judicial Scrutiny

By: Faizan Mustafa (9 January 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/narendra-modi-govt-upper-caste-
quota-reservations-5529274
The current government ended its first term with a major constitutional amendment likely to
be struck down by the Supreme Court. Its proposal to give 10% reservation to economically
backward classes (excluding SCs, STs, and OBCs) is neither novel nor innovative. The
Congress government under P.V. Narasimha Rao did provide for a similar reservation, but a
nine-judge bench in Indra Sawhney (1992) struck it down.
The apex court has said in categorical terms that reservation solely on the basis of economic
backwardness, i.e. without evidence of historical discrimination, finds no justification in the
Constitution. It ruled that reservation is a remedy for historical discrimination and its
continuing ill-effects; it is not aimed at economic upliftment or poverty alleviation. Economic
backwardness has to be on account of social backwardness, both the cause and consequence
of non-representation in the State administration, and backwardness of the whole class, not of
some individuals. The move also upsets the 50% cap on reservation imposed by the court,
which said that “any attempt to over-emphasise its compensatory aspect and widen the scope
of reservation beyond ‘minority of posts’ is to practice excessive and invidious reverse
discrimination”.
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UNIT 5: COMMERCE AND ECOLOGY
Consumerism is “Eating the Future”

By: Andy Coghlan (7 August 2009) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17569-consumerism-is-eating-the-future
We’re a gloomy lot, with many of us insisting that there’s nothing we can do personally about
global warming, or that the human race is over-running the planet like a plague. But
according to leading ecologists, few of us realise that the main cause of the current
environmental crisis is human nature. All we’re doing is what all other creatures have ever
done to survive, expanding into whatever territory is available and using up whatever
resources are available, just like a bacterial culture growing in a Petri dish till all the nutrients
are used up. What happens then, of course, is that the bugs die in a sea of their own waste.
An epidemiologist even likened the expansion of human cities to the growth and spread of
cancer, predicting “death” of the Earth in about 2025. He points out that like the accelerated
growth of a cancer, the human population has quadrupled in the past 100 years, and at this
rate will reach a size in 2025 that leads to global collapse and catastrophe. But there’s worse.
Not only are we simply doing what all creatures do: we’re doing it better. In recent times,
we’re doing it even faster because of changes in society that encourage and celebrate
conspicuous and excessive consumption.
Biologists have shown that it’s a natural tendency of living creatures to fill up all available
habitats and use up all available resources. That’s what underlies Darwinian evolution, and
species that do it best are the ones that survive, but we do it better than any other species.
We’re subconsciously still driven by an impulse for survival, domination, and expansion.
This is an impulse which now finds expression in the idea that inexorable economic growth is
the answer to everything. The problem with that is that it fails to recognise that the physical
resources to fuel this growth are finite. We’re still driven by growing and expanding, so we
will use up all the oil, we will use up all the coal, and we will keep going till we fill the Petri
dish and pollute ourselves out of existence.
But there’s another, more recent factor that’s making things even worse, and it’s an invention
of human culture rather than an evolved trait. The change took place after the Second World
War, when factories in the US previously producing weapons lay idle, and soldiers were
returning with no jobs to go to. American economists and the government of the day decided
to revive economic activity by creating a culture in which people were encouraged to
accumulate and show off material wealth, to the point where it defined their status in
society and their self-image. Economist Victor Lebow is quoted as saying in 1955: “Our
enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we
convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and
our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out,
replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate”.
In today’s world, such rhetoric seems beyond belief. Yet the consumer spree carries on
regardless, and few of us are aware that we’re still willing slaves to a completely artificial
injunction to consume, and to define ourselves by what we consume. Lebow and his cronies
got together to ‘create’ the modern advertising industry, which plays to primitive beliefs. It
makes you feel insecure, because the advertising industry turned our sense of self-worth
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into a symbolic presentation of the possessions we have. We’ve turned consumption into a
necessity, and how we define ourselves. The result is a world in which rampant consumption
in rich countries is rapidly outstripping the resources in the world needed to satisfy demand.
A process called ecological footprint analysis (EFA) was developed in 1992. Produced by
combining national consumption statistics with calculations of the resources needed to meet
reported consumption patterns, EFA generates figures that demonstrate where consumption is
least sustainable, and how fast finite material resources are being used up. Latest figures
show that, globally, we’re already in “overshoot”, consuming 30% more material than is
sustainable from the world’s resources. At present, 85 countries exceed their domestic
“bio-capacities”, compensating for their lack of local material by depleting stocks elsewhere,
in countries that have “surpluses” because they’re not consuming as much.
North Americans are the most consumptive, eating resources equivalent to 9.2 global average
hectares per capita. The world can only supply 2.1 global average hectares per person, so
already, Americans are consuming four times what the Earth can sustainably supply.
They should be taking steps to lower their eco-footprints by almost 80%, to free up the
ecological space for justifiable growth in the developing world. If everyone on Earth adopted
American lifestyles overnight, we would need four extra worlds to supply their needs.
We haven’t yet mentioned climate change or global warming. What’s to be done? We need to
snap out of our sleepwalking and begin to take real steps to cut consumption. We have our
heads in the sand, and are in a state of denial. People think: “It won’t happen to me, or be in
my lifetime, or be that bad, so what’s the point of change”. But there is hope, however slim,
both from the top down and the bottom up.
The hope from above is that governments will finally realise that never-ending economic
growth is incompatible with the finite material resources Earth has to offer, and begin to
manage those resources more fairly and equitably through a kind of world government.
Without global management, destruction will continue, producing food and energy
“crunches” that make the credit crunch look like a tea party. We need to learn to live within
the means of nature. That means sharing and redistribution of wealth, and for that we need
leadership at the highest level to understand that the competitive instinct and the drive for
power and more resources is mutually destructive, so governments must act in our collective
interest. From the bottom up, there are the glimmers of global grassroots organisations
campaigning for global justice and global solutions.
Solving the other problem—the advertising that feeds our desire to acquire—might be
trickier. In an ideal world, it would be a counter-advertising campaign to make conspicuous
consumption shameful. Advertising is an instrument for construction of people’s everyday
reality, so we could use the same media to construct a cultural paradigm in which
conspicuous consumption is despised. We’ve got to make people ashamed to be seen as a
“future eater”. Whether we’re capable of such a counter-revolution is doubtful, both because
of our state of personal denial and because of the huge power of industry to continue
seducing us. In effect, globalism and consumerism have succeeded in banishing
moderation and sanctifying greed, thereby liberating Homo economicus from any moral or
ethical constraints on consumption. Some, more pessimistic, argue that the only hope is a
disaster of immense scale that jolts us out of our denial.
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Choking Point: India’s Environmental Crisis

By: Aarti Betigeri (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/choking-point-india-environment-crisis
January, a month that, in north India, once fell in the season of winter, is now synonymous
with the depths of the region’s dreaded pollution season. This month, as in recent years, a
brutal combination of diverse factors has continued to coalesce to produce dire air quality in
its cities, most notably in New Delhi. Here, air quality logs in at the “extremely hazardous”
range so often that life carries on as normal, even with the pollution hitting global headlines.
One recent such headline read “Rain Clears India Smog, Improves Air Quality to ‘Very
Poor’”, a backhanded compliment illustrating just how unremarkable the bad air is.
The headlines are not exaggerating. Air in Delhi in January ranges from mildly smoky to
what can delicately be described as chewy, to, at its worst, pollution and fog so dire that
visibility is about two metres. Levels of PM2.5—measuring the particularly poisonous
particulate matter of 2.5 micrometres in diameter—are considered too high to be healthy.
Regularly measured at over 100—the US considers a safe limit to be 35—the level of PM2.5
sometimes is measured as being in the hundreds. Twice, we’ve seen the levels hit 999, the
highest recordable number, meaning the actual level could be far higher.
With pollution like this, it would be easy to consider India to be unable to make any strides
ahead on environmental issues and conservation more generally. But just what is the true
picture? The reality is a mixed bag. While India performs very badly on almost all metrics in
protecting its environment, there are some small strides forward being made, such as the 2018
pledge to ban single-use plastic by 2022. There is also growing civic action to clean up public
spaces, both independently and under the banner of the Swachh Bharat Mission. In particular,
the 2010 founding of the country’s National Green Tribunal means that there is a specific
avenue through which environmental cases can be pursued. The Tribunal rules on cases on
pollution, toxic waste, dumping, mining, dams, and more, with wide-ranging powers.
Yet still, India remains woefully behind other parts of the world: in 2022’s Environmental
Performance Index it ranked at the bottom among 180 countries, based on performance
across parameters related to mitigating climate change, improving environmental health, and
protecting ecosystem vitality. The report is generally prepared by researchers from Yale and
Columbia Universities in the United States. According to the report, deteriorating air quality
and rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions are the primary reasons behind India’s low
score, and need urgent attention. For a country with global leadership aspirations, it is a
particularly embarrassing result—however, the government seems intent on watering
down India’s existing environmental protection laws.
Air: India is home to 21 of the 30 most polluted cities in the world and has an air quality rated
one of the poorest in the world. Over 16 lakh people in India die from air pollution every
year, according to the report. It also identifies household fuel combustion as the largest
contributor to the country’s particulate matter emissions.
Water: India and Indonesia have been identified as the top two generators of marine plastic
waste in the world. Groups have also warned of a looming water crisis in India, whether it is
falling groundwater levels or contaminated riverways and water bodies, or Himalayan springs
drying up. Niti Aayog released its Composite Water Management Index in 2018, which is a
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useful summary of water management issues and processes across the country, and there are
numerous cases in the NGT involving water.
Forest cover: Niti Aayog says India currently has just under 22% forest cover, against a
recommended 33%. Deforestation is happening across the country—e.g. Delhi is losing trees
at the rate of one per hour—through a mixture of development and forest fires. Efforts are
being made to quell the trend, through awareness, policy changes, the NGT, and activism,
e.g. the successful stalling of a major road being built through a protected forest near Agra.
Waste: India produces far less waste than developed countries, yet struggles with how to deal
with it, with cities often seemingly drowning in waste. Landfills sometimes catch on fire,
causing major health concerns. India is among the top five e-waste producers in the world,
yet doesn’t have mechanisms for monitoring or managing it.
Renewable energy: While there is still a long way to go, India is often praised for its
investment in renewables. Solar power is at record low prices, although take-up remains low.
Karnataka is leading the pack, with 27% of its energy coming from renewable sources.
India’s Rich Emit 7x More Emissions than the Poor

By: The Wire Staff (19 January 2021) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://science.thewire.in/environment/india-carbon-emissions-rich-poor-
households/
A recent study by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature has found that the top 20%
of high expenditure households in India generate nearly seven times the carbon emissions
compared to low-expenditure households, defined as those who spend less than $1.9 in a day.
The study combined household expenditure data from the 2013 National Sample Survey
Organisation and observed that food and electricity were two avenues of expenditure that
accounted for the majority of emissions in the country across socio-economic groups. Among
affluent households, expenditures that resulted in high emissions also came from private
transport, durables, and non-cereal food items.
The study reinforces global findings on the vast gap between the global rich and the poor
when it comes to carbon emissions. According to the UN emissions gap report, the world’s
wealthiest 1% account for more than twice the combined carbon emissions of the
poorest 50%. It also concluded that to avoid a serious rise in global temperatures this
century, the richest would have to rapidly cut their CO2 footprints.
While the consumption of products like detergents, soaps, and clothing accounted for the
majority of carbon footprints in lower expenditure households, the demand for durable goods
and private transport constituted the highest carbon emissions among higher expenditure
households. To reduce its carbon emissions, the study said India had to phase out coal, invest
in renewable, and promote energy-efficient production of food and other consumables. India
should also promote transport and introduce carbon pricing of goods and services to manage
consumption if economic growth is accompanied by a shift from medium to high income
households, the study said.
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A 2018 study by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Columbia
University, the Indian Institute of Public Health, and the Johns Hopkins University also noted
that, with the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s, the Indian government had
promoted the use of high-yield and low-nutrient varieties of wheat and rice that emit more
greenhouse gases. A reduction in emissions could thus be achieved by shifting away from rice
to wheat, maize, bajra, and ragi; and from beef and eggs to chicken and legumes.
Managing Water Resources in Urban India

By: Neha Mungekar (15 September 2015) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://thecityfix.com/blog/managing-water-resources-urban-design-india-neha-
mungekar
India is undergoing rapid urbanisation: within 15 years, about 600 million Indians will live in
urban areas. Given that cities practically run on water, India must find a way to route clean,
reliable water to its citizens, helping meet their needs for drinking, hygiene, and sanitation.
The 2015 World Economic Forum identified “water supply crises” as one of the top five
global risks, and as many as 3.5 billion could experience water scarcity by 2025.
Often, land development and the rapid rate of development of buildings, roads, and other
infrastructure overlook naturally occurring water resources in an area. Encroachment on
catchment areas, watershed zones, aquifers, and water bodies has become a common
phenomenon. This interrupts naturally forming water basins, dries-up or damages water
bodies, reduces water catchments, cuts off and contaminates water sources that should be
available to the people living around them, leading to poor drainage, unnatural flooding,
and damaged local infrastructure.
If water channels in a neighbourhood that flow into larger rivers are blocked, they will dry
up, and there will be large scale flooding of low lying areas when it rains. The WRI Aqueduct
Global Flood Analyser estimates that by 2030, roughly 62.2% of the increase in the annual
urban damage in India could be driven by socio-economic change if no additional flood
protection is introduced. Unfortunately, these water network channels are not yet identified,
let alone protected.
History tells us how we have successfully built civilisations around water. Today’s inventions
are helping mankind investigate traces of water on other planets, and yet, provisioning for
water conservation and protecting existing water network on earth are not prioritised while
planning for today’s cities. We seem to be headed for “water wars”, where the pace of
depletion of water sources is faster than its consumption. Within cities, we need to conserve
existing water systems. Indeed, the future of our cities lies in effectively balancing its need
for water and its need for growth.
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Water Wars: Plachimada vs. Coca-Cola

Dated: 15 July 2017 (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/water-wars-
plachimada-vs-coca-cola/article19284658.ece
Plachimada is a sparsely populated tribal hamlet in Perumatty panchayat in Palakkad district.

A socio-economic census reveals that 60% of the population is engaged in agriculture.
Palakkad is also known as the rice bowl of Kerala.
Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd, the Indian subsidiary of the Atlanta-based
manufacturer of aerated drinks, erected a factory in a 38-acre plot in Plachimada in 1999. The
plant is situated in the midst of agricultural land which historically belonged to the Adivasis.
In its halcyon days, before the company’s relationship with the locals soured, the facility
employed 284 people. Audits reveal that around 600 cases comprising of 24 bottles of 300ml
capacity each, were produced every day.
As per the agreement struck by the company with the KSPCB, up to 1.5 million litres of
water was drawn commercially from six bore-wells situated inside the factory compound.
The permit granted Coca-Cola the right to extract ground water to meet its production
demands of 3.8 litres of water for a litre of cola. As a result, the water table receded, as did
the quality of groundwater. Detailed sampling of the water collected from the region
revealed high concentration of calcium, and magnesium ions. Moreover, the colloidal slurry
that was generated as a by-product was initially sold to villagers as fertiliser.
In 2003, the BBC declared that samples of slurry that was being deployed as fertiliser were
found to contain dangerous levels of toxic metals and the known carcinogen, cadmium. “The
area’s farming industry has been devastated and jobs, as well as the health of the local people,
have been put at risk,” said the presenter, as he read out the verdict of scientists from the
University of Exeter, where samples collected from Plachimada were sent for analysis.
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru infer that Palakkad’s
groundwater fares badly on most counts, having a large number of dissolved minerals, above
the desirable limit. Plachimada has been mentioned for failing to meet the quality norms on
salinity, alkalinity, and high traces of magnesium, and chloride, among other minerals.
Public anger led to the mobilisation of villagers who formed the “Coca-Cola Virudha
Janakeeya Samara Samithy”, a body fighting for the closure of the polluting soda factory, in
April 2002. For a year, awareness camps and torchlight vigils were organised, resulting in
several villagers picketing the factory. The cola giant slapped charges against the leaders of
the rebellion. The Perumatty panchayat took matters into its own hands by refusing to renew
Coca-Cola’s license on account of the exploitation of natural resources that had deleterious
effects on public health, as well as agricultural yield. The company challenged this order in
the Kerala High Court, which directed the litigants to approach the government’s Local
Self-Government Department. The latter overruled the panchayat’s order banning the license.
Following the BBC report, the government was forced to sit up and take notice. The KSPCB
conducted tests which corroborated the findings of the Exeter researchers. The panchayat
again approached the High Court, which observed this time around that “groundwater was a
public property held in trust by a government and that it had no right to allow a private party
to overexploit the resource to the detriment of the people”. However, the Local
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Self-Government Department refused to relent from its earlier position on legal grounds. The
company was allowed to continue operation as long as it found alternative sources of water
supply. Things came to a head when the Supreme Court, in 2005, issued a notice to the
company allowing it to draw 5,00,000 litres of groundwater per day.
In the intervening years, members of the Coca-Cola Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samithy, as
well as the village committee held awareness programmes to draw public attention to their
struggle for corporate accountability. The factory had been in lock-down since 2004, with
the legal stalemate ensuring the future of the company’s operations in Plachimada remained
uncertain. The 12-year-old case reached closure after much wrangling, when Coca-Cola
relinquished its license, stating it did not intend to resume production from Plachimada.
Chennai Floods: When Will We Ever Learn?

By: A Narayanamoorthy Palli (15 November 2017) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/chennai-floods-when-will-we-ever-
learn/article9962568.ece
Chennai is no stranger to heavy rains and cyclonic storms as it is very much located along the
highly volatile coast of Bay of Bengal. However, massive flooding and water logging within
a span of few days of torrential rains has become almost a recurring phenomenon. Global
warming, unplanned urban development, and unwieldy growth with no hydrological plan
are some of the reasons that have been cited as the prime reason for the threat of a massive
devastation. How far is this true?
Generally, when there is heavy rain, it is the natural lakes, ponds, tanks, rivers and
inter-linked drainage systems that help replenish the groundwater, hold back some water, and
release the excess to the ocean. Why have major rivers serving as the main canal water
drainage for the city not been able to drain out excess rainwater? What has happened to the
Pallikaranai marsh which acts as a sponge to soak up the excess of rainwater?
Chennai’s original terrain consists of many lakes and marshy areas. The city had more than
600 small water bodies in the 1980s. Each of these small water bodies had a natural flood
discharge channel which used to drain the spillover. But currently, only a fraction of them
could be found healthy. Lamentably, they have not disappeared but have been encroached
upon to make way for concrete structures. What may have been a tank/ pond some 20 years
ago is today the site of a multi-storey residential or industrial structure. For instance,
Chennai’s airport is built entirely on the floodplains of the Adyar river, and the city’s elevated
railway has come up along the stretches of Buckingham Canal.
The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority in 2008 had clearly warned that,
considering its importance and drainage system it provides, contiguous swamp area in
Pallikaranai should remain conserved, prohibiting development therein. Sadly, the marshland
over the years has become the largest dumping site for solid waste. Open spaces and drainage
courses have all become the centre of human habitation. In such a case, where will the rain
water runoff go? Pathetically, it has to settle instead on the roads causing extensive flood.
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The threat of catastrophic flooding and encroachments on ecologically sensitive wetlands is

not happening in Chennai alone. Recent floods in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad,
Guwahati, Kolkata, Bengaluru, and Surat clearly demonstrated how most of the urban
centres of India fail to manage their drainage channels.
In the process of building a smart city, most of the major cities in India have either
completely neglected or have encroached upon natural reservoirs indiscriminately. As the
planet continues to get warmer in the coming decades, countries like India are expected to get
more rainfall in less number of rainy days. Are we prepared for it?
Constructive urban planning with proper drainage system is the need of the hour.
Governments should not compromise in taking stringent action against encroachments on
natural reservoirs, which are reducing water storage capacity. Tamil Nadu is among the few
states spending large sums of money to clean its rivers and resuscitate sewage infrastructure.
However, its efforts go in vain because of civic authorities and the land mafia who are
seriously violating the hydrological cycle of the city. A new legislation should urgently be
enacted to make encroachments on water bodies a cognisable offense.
It is also imperative to impose a blanket ban on all construction work in the marshlands.
Developmental activities in urban areas should be strictly reviewed and approved. Desilting
of small water bodies and drainages should be undertaken at regular intervals. The rainwater
harvesting method that was propagated some years back in the state needs a fresh thrust.
Parks must have ponds, and large development areas must have at least a two-acre retention
area which will in turn recharge aquifers. Wherever possible, interlinking of rivers within the
state should be encouraged so that excess water can be diverted to water-deficit regions.
These initiatives need to be undertaken on a war-footing, lest flood-related problems become
a recurring phenomenon.
Protests, Miscarriages, Deaths: Sterlite Copper’s 20 Years in Thoothukudi

By: Sushma U N and Maria Thomas (24 May 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://qz.com/india/1287476/sterlite-coppers-20-years-in-thoothukudi-have-been-
marked-by-deaths-miscarriages-and-endless-protests
The port town of Thoothukudi in southern Tamil Nadu, home to India’s largest copper
smelter, is the site of much violence and anger. For more than 100 days now, locals have been
protesting the expansion of the smelter operated by UK-based Vedanta Resources’ subsidiary,
Sterlite Copper. But the months-long peaceful demonstrations turned violent on 22 May after
police opened fire on the protesters, killing at least 11 people and leaving several more
injured. This is not the first time that the Thoothukudi area has erupted in anger against
Sterlite Copper. The company has had a rough ride pretty much since it began operations of
the country’s largest copper smelting unit over two decades ago. Here’s a look at its journey:
October 1994: Tamil Nadu’s then chief minister, Jayalalithaa Jayaraman, laid the foundation
stone for a INR 1,300 crore copper smelter project proposed by Sterlite Copper, in
Thoothukudi. Already controversial—and reportedly rejected by Gujarat, Goa, and
Maharashtra before moving to Tamil Nadu—the project sparked opposition from residents,
who joined environmentalists to form the Anti-Sterlite Movement.
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1996: The National Trust for Clean Environment approached the Madras High Court to
challenge the environmental clearances granted to the project by Tamil Nadu’s ministry of
environment and forests and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB). In the
meantime, the copper smelter was built, receiving a license to operate from the government.
January 1997: The plant began operations, producing 391 tonnes of copper anode per day.
Six months later, employees at Ramesh Flowers, a dry flower manufacturing facility next
door, reportedly fell sick and were rushed to hospital. A month after that, workers at a nearby
Tamil Nadu Electricity Board sub-station complained of headaches and coughing.
November 1998: A report commissioned by the Madras High Court found that the Sterlite
Copper plant is located within 14km of the Gulf of Mannar, flouting the government’s
stipulation that it not be located within 25km of the ecologically sensitive area. It also found
that it was gas leaks from the copper plant that made nearby workers sick, and that it had
contaminated groundwater with arsenic, lead, and selenium, among other chemicals. The
High Court ordered the plant to close but a few days later modified its order to allow the plant
to run while another study was conducted.
March 1999: Workers at a nearby All India Radio office were hospitalised after complaining
of breathlessness and nausea. Despite this, the plant was given permission to nearly double its
production to 70,000 tonnes per year.
October 2008: As protests and court cases against the plant dragged on, a study by
researchers from Tirunelveli Medical College found a high prevalence of respiratory tract
infections among residents living within a 5km radius. They attributed this to air pollution
from a mix of gases and particulate matter.
September 2010: Over a decade after the National Trust for Clean Environment filed its case
against the Sterlite plant, the Madras High Court ordered it to be shut down, citing its
violations of the law, and heavy pollution. “The materials on record show that the continuing
air pollution being caused by the noxious effluents discharged into the air by the respondent
company is having a more devastating effect on the people living in the surroundings,” its
judgement said. Sterlite Copper appealed to the Supreme Court of India, which stayed the
order within days, allowing the plant to continue production.
March 2013: Residents of Thoothukudi alleged that there was a gas leak from the factory,
complaining of coughing, wheezing, eye irritation, and miscarriages due to the effects of the
toxic gas being emitted. Locals staged a demonstration demanding the plant be shut. The
TNPCB ordered the plant to be shut until further notice.
April 2013: The Supreme Court overturned the 2010 High Court directive to shut down the
plant, ordering a INR 100 crore fine on the company for flouting environmental norms.
June 2013: Shut for nearly three months, the factory reopened after the National Green
Tribunal allows the company to commence operations on the grounds that “no scientific data,
analysis, etc, [had] been placed…to show emission in excess of prescribed parameters”.
February 2018: The latest round of protests against Vedanta began after Sterlite Copper
proposed to expand the facility and add a second unit in the factory. The company intended to
double its production from the current 4,00,000 tonne capacity. If the expansion comes
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through, it would be the world’s largest single-location copper smelter in an urban area.
Beginning with around 250 people going on strike, the demonstration grew into large-scale
protests with thousands from Thoothukudi and neighbouring areas coming together.
March 2018: Amid the protests, the existing plant was temporarily shut for scheduled
maintenance. Subsequently, the company sought consent to reopen from the TNPCB. The
request was rejected on the grounds that the company hasn’t complied with required
environmental norms. Meanwhile, the anti-Sterlite movement gained momentum, with
multiple political parties lending support to the protestors.
Endosulfan Poisoning in Kerala

By: TA Ameerudheen (30 January 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://scroll.in/article/911273/we-want-justice-victims-of-endosulfan-poisoning-in-
kerala-set-to-start-hunger-strike
People living in more than 20 gram panchayats in Kasargod district were exposed to the
insecticide endosulfan—a highly potent neurotoxin—between 1975 and 2000, when the
public sector Plantation Corporation of Kerala sprayed the chemical aerially on its
12,000-acre cashew estates. Its residues spread far and wide via wind and rain, leaving a trail
of destruction in the district and neighbouring regions of Karnataka, killing more than 1,000
people. It poisoned more than 6,000 people. Thousands of children were born with congenital
disabilities, hydrocephalus, diseases of the nervous system, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and
severe physical and mental disabilities.
The pesticide, which is not easily degradable, contaminated the soil and water and found its
way into the food chain affecting various forms of life in the area, including humans. The
Plantation Corporation stopped spraying endosulfan in 2001, but its impact is still being felt
in Kasargod—babies continue to be born with genetic disorders and physical deformities.
This is why environmental activists call it the biggest pesticide tragedy in India.
In 2012, the victims staged a 128-day strike in Thiruvananthapuram, which was called off
after the government agreed to all their demands, including giving financial aid and setting up
of treatment facilities. Continued agitations, along with legal fights, have helped many
victims get financial help as recommended by the National Human Rights Commission
almost a decade ago. The commission had asked the state government to disburse INR 5 lakh
to seriously ill and bedridden victims, and INR 3 lakh for other victims within eight months.
When the state government failed to comply with the order, the Supreme Court intervened, in
January 2017, asking the state government to disburse INR 500 crore to over 5,000 victims of
endosulfan poisoning within three months.
However, leaders of the movement say that majority of the victims are yet to receive the
compensation. “Of the 6,212 victims, only 2,665 received the monetary help, while 3,547
people are still waiting for it,” said Ambalathara Kunhikrishnan, who has been leading the
agitation since 1998. The victims have alleged there are discrepancies in the list of
beneficiaries prepared by the government for the financial aid. Kunhikrishnan alleged that
government trimmed the list at the behest of pesticide manufacturers. “It wants to show that
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the impact of the pesticide is on the wane now,” he said. “The government is acting in
cahoots with the pesticide manufacturers.”
The protesters also want the government to act swiftly to bring quality medical treatment to
endosulfan victims. They say parents of affected children in Kasargod have to go to either
neighbouring districts or to Karnataka for emergency medical treatment as there are no
suitable government hospitals nearby. “The state government had decided to set up a medical
college in Kasargod district in 2012 and the foundation stone was laid in 2013,” said
Kunhikrishnan. “It had announced that the hospital would begin functioning in 2015, but the
construction has not started yet. The district should get a medical college immediately.”
Their other demands include the formation of a tribunal to bring the culprits of this
catastrophe to book, and the setting up of special schools for the victims. Muneesa, an
endosulfan victim and leader of the movement, says mothers of the endosulfan victims in
Kasargod have suffered enough. “I request the government to help us live a decent life,” she
said. “We want justice.”
Avni: A Wanton Killing

By: Pritish Nandy (7 November 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/extraordinaryissue/avni-a-wanton-killing
The killing of Avni has outraged people across the nation because, in a sense, it represents the
same senseless violence that appears to have gripped us in recent years. And the politics
behind this tragic killing appears to have the same sense of déjà vu: how people in power use
a conflict situation as an opportunity to grab land (hundreds of hectares of precious forest
land in this case) and sell it at a throwaway price to their business cronies. And, once again,
the same names reappear as beneficiaries.
But let’s start at the beginning. Who was Avni? Avni was a six-year-old tigress, the mother of
two ten-month-old cubs. She was officially known as T1.
Avni’s home was Pandharkawada in Yavatmal district. Pandharkawada is a small forest

rapidly encroached upon by the locals as well as those who come in search of lime, coal, and
dolomite. For a mere Rs 40 crore, almost 500 hectares of the forest was given away (you
could say almost gifted) by the government to Anil Ambani. Ambani was to set up a cement
plant there. The plant, of course, got promptly sold off—lock, stock, and barrel—to another
business house for Rs 4,800 crore, thus benchmarking the land’s actual value.
While Avni and her mate were planning a family, which would have in turn grown the tiger
population in the forest, several industrial groups were also eyeing the land. There was
another cement plant coming up there as well as a power plant. Others were also lining up,
eager to grab a part of the forest and there were ministers always ready to sign away forest
land. It is a big business today. But Avni didn’t know that. She saw it as her home.
Luckily, tiger habitats are not easy to give away—for the tiger is a protected species. So Avni
became a headache. There was only one way to get rid of her—to spread the lie that she was
a man-eater. That is very easy to do in a place like Yavatmal, often referred to as India’s
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suicide capital. Years of neglect of local farmers, successive droughts, lack of irrigation,
missed monsoons, mounting debts, and frequent crop failures have brought the region to its
knees. Promised loan reliefs never came. Things are so bad there that people are even ready
to kill themselves for a paltry compensation so that their families may live. In this tragic (and
unfortunate) situation, claiming compensation from wildlife deaths could fetch someone’s
family three times more money than death from drinking pesticide or hanging from a tree.
That is why it was convenient to pin the moniker of a man-eater on Avni. Every death that
took place out there, natural or unnatural, began to be attributed to her.
This campaign was started by the state’s minister of forests himself, who has been accused by
his own party leader Maneka Gandhi (a former Union minister of environment and forests
and renowned for her work among animals) of being on a killing spree since he became
minister. “I am shocked”, she said, “that such a man is allowed to hold this portfolio”. She
also pointed out that the murder of Avni—stealthily and in the dead of night, violating every
wildlife law of the country—was “nothing but a straight case of crime. Despite requests from
his own forest department and people all over India, he gave the order to kill.”
And whom did he hire for the kill? A shooter from Hyderabad, with a history of many run-ins
with the law. In 2005, the Karnataka CID (forests) caught him for illegal shooting
expeditions—punishable under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The former IG of CID
(forests), described him as “a very trigger-happy man”. But the charges against him are not
just limited to poaching. In 1991-92, the Karnataka police had arrested him for allegedly
supplying weapons to Maoists operating along the Andhra-Odisha boundary.
To justify the killing, recent deaths in the region were blamed on Avni—all 13 of them. DNA
tests, however, were only done on three, and two of them showed signs of a tiger kill. But
none of those tests conclusively proved it was Avni who was responsible. Yet, the campaign
continued. Stories were spread about how Avni had become a threat. By law, a man-eater is a
tiger that kills humans for food and, till the very end, there was no evidence that Avni had
ever killed humans for food. In fact, conservationists will tell you that tigers see humans
as predators, not prey. The notion of a man-eater is ridiculously old-fashioned, created
by the British to justify hunting. But the minister kept shouting from the rooftops. And as
the rumours grew, secret plans were laid out on how to kill Avni. The shooter was brought in.
His CV declared that he had killed 250 nilgai in Bihar in public interest.
Many NGOs were ready to offer tonnes of fodder to the villagers to stop them from grazing
in the forest and there was even a proposal to solar-fence the forest zone. But the minister
was adamant. Avni had to go. Even the courts urged restraint. Maneka Gandhi promised to
bring in an expert team from Madhya Pradesh to tranquilise and relocate Avni. But the
minister kept assuring everyone that the shooter would only be an observer while the
veterinary teams would trap the tigress and her cubs, as per the law.
What finally happened was a cold-blooded murder. The shooter’s son, who (some claim) was
not even authorised—slunk into the forest in the night, violating all regulations, and shot Avni
dead. Like in all fake encounters, the excuse was lame: “The tigress attacked us”. What did
you expect it to do when you sneaked up on her and her cubs at night? Forensic tests,
however, disprove even that. They reveal that the bullet went through her shoulder, passed
through the ribs and came out through the other shoulder. This clearly shows Avni was not
attacking them at all but going away into the forest, to avoid a confrontation. Those who have
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examined the body say a tranquiliser gun was fired at her long after she had been killed, to
prove that attempts were made to capture her alive. And all this while the law says you cannot
tranquilise a tiger at night.
Also, as per sources, Avni was shot by a .300 Win rifle which has a bullet diameter of
7.62mm and the bullet weight is about 11.50gm. This is not a calibre permitted for shooting
tigers as per NTCA guidelines. Also, the rifle had a night vision thermal scope attached to it
to aid shooting in complete darkness. Why would you need that if you were not shooting her
at night, violating all laws? Attempts are also being made to replace the bullet which was
recovered from Avni’s body with a 33.10gm bullet used in a .458 Win Mag rifle which the
shooters claim they used for the shoot. A letter has been issued to the shooter and his son to
deposit their rifle and a live cartridge for ballistic testing. But they have moved the weapon
out of the state and have not complied with the order. Rumours say that attempts are being
made to use political influence in Delhi to get that letter withdrawn.
Avni is dead. Her cubs lie orphaned and will probably die. They are too young to hunt for
food on their own. The minister is strutting around, boasting his decision and making
offensive statements against Maneka Gandhi for exposing him. And the forests, as usual, are
up for sale, while the locals barely manage to eke out their indigent existence.
Organised Illegal Mining across India

By: Basant Rath (8 May 2017) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://thewire.in/culture/chhattisgarh-naxal-violence-mining-mafia-jnu
Chhattisgarh’s worst insurgency-hit, tribal-dominated, iron-ore bearing districts, Bastar and

Dantewada, are among the ten most backward districts of the country. Almost all of the
state’s districts feature in the 150 backward district lists of India.
Between October 1980 and July 2016, India has diverted almost 9,00,000 hectares of
forestland for non-forest purposes. This amounts to 1.2% of India’s total forest area as of
2015. Of the 8,97,698.4 hectares of forest land diverted all over India, Madhya Pradesh had
the highest share at over 27%. Chhattisgarh ranked second at 9.4%. In Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh, huge areas of land have been used up for coal and iron ore mining. One-third of
Dantewada’s forests have been degraded due to mining activities.
Pollution of water resources and degradation of natural forests topped up by large-scale land
acquisition have affected the state’s large Adivasi population. According to independent
observers, almost 40% of all those displaced by mining and industrial projects in India
have been Adivasis, though they are only 8% of the population. Chhattisgarh and
Jharkhand have been among the worst hit. The degradation and displacement have anticipated
social implications—but also unanticipated political consequences. The widespread
discontent and conflict has been translated into the growing influence of Naxalism in these
states.
Chhattisgarh has a sanctioned strength of around 1,200 medical specialists for the entire state
but only about 250 posts are filled, mostly outside Bastar’s rural, tribal and violence-hit
areas—devastating an already poor healthcare infrastructure. The living conditions and the
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basic medical facilities are so inadequate that even the security personnel are not immune to
decades of criminal negligence and administrative indifference.
Between April 2012 and September 2015 in Chhattisgarh, 13,383 cases of illegal mining have
been filed in various courts and 1,138 vehicles seized. The corresponding figures for
Madhya Pradesh are 28,830 and 14,671. These figures show how rampant illegal mining is in
these states and what the organised mining mafia syndicates and their political patrons are
doing there. Organised illegal mining is not possible without direct and indirect involvement
of the local police and revenue administrations. And the police and revenue officials can’t
support such a lucrative business without the blessings of politicians.
Illegal mining syndicates and the Naxals share a symbiotic relationship. It is in the interest of
both that the densely-forested, thinly-populated, mineral-rich tribal areas stay isolated from
the outside world and remain economically backward. The mining mafia can’t afford to let go
of their immensely lucrative business. They have done their best to prevent these areas from
having road and mobile connectivity and last mile internet access. That explains why they
finance the Maoists—and, by extension, their violent attacks on security forces. Illegal
miners want the Naxalites to prevent the building of roads, schools, hospitals, police stations,
and other infrastructure that could help people and capital access the mining areas. Road
connectivity will encourage openness. With mobile telephones everywhere, anyone can take
video clips of illegal mining. That would compel the authorities to act and the media to take
note, and make illegal mining much more difficult to conceal from the public.
The biggest beneficiaries of illegal mining are the politicians themselves. There is evidence
on record. Preliminary investigations by the CBI into the Saradha chit fund scam showed that
at least Rs 1,000 crore had been invested in illegal mining in the northeast region.
Business Insider on 4 October 2012 put up photographs as evidence of the exploitative
conditions under which illegal mining in the northeast thrived. The biggest beneficiaries were
investors like Saradha and its powerful supporters of all political hues. Moreover, the
Justice J.C. Shah Commission report named 14 miners and asked for a CBI enquiry. All were
linked to illegal mining in Odisha. Incidentally, the state that accounts for the largest number
of registered incidents of illegal mining is Maharashtra.
The conduct of the Chhattisgarh police has come under serious scrutiny of the
Supreme Court. In January this year, the CBI charged seven constables of the Chhattisgarh
police with arson and causing grievous hurt in raids on three villages in Sukma in 2011.
Another 26 men—many of whom are former members of the outlawed Salwa Judum—have
been charged with rioting and violence. Earlier in December 2015, while investigating this
case, the CBI filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court, alleging that the Chhattisgarh
police was thwarting its probe into key cases in Maoist-hit areas. It has cited instances when
state police personnel assaulted its team. If this can happen to the officers of India’s apex
federal agency, what is happening to the poor Adivasis in Chhattisgarh is best left to one’s
imagination.
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An Ethical Argument against Animal Experiments

Source: https://www.navs.org/additional-information/an-ethical-argument-against-
vivisection/#.XMF0gzAzbIU
Animal advocates oppose animal experiments, on ethical grounds, believing that it is morally
wrong to harm one species for the supposed benefit of another. They encourage others to
extend the circle of compassion to include all living creatures—human and nonhuman alike.
Extending the circle of compassion beyond humankind demands a break with traditional
thought, which holds that animals exist for humans to use as they see fit. In a world that is
largely anthropocentric (human centred), the idea of compassion, respect, and justice for all
animals is often disregarded as mere sentimentality. After all, people argue, where would we
be if we could not use animals for food, clothing, and transportation—or as research tools?
Animals are seen simply as resources—as little more than products to make our lives more
convenient and comfortable.
Animal advocates, on the other hand, view animals through a wider ethical prism—and it
involves far more than sentimentality. They believe animals should not be viewed as
resources and products, but as fellow living creatures who share our planet and deserve moral
consideration that recognises their rightful place in the vast and complex web of life.
Both human and nonhuman animals have been blessed with gifts unique to their own species,
and we each have our own ecological niche that fits into the natural world. The right to enter
into the circle of compassion cannot be measured by mental, physical, or emotional abilities.
As Jeremy Bentham wrote, “The question is not, can they think? But can they suffer?”
As sentient beings, with the ability to experience sensation or feelings, animals caught in the
web of scientific research suffer enormously, both physically and psychologically. Even
those few “laboratory” animals that escape outright physical pain and discomfort are almost
always subjected to isolation, depression, and anxiety. In fact, the worst atrocity we inflict
upon those innocent creatures condemned to animal experiments may be the act of removing
them from their natural habitat, or breeding them in captivity, and then placing them in the
artificial environment of a laboratory cage, where they have no hope of having the kind of
life nature intended for them.
In the end, we as a society have a choice. Do we treat our fellow creatures with cruelty and
callousness? Or with compassion, respect, and justice? As humans, we have the freedom to
make that choice. With this freedom comes the moral obligation to make responsible
decisions. Animals have no such choice. Because they cannot say no, they are completely
vulnerable to whatever the researcher has in store for them, no matter how much pain and
suffering is involved. Animals are unable to understand or claim their right to be alive, to be
free from pain and suffering, and fulfil their biological potential. Therefore, it is up to humans
to recognise and protect those rights for them, just as we are morally obligated to protect
infants, the developmentally disabled, and the mentally ill.
It has been said that the moral progress of our society can be measured by the way it treats
animals. The exploitation inherent in animal experiments stands in the way of moral progress.
Now is the time to extend our sphere of ethical concern to all creatures.
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India’s Recent Laws on Animal Testing

(Compiled from multiple sources)
Animal experimentation in India is overseen by the Committee for the Control and
Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA), the committee formed for this purpose
under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960. CPCSEA operates under the aegis of
the Ministry of Environment and Forests and is “duty bound to take all such measures as may
be necessary to ensure that animals are not subjected to unnecessary pain or suffering before,
during or after the performance of experiments on them. All establishments engaged in
research and education involving animals, are required to comply with the various guidelines,
norms and stipulations set out by CPCSEA.”
June 2013: India became the first country in South Asia to ban the testing of cosmetics and
its ingredients on animals. Any cosmetic product which carries out animal testing will face
action as per provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and the Animal Cruelty Act. The use
of modern non-animal alternative tests also becomes mandatory, replacing invasive tests on
animals. This means that any manufacturer interested in testing new cosmetic ingredients or
finished products must first seek the approval of India’s regulator Central Drug Standards
Control Organisation. A manufacturer will be given approval to test only after complying
with the BIS non-animal standards.
October 2014: After banning cosmetic animal testing within the country, India also imposed a
ban on importing such products that test on animals and thus becoming the first animal
cruelty-free zone in South Asia.
April 2016: CPCSEA, under the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change,
issued a circular restraining soap and detergent manufacturers from product testing on
animals. However, this does not restrict imports of similar products into India. Product
testing on animals such as rabbits, mice, and guinea pigs is a common practice among
manufacturers of cosmetics, soaps, and detergents in various parts of the world.
July 2018: The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission approved modern, animal-free tests for
drug manufacturers. In the 2018 edition of Indian Pharmacopoeia, that provides guidelines
on tests for drugs manufactured and marketed in India, the IPC has replaced the pyrogen test
carried out on rabbits and the abnormal toxicity test carried out on guinea pigs and mice with
tests that can be done in test tubes. These guidelines, which would spare animals from
suffering due to drug experiments, came into effect from 1 July 2018.
In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimated that 92% of drugs that pass
preclinical tests, including “pivotal” animal tests, fail to proceed to the market. More recent
analysis suggests that, despite efforts to improve the predictability of animal testing, the
failure rate has actually increased and is now closer to 96%. The main causes of failure are
lack of effectiveness and safety problems that were not predicted by animal tests.
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What’s behind that Glass of Milk?

By: Anusha Narain (4 May 2013) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/whats-behind-that-glass-of-
milk/article4675921.ece
You know that child who throws a terrible tantrum over a glass of milk. How he kicks and
screams and refuses to touch the stuff? Haven’t you wondered what the fuss is all about?
After all, it’s just a glass of milk. It turns out the child may just have the right idea. The
business of producing milk—indeed, the multi-crore rupee cattle industry it’s a part of—is
sustained by a process of relentless cruelty towards animals, from birth till death, with little
letup: cruelty compounded by poorly defined and implemented methods and gross violations.
In 1998, India, hitherto a milk-deficient nation, surpassed the U.S. as the highest
milk-producing nation, a position it holds till date. According to the Department of Animal
Husbandry, Dairying, and Fisheries, the government has invested INR 2,242 crore to help
meet a national demand of 150 million tonnes of milk by 2016-17. Millions of cattle will be
produced (mainly through artificial insemination) for this purpose.
Today India is home to the world’s largest cattle herd, with 324 million head. The
government is positioning this as a food security measure for the future. From the point of
view of the animals, though, unthinkable cruelty lies ahead. That image of tender care and
worship that we are raised with, the image that is propagated in films and integrated with our
cultural values—that’s a myth. In reality, the life of a cow in India is a horror show.
The first three stages of life—birth, maturity, and motherhood—happen with inhuman haste.
The female calf reaches puberty somewhere between 15 months and three years of age,
depending on the breed, and is then impregnated, increasingly through artificial
insemination. Arpan Sharma, at the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations,
says, “Due to poor equipment and lack of proper training, artificially inseminated cows
sometimes become infertile and develop infections with few to care for them.”
Soon, the calf is born. While the cow is seen as a metaphor for motherhood, she is rarely
given a chance to experience its joys for very long. Calves are separated from their
mothers soon after they are born so that they don’t drink up all the milk. Just what does
this do to these docile creatures? The American physician Dr. Michael Klaper provides an
insight. “On the second day after birth, my uncle took the calf from the mother and placed
him in the veal pen in the barn—only 10 yards away, in plain view of the mother. The mother
cow could see her infant, smell him, hear him, but could not touch him, comfort him, or nurse
him. The heartrending bellows that she poured forth—minute after minute, hour after hour,
for five long days—were excruciating to listen to. They are the most poignant and painful
auditory memories I carry in my brain,” he said in a 2010 interview with an NGO in Oregon.
Eileen Weintraub of Help Animals India and Vishakha Society for Protection and Care of
Animals, Vishakhapatnam, takes this fact to its logical extreme. She states firmly, “With
1.2 billion people and 400 million vegetarians, anyone who does not have a vegan diet
contributes to the suffering of cows.” I once asked my mother, “If we take milk from cows,
then what does the calf drink?” She said the milk a cow produces is more than the calf
requires, and humans use what’s left over. Apparently not. “The quantity of milk a calf gets
varies. By and large, unless the calf is what is called “replacement stock”, it will get only the
bare minimum necessary for survival. Often it will not even get that,” says Sharma.
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To increase yield, the cows are also injected with Oxytocin, a hormone banned in India.
“Studies around the world show that cows injected with Oxytocin have a greater incidence of
abortions, mastitis, and lower conception rates, and their calves suffer higher than normal
infant mortality and delayed puberty,” says Erika Abrams, founder of Animal Aid Unlimited,
an animal rescue organisation based in Udaipur.
And what happens to unwanted male calves? This is where we wade into the red zone of this
bloody business. “Milk cows need to produce a calf every year and half those calves are
male. While a fraction of these are used to pull ploughs, others are butchered. Their skin is
used for leather, and their meat for local consumption and export,” says Abrams. Calf leather
comes from male calves of which India has a huge number.
The ones that live don’t fare much better. With traditional backyard agriculture slowly giving
way to “intensive dairy farming”, hundreds of cows are confined for long periods within
cramped, dark, and acrid quarters. “More times than not even where there is a lot of space
they are tied with a two-foot rope and in most cases all they can do is sit down and stand up
even if they are in the open,” says Nandita Shah, Director at Sharan, Sanctuary for Health and
Reconnection to Animals and Nature, Pondicherry. “At some places in Mumbai, calves are
tied outside till they die of starvation; so technically they have not been killed.”
Divya Narain, an animal rescue volunteer from Bhopal, says, “At the State-run animal shelter
in Bhopal, we often get recumbent little male calves, which have been dumped on the streets
to die.” In other words, male calves, more or less, suffer an early death.
And what about cows? Cows and buffaloes can be productive until about the age of 14 years.
But in the existing set up, in which cows are kept pregnant for almost 300 days a year, most
of them dry up by the age of five or six. And after spending most of her life being milked,
enduring hormone injections and the trauma of separation, the cow is sent off to the
slaughterhouse. 28 Indian states have cow-slaughter protection legislations in place.
Unproductive cows, therefore, are routinely trafficked to slaughterhouses in the states
where laws are less stringent or non-existent.
A large number of cattle is trafficked to Kerala, under inhuman conditions, from the
neighbouring states, as it is a major consumer of beef and does not have any regulation
pertaining to cow slaughter. Apuroopa Podhardha, the legal adviser of People for Cattle in
India (PFCI), a Chennai-based animal rescue group, says, “30 animals are crammed into a
truck meant for six. In some instances, the legs of calves are tied and they are dumped in one
on top of the other. Furthermore, no provision for food or water is made”. Cattle are also
trafficked to West Bengal, from where they are taken to Bangladesh.
PFCI has conducted three cow-rescue operations in Chennai. Podhardha’s colleague

Arun Prasanna G. says, “The latest delicacy in demand in the Middle Eastern markets is veal
(the meat of a calf no older than three months). Flesh of unborn calves is known to bear
medicinal value hence pregnant cattle are slaughtered. In many slaughterhouses, the act of
slaughtering involves smashing the head of a cow with a sledgehammer, which renders it
unconscious; then skinning it; and or hanging it upside down so that all the blood can be
drained from the slit jugular vein, then skinning it live.” In a recent raid in an illegal
slaughterhouse in Chennai recently, there were 20 cattle. “We could only rescue six of them.
The police insisted we file a complaint first, which gave the cattle owners time to hide the
remaining cows.” The slaughterhouse owners received an anticipatory bail.
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According to the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, India has 3,600 slaughterhouses,
nine modern abattoirs, and 171 meat-processing units licensed under the meat products order.
These do not include the numerous and ever-growing number of illegal and unregulated
slaughterhouses, estimated to be more than 30,000. According to the U.S Department of
Agriculture’s report on Livestock and Poultry: World Markets and Trade, India became the
biggest beef exporter in the world in 2012 (till October).
“The government gives subsidies to slaughterhouses because beef exports are a gold mine,”
says Prasanna. According to Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animals Sciences authorities,
1.4 million tonnes of cattle were legally slaughtered in 2012 nationwide. “One dead animal is
worth about INR 30,000. Tissues from a cattle’s heart are used to rebuild livers. Horns and
hoofs are used to make buttons, skin is used for leather, flesh for meat, tail is used for fertility
treatment, bones are used for whitening sugar, and producing gelatin,” says Prasanna.
In states such as Madhya Pradesh, where cow slaughter is illegal, trafficking is rife, and the
dry cattle that are not transported are let loose on the streets, where they live the last days of
their lives foraging in dustbins, eating plastic-infested garbage, and drinking polluted water
from open drains. The government runs several goshalas, shelters for old cattle, across the
country, but these are too few and are not governed by serious norms. Suma R. Nayak, an
advocate and a trustee of the Animal Care Trust, Mangalore, says, “Goshalas have started to
operate along the lines of dairy farms; only accepting healthy, productive cows.”
For all this, milk may not even be as rich in calcium as we have been led to believe.
Amy Lanou, Ph.D., Nutrition Director for the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine in Washington, D.C., says, “The countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis are
the ones where people drink the most milk and have the most calcium in their diets. The
connection between calcium consumption and bone health is actually very weak, and the
connection between dairy consumption and bone health is almost non-existent.”
Also, the growing numbers of cattle casts a heavy shadow on the environment. Bovines
produce methane when they pass gas. It is estimated that a bovine produces, depending on
the breed, anywhere between 100 litres to 500 litres of methane a day. This is equivalent to
the per-day carbon dioxide emissions of a car. India’s huge bovine population makes methane
a dangerous pollutant. There is also the ecological problem. Producing fodder for 324 million
cows puts immense strain on scarce land and water resources. The Humane Society of India’s
report states: Animal agriculture occupies 30% of the earth’s total land area. Approximately
33% of total arable land is used to produce feed crops, in addition to vast areas of forested
land that is clear-cut to graze or grow feed for farmed animals.
What, then, is the alternative? Narain, who is also a major in Ecology from the University of
Oxford, suggests a plant-based diet. “The government is using taxpayer money to subsidise
dairy products (and indirectly the leather and beef industries). What it should be doing is to
promote the production of protein-rich plant-based foods such as legumes, soybeans, pulses,
fruits, and nuts using the land and water resources that are otherwise used to produce cattle
feed. That, and only that, will work.”
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Green Tax
Source: https://www.bankbazaar.com/tax/green-tax.html
Green tax, or pollution tax or environmental tax, is an excise duty on goods that cause
environmental pollutants. Charging taxes on emissions that cause pollution is expected to
lower environmental impairment in a cost-effective manner by encouraging behavioural
changes in households and firms that need to decrease their pollution.
Pollution is considered as the cost of creating products that is not borne by the
producer/ polluter. The adverse effects of pollution, such as climate changes, impaired
health, and noxious odours are forms of an impaired environment borne by everyone,
whether or not they contribute towards pollution. Green tax aims at ensuring that polluters are
duly punished for the activities that deter the environment by charging them a penalty for the
harm caused to others. Charging direct taxes to perpetrators on emissions is an economical
means to provide them with an incentive to lower their pollution to the extent where further
reduction could potentially turn out to be more expensive than paying the tax itself.
Indirect taxes, like taxes aimed at alternative policies or related goods such as authorised
technology standards have the potential to reduce pollution, but the costs involved may be
rather high. For instance, increasing fuel tax in an effort to lower environmental damage
caused by automobile emissions provides no incentive to drivers to ensure that the pollution
control equipment in their car is maintained, and making pollution control equipment
compulsory for all drivers will not encourage them to drive less.
Taxes charged on direct emissions are cost-effective due to the fact that they target those who
need to start working towards pollution reduction. Firms and households that find pollution
reduction expensive will continue to cause pollution and will have to pay more tax as a result
while firms and households that find it less expensive can cut/ lower their pollution and thus
lower their taxes.
Another alternative to emission taxes is a tradable permit scheme. It is as cost-effective as the

levy of direct taxes as these schemes reduce the amount of permissible emissions by issuing a
certain amount of emissions permits. These permits can then be traded among polluters. The
permit price is similar to tax in the sense that polluters who find it expensive to lower their
emissions will instead purchase permits that allow them to continue emitting pollutants while
those who can reduce emissions at a lower price can do so before putting up their unused
permits for sale. The distributional effects that tradable permit schemes may have are
different in comparison with pollution taxes, but will depend on the permits and whether or
not they are given away or auctioned off (on what basis and to whom).
Green tax on vehicles in India is a relatively new trend, but RFID tags are being given and
CCTV cameras have been deployed at border entry points in Delhi to ensure that commercial
vehicles that enter the city will be monitored for emissions. ECC (Environmental
Compensation Charge) was imposed from October 2015 on pollutants depending upon the
vehicle’s size. The government of Maharashtra decided to impose a green tax on private
vehicles that are older than 15 years, while commercial vehicles used for over eight years will
also be subject to the tax.
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Green Banking
By: Amruth Prasad Reddy, M.B.S. Sravanthi, Shaik Rehana Bhanu (Edited excerpts)
Source: http://www.bankingfinance.in/green-banking-challenges-opportunities.html
Green banking refers to the promotion of environment-friendly practices by banks, and

reduction in the carbon footprint of banking activities. This involves three major approaches:
green transformation of internal operations, environmentally responsible financing, and
market-based solutions to address a range of environmental problems.
Green banking through internal operations: In the past few years, banks have incorporated
paperless technologies in their internal operations to help the environment as well as to
provide their customers efficient and better services. In their day-to-day business operations,
banks ordinarily generate carbon emissions through the usage of paper, electricity, stationary,
lighting, air-conditioning, and electronic equipment. Green banking through internal
operations includes online account opening, online banking, mobile banking, net banking,
electronic fund transfers, as well as the use of ATM, cash and cheque deposit machines, credit
and debit cards, e-statement SMS alerts, and mini image statements.
Green financing: This refers to banks providing financial assistance for environmentally
responsible projects. The purpose is to provide financial assistance to green technology and
pollution reduction projects to reduce external carbon emissions. Banks support industries
that are resource-efficient and emit low carbon footprint. Priority is given to financing
eco-friendly business activities and energy efficient projects such as water treatment plants,
waste disposal plants, bio-gas plants, windmills, solar plants, and hybrid car projects.
Green banking financial products:

(i) Green mortgages or energy efficient mortgages: providing retail customers with lower
interest rates for purchasing new energy efficient homes or investing in energy efficient
appliances or green power.
(ii) Green car loans: providing lower interest rates for purchase of eco-friendly cars/ cars
with higher fuel efficiency.
(iii) Green credit cards: Allow cardholders to earn rewards or points for contributions to
eco-friendly charitable organisations, which can be redeemed.
Carbon Credits
By: Gautam Ahuja (Edited excerpts)
Source: http://www.legalservicesindia.com/article/264/Carbon-Trading-In-India.html
Companies in the developed world are required to meet certain carbon emission targets set by
their respective governments. However, if these companies are not able to meet their
emission targets, they have an alternative of purchasing these carbon credits from the market
i.e. from someone who is successful in meeting these targets and who has a surplus of these
credits. This process is known as carbon trading. Carbon trading is also advantageous for
companies of the developing world, as it provides monetary gains through sale of carbon
credits, which helps such companies in purchasing or updating their technology. This change
in technology eventually helps them further reduce carbon emissions.
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Indian industries were able to cash in on the sudden boom in the carbon market, making it a
preferred location for carbon credit buyers. India is one of the largest beneficiaries of the total
world carbon trade through the Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol,
claiming about 31%. It has already generated about 30 million carbon credits, the second
highest transacted volumes in the world. Here are some examples of carbon trading in India:
- Jindal Vijaynagar Steel declared that by the next ten years, it will be ready to sell
credits worth $225 million on saved carbon. This was made possible since their steel
plant uses the Corex furnace technology which prevents 15 million tonnes of carbon
from being discharged into the atmosphere.
- Powerguda in Andhra Pradesh sold credits worth 147 tonnes of saved carbon dioxide.
This was done by extracting bio-diesel from 4,500 Pongamia trees in the village.
- In Madhya Pradesh, it is estimated that 95 very poor rural villages would jointly earn at
least $300,000 every year from carbon payments by restoring 10,000 hectares of the
degraded Handia forest.
Even though India is the largest beneficiary of carbon trading and carbon credits are traded on
the Multi Commodity Exchange, it still does not have a proper policy for trading of carbons
in the market. The National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Limited has asked the
Centre to put in place a proper policy framework for allowing trading of certified emission
reductions (CERs) in the market. Also, to unleash the true potential of carbon trading in India,
it is important that a special statute be created for this purpose as the Indian Contracts Act is
not enough to govern contractual issues relating to carbon credits.
Green Bonds
By: Aishwarya Nagpal and Megha Jain (Edited, updated excerpts)
Source: https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/go-for-green-
bonds/article24997935.ece
Leveraging the debt market, green bonds have emerged as an innovative financial tool
serving as a bridge between capital markets and addressing climate change. A green bond is a
regular bond whose proceeds fund projects with tangible environmental benefits. Indian
companies raised nearly $7 billion through Green and ESG (Environmental, Social, and
Governance) bonds in 2021, compared to $1.4 billion and $4 billion in 2020 and 2019,
respectively. The funds are primarily set aside for renewable energy projects, the low carbon
transport sector, and low carbon buildings.
Green bonds provide lower cost, long-term capital, and stable funding for renewable energy
projects. They provide access to domestic as well as foreign capital and have further attracted
new institutional investors with climate mandates. They play a key role in meeting these
investors’ Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) objectives. They also offer a hedge
against carbon transition risks in portfolios that include emissions-intensive assets. On the
other hand, major challenges for India’s green bond market include not-so-robust regulatory
monitoring mechanisms, high currency hedging costs, poor sovereign rating (BBB-), lower
tenures, lack of standardised reporting, and exposure to credit risks.
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India’s Waste Management Woes

By: Anisha Bhatia and Priyanka Bhattacharya (20 April 2017) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://swachhindia.ndtv.com/top-10-things-know-indias-waste-management-woes-
6374
India’s urban population of 429 million citizens produces a whopping 62 million tonnes of
garbage every year. Out of this, 5.6 million tonnes is plastic waste, 0.17 million tonnes is
biomedical waste, 7.90 million tonnes is hazardous waste, and 15 lakh tonnes is e-waste. A
staggering figure of 43 million tonnes of solid waste is collected annually, out of which only
11.9 million, i.e. 22-28% is treated, while about 31 million tonnes of waste is left untreated
and dumped at landfill sites.
India’s ever-growing landfills: India’s landfills are bursting at the seams and overflowing
with items that shouldn’t be thrown in the trash. More than 70% of collected urban waste is
dumped straight into the landfills. As a result, most of them are way past their capacity.
The problem of untreated waste: Imagine three million trucks piled high with garbage.
That’s how much untreated garbage urban India generates every day. Just in case if you are
wondering how much waste that is—if these three million trucks are laid end to end, they
would cover half the distance between the earth and the moon.
Top waste generating cities: Maharashtra tops in solid waste generation by generating over
26,820 tonnes of solid waste per day. In the e-waste sector, Mumbai comes first as it
generates an estimated 1,20,000 tonnes of e-waste annually. Delhi and Bengaluru are ranked
second and third, with 98,000 and 92,000 tonnes of e-waste generation respectively. The
biggest threat to our environment comes from plastic. 60 major cities in India together churn
out over 3,500 tonnes of plastic waste every day, with cities like New Delhi, Chennai,
Kolkata, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and Hyderabad being the biggest culprits.
Prediction: Research shows that if India continues to dump untreated garbage at its current
rate, we will need a landfill of 66,000 hectares which is 10 metres high and can hold 20 years’
worth of waste. That is almost 90% of Bengaluru’s area.
Where India stands: Globally, there are around 2,200 waste-to-energy plants, of which the
European Union has 445, China has 150, and USA has 86. Despite its burgeoning population,
India just has eight. Unused waste has the potential to generate 439 MW of power from
32,890 TPD of combustible waste. To put it in perspective, this much energy is enough to
meet the power demand of a union territory like Pondicherry.
India’s contribution to the world’s growing waste miseries: Researchers say India pumps
around 0.6 tonnes of plastic waste into the oceans annually. It is the 12th biggest plastic
polluter in the world and ranked 10th when it comes to the generation of municipal solid
waste. India also discards around 1.7 million tonnes of electronic and electrical equipment
annually and is the fifth biggest producer of e-waste in the world.
Poor waste management turning India’s cities into pollution bombs: All you need is a small
spark from the light of a matchstick or a cigarette stub to turn any dumping waste site into an
inferno of hazardous gases. Apart from overflowing waste, India’s landfills are also home to
toxins, leachate, and greenhouse gases. With time, toxins produced by waste leaches into the
soil and groundwater, and become environmental hazards for years. Another area of concern
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is the imminent danger of greenhouse gases. When organic material like food scraps and
green waste is put in the landfills, it is generally compacted down and covered. As a result,
the oxygen is removed from it, which causes it to break down in an anaerobic process.
Eventually this releases methane, which is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Lack of awareness and enforcement: The solid waste management rules of 2016 has made
waste segregation mandatory for every waste generator, be it an individual, community,
society, or a corporate office, but implementation remains poor. Another reason for the poor
waste management in India is the lack of awareness. Waste generators don’t know what they
can do in order to reduce their own carbon footprint. Though composting is an important part
of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Campaign, lack of knowledge makes it unsuccessful.
Meet the new Urban Minimalists

By: Somak Ghoshal (5 January 2019) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/jU7SiAe1LbV95ovBly8vHK/Meet-the-new-urban-
minimalists.html
Tender coconut water and paani puri are a few of Sahar Mansoor’s favourite things. As
popular street food across India, these items may cost little, but they exact a steep ecological
price. Their immediate by-product is usually a plastic straw that cannot be recycled, or plates
often disposed of carelessly, leading to clogged drainage. The empty coconut shell has a
better chance of being turned into coir.
“For a long time, I would try to drink the coconut water without the plastic straw and end up
pouring most of it all over myself,” says Mansoor, 27, who lives in Bengaluru. “Until I
finally made the switch.” A couple of years ago, she began carrying a stainless steel straw
and an empty lunch box everywhere so that she could enjoy her beloved snacks without
adding to the burden of urban waste. Soon Mansoor was buying foodgrains only from a city
store that sold them loose, free of packaging. She began to use home-grown personal care
products made with ingredients her grandmother once used—multani mitti (Fuller’s earth),
shikakai, and reetha (soapnut). That led to further reduction of plastic waste. By the time
Mansoor started her venture, Bare Necessities, in 2016, the amount of non-biodegradable dry
waste she produced in over two years fitted into a 500ml jar.
Bare Necessities makes products with ethically sourced and zero-waste ingredients,
supplying them in eco-friendly packages using recyclable material. Sold from select outlets in
Bengaluru, items such as the compostable bamboo toothbrush or the Boondh menstrual
cup are steadily attracting buyers. “Our customer base is mostly women between the ages of
18 and 40,” says Mansoor. “Many of them are young mothers and millennials who want to
consume more mindfully and associate with ethical brands that reflect their personal values.”
While Bengaluru (a hub for urban minimalists) has a rich and long tradition of green living,
the trend seems to be catching on in other metros too. Mansoor says she is invited every
month to give multiple talks about zero-waste living and conduct workshops in different
cities. From corporates such as Google and Godrej to apartment complexes and coffee shops,
she has spoken to a variety of audiences. “The goal of Bare Necessities is not just to sell
products,” she says, “it is to convince people to change their thinking and lifestyles.”
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In the last few years, green warriors and urban minimalists across the country have begun to
consume more consciously, cutting back on excesses and opting out of the rat race. In their
quest for a low-impact life, people are retreating from the urban bustle to the stillness of rural
farms. Some have shrunk their material needs to fit all their possessions into a few bags,
while others have improvised ingenious strategies to make their habitats eco-friendly. In the
examples set by them are lessons of frugality and conservation, not only integral to living
meaningfully in the 21st century, but also surviving its multiplying challenges.
Minimalism in India isn’t a new phenomenon, though the opening up of the economy in
1991, followed by the wave of globalisation, has dimmed its impact considerably. Even so,
all major religions in the subcontinent advocate simple living and a philosophy of
renunciation. In the 20th century, the most influential proponent of such ideas in the social
sphere was M.K. Gandhi. Dressed in his trademark loincloth made of handspun yarn and
subsisting on a frugal diet of fruits, nuts, and boiled vegetables when he was not engaged in
lengthy fasts, Gandhi fashioned himself as the archetypical minimalist, almost impossible to
rival. If his sartorial tastes are harder to emulate in the 21st century, the charkha, or the
spinning wheel, which he turned into a tool of resistance, has found an enduring place in
Indian life. Promoted by Khadi Aur Gram Udyog Aayog since 1956, handspun yarn and
handloom weaves signify both elegance and simplicity.
Two years ago, Bengaluru-based Jahnavi Pai, a 37-year-old ecologist who loves handloom
clothes, decided to pay tribute to weavers by learning to spin yarn on the charkha. “When I
was working in villages around Challakere (in Karnataka), I saw weavers moving to cities to
work in garment factories,” she says. “Most of them were resolved that their trade should end
with them; they didn’t want their children to carry it.” So profound was the sense of
disillusionment, the younger generation preferred jobs as security guards to the life of a
village weaver. “That’s when I thought, we have to be part of the system and bring dignity
back to the profession,” Pai says.
Since weaving required elaborate infrastructure and specialised technique, spinning seemed a
good place to start at. But finding a teacher proved challenging, especially since the local
Khadi centres weren’t encouraging. Eventually, Pai took lessons from a proponent of the
charkha in Pune, and was joined by friends, one of whom was growing cotton in her garden.
Since then, Pai and her fellow enthusiasts have organised about nine workshops at
Navadarshanam, an ashram-like setup over 100 acres of land near Anekal in Tamil Nadu, and
also at Melukote in Karnataka. Some 200–250 people have learnt spinning from them.
Apart from helping people slow down, spinning returns them to the origins of one of the most
essential items in their lives. For Pai, the awareness of the physical labour that goes into the
making of a piece of cloth has segued into more intentional living choices. On the path to
leading a minimalist life, she and her husband don’t own a refrigerator, car, or RO filter
(which leads to water wastage during filtration). “We don’t buy dairy or meat products, cook
at least once every day, and get supply of fresh fruit and vegetables daily,” she says.
The discipline, rigour and self-control that minimal and eco-friendly living requires seem
near impossible to infuse into a public culture like India’s. According to 2016 data from the
Press Information Bureau, India generates around 62 million tonnes of mixed waste
(containing both recyclable and non-recyclable material) every year, most of which ends up
in landfills. While in some cities, like Bengaluru, there is a robust practice of composting
wet waste and segregating the dry, such norms are far from common across the country.
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The bulk of dry waste usually comes from the packaging used in fast moving consumer
goods. Add to it gadgets and electronic appliances—programmed to last a limited span and
now increasingly discarded by users to “upgrade” to better products.
For someone who once worked in mass-manufacturing industries, Bengaluru-based

Arvind Shivakumar has come a long way. Trained in tool-and-die-making, the 40-year-old
has moved away from the assembly-line model of making moulds for disposable objects over
the last 15 years “to earning a meaningful living by facilitating and hosting conversations that
matter,” as he puts it. “When I was five-six years old, I attended a nature camp in Ragihalli
(on the outskirts of Bengaluru), where waste had been dumped on part of the site,” he says.
“The trainer asked us, ‘How do you want to leave this place?’ So we cleaned it up a bit. All
these years later, I realise that question has become the larger theme of my life.”
In the last two decades, Shivakumar says, he has internalised this question, and acted upon it
at many levels. Despite growing up in a meat-eating family, he turned vegan over a decade
ago. He stopped buying silk and leather as these are non-compassionate towards animals.
Once attached to his wardrobe, he reduced it from 200-250 pieces to 50-odd items—and still
did not need to buy clothes for almost 10 years. Recently, after living in a rented house,
Shivakumar moved into his parents’ home with his partner. “The nuclear family is a model
that feeds into the capitalist ideal of over-consumption,” he says. “Living with my parents,
for instance, has meant less consumption of water and electricity for all of us.”
Shivakumar describes his journey into minimalism as incremental deepening of

self-awareness, which finds resonance in the experience of another practising minimalist, a
water management expert, also based in Bengaluru. Speaking on the condition of anonymity
(that’s part of being a minimalist, she explains), she mentions the big and small changes she
has made in her life in the last six years. It started with cutting off her hair, on which she
had once lavished attention. A shorter crop meant less time and resources spent on its upkeep.
By the same logic, life in a smaller house, with a leaner wardrobe, a concise library, and
no vehicle, can free up precious hours every day otherwise spent looking after these items.
The uniquely urban condition called “stuffocation” leads to the urge to periodically escape
into a sylvan idyll. But Venetia Kotamraju and her husband, Gautam, decided to change their
lives. “We thought we would buy some land and start spending some weekends here,”
Kotamraju says on the phone from their farm in Sakleshpur, in Karnataka’s Hassan district,
where she spends most of her time with her two children. “Over the last year-and-a-half,
since I started living here, we fell in love with a bare minimum lifestyle. We realised so much
of what we think we need is actually unnecessary.”
Their life on the farm began with the absolute essentials—a tent in a jungle, some sleeping
linen and water. They built a compost toilet, which doesn’t create waste, a bathroom to
shower in, and a woodfire stove. “Then we realised we needed a storage area, so we put in a
shipping container,” she says. After the birth of their younger son earlier this year, the
Kotamrajus built a basic mud hut with earth bags. “We’ve given ourselves the luxury of a tap
coming in from the water tank so we have running water,” Kotamraju says. “There is also a
solar water heater.”
While her husband works in Bengaluru and spends weekends at the farm, Venetia says she
finds it difficult to exist “in our ‘modern’ world” when she goes back to the city now. At five
and a half years, their older son is being unschooled—instead of actively teaching him, the
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parents facilitate his interests—which also ties in with their philosophy of rejecting the
trappings of urban life. Like the Kotamrajus, Sameer Shisodia, another Bengalurean, also
planned to move to a farm in Coorg with his wife, once their children went off for higher
education. The idea led to the formation of the Tamarind Valley Collective in 2016, made up
of 47 co-owners, who own 75 acres of land in Thagatti village, 100km from Bengaluru.
Founder of the parent company Beforest, which manages the collective, Shisodia met over
350 people before he picked the buyers. The initial investment for each co-owner is
INR 37 lakh. The collective consists of professionals, mostly in high-income corporate jobs,
who have moved to the site, or visit it on weekends and take periodic breaks there, or are
planning to retire there eventually. “The idea behind the farm is that your entire plate should
come from what you grow,” says Shisodia. About 35% of the land is reserved for forest
cover, while millets and other crops that aren’t water intensive are grown on the rest. “We
have hired a team of farmers, who carry out the daily grunt work,” he adds. “Most members
participate on the weekends.”
Understanding the source of the food we eat, as well as the products we use on our bodies, is
indeed key to living more intentionally, ethically, and minimally. In 2000, Smitha Kamath,
46, who describes herself as a “spiritual ecologist”, began to reflect on these questions when
her daughter, then two, suffered from severe allergic reactions. In 2006, Kamath took a
sabbatical from her corporate job and worked with Greenpeace for a year. But the inflection
point came in 2011, after attending a workshop on sustainable futures at Auroville,
Puducherry. “I realised the solution does not lie with a corporate, but with shifting our
individual lifestyle at the grassroots level,” Kamath says.
Soon after, she began working on her farming project, Devara Kaadu, in Channapatna, near
Bengaluru, where she focused on rain-fed crops and millets. She refrained from using
chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Leaf mulch and bird droppings became the pillars of her
zero-budget natural farming programme, implemented with minimal investment. The
harvest was vulnerable to attacks from various organisms, but that is the way things are.
“Earlier, one-third of the produce was always reserved for the birds and other animals,” says
Kamath. “Now we want everything for ourselves.”
Kamath believes in devara kaadu (forests of the gods or the sacred grove), a practice of
holistic living common to Karnataka as well as parts of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Inspired
by its principle of living off the earth, abjuring synthetic products, she eventually started the
PraanaPoorna Collective. With 24 members based in Bengaluru, Gurugram, Coimbatore,
Madurai, and Chennai, the group makes a range of everyday household and self-care
products using natural ingredients like soap nuts, shikakai, beeswax, coconut oil, and
jaggery.
At her home in Bengaluru, Kamath runs her “production unit” from an outhouse, where she
makes floor cleaners, body butter, soaps, shampoos, and hand-wash with citrus peels, jaggery,
and bio enzymes. These are packaged in used water or beer bottles and sold to people
locally. “We want to break the habit of picking up these items from the shelves of
convenience stores,” she says. “So we urge people to come and pick up these products from
our homes because buying from those you know closely is one way of community building.”
Tucked away in bustling Whitefield, on the eastern fringes of Bengaluru, water management
expert Rajesh Shah’s home is an oasis of eco-friendly living as well. The water requirement
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for his family is met through rainwater harvesting. The water for the laundry is reused to
flush the toilets. The kitchen water is recycled to irrigate the garden. Depending entirely on
solar panels, the house is off grid. Rajesh, 56, and his wife, Vallari, grow seasonal vegetables
on their terrace garden to meet some of their daily demands. And for the last five-six years,
they have an open-door policy on Fridays for anyone who wants to join them for an evening
of meditation and quiet reflection.
Rajesh says he was “born a minimalist”. “In Bombay, where I grew up, I recycled textbooks
as a child, hated wasting paper, and went to the sahakari bhandar with a thaila (cloth bag),”
he says. While working at Bell Labs in the US, he introduced the practice of double-sided
printing at his workplace. After he moved to Bengaluru a decade ago, he convinced the local
milk supplier to bring them milk in their own steel containers instead of packets. In the last
few years, the Shahs have moved to a vegan, oil-free, and gluten-free diet. Processed foods
and white foods don’t enter their kitchen. Having got rid of his car, Shah commutes by
bicycle or takes a bus.
The scale of the environmental challenges facing urban India is daunting, and growing each
day. Nothing short of a valiant and sustained collective effort can make a dent in the crisis
looming ahead of us—but it can only begin at the level of the individual. “Can you think of
one Indian city where the air and water quality is improving year by year?” Shah asks. “We
must strive to get to such a goal—that would be the mark of real success.”
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UNIT 6: COUNTER-NARRATIVES: EXPLORING ALTERNATE ECONOMIC
MODELS
Beyond GDP—Is it Time to Rethink the way we Measure Growth?

By: Ross Chainey (13 April 2016) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/beyond-gdp-is-it-time-to-rethink-the-way-
we-measure-growth
Is our love affair with GDP coming to an end? If you were following this year’s Annual
Meeting in Davos, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is indeed the case. In three
separate sessions, two giants of the financial world and one leading academic were all in
agreement: gross domestic product—the estimate of the total value of goods and services a
country produces—is up for review.
Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, IMF head Christine Lagarde, and MIT
professor Erik Brynjolfsson all said GDP is a poor indicator of progress, and argued for a
change to the way we measure economic and social development. “We have to go back to
GDP, the calculation of productivity, the value of things—in order to assess, and probably
change, the way we look at the economy,” said Lagarde.
As the business landscape reinvents itself, demographics shift, inequality expands, climate
change gets worse, and technology continues to advance at breakneck speed, GDP is
struggling to stay relevant. In order to keep up with the changes brought on by the Fourth
Industrial Revolution, many are arguing that we need to find a new measure to assess the
health of our economies and—more importantly—the people living in them.
For decades, GDP was the measure of all things. Some countries, like China, remain obsessed
with it and use it to set their own targets for growth. As the World Economic Forum’s chief
economist Jennifer Blanke writes, “the evolution of GDP remains a fixation for governments
around the world and it is also a regular topic on the agenda of global and regional
groupings”, such as the 2016 Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank. But amid this
obsession, Blanke argues, “it’s easy to forget that it merely provides a measure of the final
goods and services produced in an economy over a given period, without any attention to
what is produced, how it’s produced, or who is producing it.”
Put simply, focusing on GDP growth is not the way forward. She writes: “GDP is a partial,
short-term measure, whereas the world needs more wide-ranging and responsible instruments
to inform the way we build the economies of the future”. Blanke mentions three key
questions that GDP overlooks: is growth fair, is it green, and is it improving our lives?
This last question is one that would resonate with Richard Easterlin, professor of economics
at the University of Southern California, who has been writing about the link between
happiness and income for 40 years. We are faced with an “enticing opportunity,” he writes,
“to consider happiness as the leading measure of well-being, supplanting the current
favourite…GDP.” Crunch the numbers and you’ll find that the relationship between
happiness and income probably isn’t what you thought it was, he argues. In short—money
isn’t everything: “In rich countries—rich or poor, democratic or autocratic—happiness for
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UNIT 6: COUNTER-NARRATIVES: EXPLORING ALTERNATE ECONOMIC MODELS
most is success in doing things of everyday life. That might be making a living, raising a
family, maintaining good health, and working in an interesting and secure job.”
Inclusive growth, environmental outcomes, and well-being are not the only missing parts
of the puzzle. Another controversial, unsurprising omission is the women whose unpaid
efforts are overlooked by economic policy. If GDP counted women, argues economist Diane
Coyle, then GDP would look very different. In a 2011 study, the OECD found that so-called
“home production” would add between 20% and 50% to the GDP of its member countries.
Thankfully, old barriers are breaking down, and an equal opportunity GDP—or its
equivalent—could be closer than we think. This is down to two things: the rise of the sharing
economy and shifting demographic trends in many countries (ageing populations, for
example). Coyle writes, “The time has come to reopen the 1950s debate about how we should
define the economy, and ensure that GDP or its replacement counts the vital work that goes
on in the home, and in the community, as well as the marketplace.”
However we decide to put a number on progress, our cities will remain the main engines of
economic growth. Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of
Public Policy in Singapore and a Young Global Leader alumnus, breaks down the
extraordinary contribution of the world’s urban clusters towards a nation’s economic status.
“Within many emerging markets,” he writes, “the leading commercial hub accounts for at
least one-third or more of national GDP. In the UK, London accounts for almost half of
Britain’s. And in America, the Boston-New York-Washington corridor and greater
Los Angeles area together combine for about one-third of America’s GDP.”
With the rapid growth of megacities and urban corridors (some as big as 100 million people)
soaking up investment and attracting talent from smaller cities and rural areas, spreading this
wealth around is a challenge governments around the world will have to face up to.
Inequality, happiness, sustainable development are all inextricably linked to whatever the
world’s leading economists and policy-makers decide to do next. This matters to all of us. As
Joseph Stiglitz said in Davos, “What we measure informs what we do. And if we’re
measuring the wrong thing, we’re going to do the wrong thing.”
Indices of Social Development

Source: http://www.indsocdev.org
Social development is about putting people at the centre of development. Since the 1990s,
there has been growing recognition that social development is critical for broader
development outcomes, including sustainable economic growth. But until now, data
limitations have hindered international comparative research capable of showing weaknesses
and strengths across countries, as well as the links between social development and other
development outcomes.
The Indices of Social Development (ISD) hosted by the International Institute of Social
Studies has the potential to change this. It brings together 200 indicators, synthesising them
into a usable set of measures to track how different societies perform along six dimensions of
social development:
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(i) Civic Activism, measuring use of media and protest behaviour.

(ii) Clubs and Associations, defined as membership in local voluntary associations.
(iii)Intergroup Cohesion, which measures ethnic and sectarian tensions, and discrimination.
(iv) Interpersonal Safety and Trust, focusing on perceptions and incidences of crime and
personal transgressions.
(v) Gender Equality, reflecting gender discrimination in home, work, and public life.
(vi) Inclusion of Minorities, measures levels of discrimination against vulnerable groups
such as indigenous peoples, migrants, refugees, or lower caste groups.
The indices are composed from 25 reputable data sources for 193 countries, over the period
from 1990 to 2010, and are updated as new data become available. The indices are
aggregated using the innovative method of “matching percentiles”.
The results reveal the achievements and challenges facing societies across the world: from
the richness of community life in Sub-Saharan Africa, to the high levels of personal safety
and security in the Persian Gulf, to violence in the Caribbean. And we can monitor
improvement over time: the growth of civic engagement in Eastern Europe, gender
empowerment in the Middle East, or inclusion of minorities in Southern Africa. The
indicators show that while economic and social development are closely correlated, many
high income societies continue to face problems of discrimination and exclusion, while some
developing countries have overcome these challenges.
The indices allow estimating the effects of social development for a large range of countries
on indicators like economic growth, human development, and governance.
Gross National Happiness

By: TCA Ramanujam (Edited excerpts and updates)
Source: https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/why-india-doesnt-score-high-on-
happiness-quotient/1167495
Dissatisfaction with GDP as a measure of an economy gave rise to the emergence of Gross
National Happiness, or GNH, in 1972. The king of Bhutan pointed out how GNH is more
important than GDP. In 2011, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution entitled
“Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development”. Member nations were urged to
follow the example of Bhutan and measure happiness and well-being by defined goals.
The UN released the latest World Happiness Report in March 2022. It ranked 146 countries
by happiness levels, based on factors such as income, freedom, trust, healthy life expectancy,
social support, and generosity. In the report, India is ranked at 136. However, neighbouring
Sri Lanka at 126, Pakistan at 103, Bangladesh at 99, Nepal at 85, and China at 82 are all far
ahead. GNH is distinguishable from GDP. It values collective happiness as the goal of
governance by emphasising harmony with nature. Its four pillars are:
(i) Sustainable, equitable, and socio-economic development;

(ii) Environmental conservation;
(iii) Preservation and promotion of culture; and
(iv) Good governance.
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India’s rank is quite high in the corruption index that was released by the Transparency
International. If Finland is the world’s happiest country, Afghanistan is at the bottom of the
report. The Finns believe that access to nature, safety, childcare, good schools, and free
healthcare took them to the top rank. This is true of the other top nations in the report as well.
Latin America, with its high rates of poverty, income inequality, violence, corruption, ranks
higher in the World Happiness Report mainly due to the remarkable warmth and strength of
family bonds. Governments realise they should focus on supporting societal and family bonds
as much as chasing economic growth. Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University and the author of
Stumbling on Happiness points out that once basic human needs are met, a lot more money
does not make for a lot more happiness. In fact, it may lead to more stress.
In his latest work The Origin of Happiness, British economist Richard Layard notes how
relationships play a critical role. Globally, as incomes have risen, happiness has not. This
is because of breakdown of social factors. A sense of connection to families, wider society,
and community are all critical. The people of Scandinavian countries can be credited with an
egalitarian ethos where people care for each other.
Britain has established a minister for loneliness to take care of people in depression. The
Delhi government introduced happiness curriculum in schools. Madhya Pradesh and Andhra
Pradesh have set up happiness index departments.
Reforms and Indian Capitalism

By: Yamini Aiyar (29 June 2021) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/reforms-and-indian-capitalism-
101624960517214.html
India marks 30 years since the 1991 reforms at a moment when its economy is on the
precipice of another crisis. 1991 ushered in an era of high growth, declining poverty, a
burgeoning, aspirational middle class, and the very real possibility of a seat on the global
stage. By the early 2010s, those heady days of high growth were fast becoming history and
long ignored fragilities within the Indian economy—of cronyism, structural inequality,
regional concentration—were increasingly visible.
India has reached the end of the road of the gains made from the 1991 moment and the
ravages of Covid-19 have thrown this into sharp relief. Finding our way out of the crisis and
on to a growth trajectory requires an honest appraisal of the past, a debate that goes beyond
Gross Domestic Product to focus on the real economy and a reform imagination that is
willing to confront the realities of our political economy.
Nurturing Indian capitalism by breaking it free from the shackles of the licence-raj through
de-licensing, market competition, and opening up was the dominant framework of the 1991
moment. What has emerged, is capitalism with two faces—partly dynamic, competitive and
productivity-oriented, but coexisting with an increasingly visible, dark side entrenched in
rent-extracting cronyism that privileges political deals over rules-based business.
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Corruption scandals, the twin balance sheet problem, the consolidation of capitalist
oligarchies, and increased opacity in electoral finances are illustrations of this entrenched
cronyism, notwithstanding reforms such as the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. India’s path
to capitalism is yet to credibly create markets that embrace competition and create conditions
for widespread prosperity. And it is this lack of credibility that lies at the heart of the
scepticism and resistance toward deeper factor market reforms in land, labour, and agriculture
that impact the everyday economic prospects of ordinary Indians. The fears and anxieties of
losing bargaining power when confronted with an entrenched State–business nexus are far
more genuine than our debates on economic reforms have cared to admit.
The credibility deficit of Indian capitalism is partly due to the weaknesses of the regulatory
regime. In the rush to get government out of the way, scant attention was paid to ensuring we
had good government where we needed it. India’s regulatory regime mirrors the very
infirmities of government that the 1991 reforms hoped to escape. Robust regulation required
building technical skills, creating an enabling legal regime, instituting checks and balances
against unrestricted power, and ensuring public accountability. Instead, we enabled a weak
and politically vulnerable institutional landscape. Sustainable growth requires credible
institutions. Investing in the State and its regulatory institutions rather than wishing it
away will ultimately be the real driver of growth.
Weak regulation, however, is only part of the challenge. Markets in India operate in the
context of deep structural inequalities. Our 1991 economic imagination responded to these
realities by framing the debate in false binaries of growth versus inequality. This gave India
comfort in its unusual structural transformation, one that skipped manufacturing, despite
abundant low skilled labour, growing instead on the back of a far smaller high-skilled
services sector. The distributional consequences of this became apparent even before the
pandemic. Informality, under-employment, and low inter-generational mobility persisted
through the heady days of growth eventually contributing to the pre-pandemic slowdown.
Mobility is highest in places that are economically better off—southern, urban, and with high
education levels. Poorer regions and poorer people have failed to catch up. There is no trade
off. Inequality has hampered growth. The pandemic has only exacerbated this trend.
Addressing structural inequalities requires a radical shift in our frameworks of economic

policymaking. While there is widespread consensus that India needs to change direction and
focus on employment-intensive manufacturing, the policy tools, framed by 1991, remain
focussed on de-regulating factors of production, visible in the rush to push farm laws without
addressing structural vulnerabilities which fuel market scepticism. To make markets work for
the poor, the State needs to invest and build markets even as it clears the regulatory maze.
This includes physical market infrastructure, supply chains, and risk management through
safety nets. Small towns and rural areas, which contribute to half of India’s manufacturing
value addition and non-farm employment, have to be the priority and not just “smart” cities.
None of this is viable without decentralised, local economic planning. Strengthening local
governments for better governance has to be at the heart of the agenda.
Finally, the colossal failure to invest in human capital, health, education, nutrition,
worse, treating these as an afterthought, a luxury of high growth, is both an economic and a
moral failure. There can be no sustainable growth without first investing in people and
enabling them the opportunity to be active participants in the economy.
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Criticism of Free Market Economics

By: Tejvan Pettinger (28 November 2012) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/criticism-free-market
Free market economics believes government intervention should be limited to the protection
of private property. It is advocated by many economists especially in the Chicago, and
Austrian school of Economics. However, although free markets have advantages, such as
greater efficiency, there are several criticisms levelled at purely free market economies:
(i) Inequality: The wealthy are able to accumulate greater wealth due to their ability to:
- Inherit wealth;
- Pay for better education for their children, giving them a better start in life;
- Use profit and dividend to purchase more assets, i.e. accumulate more; and
- Create monopoly power, which exacerbates inequality.
There are also periods of unemployment which leave some people with no income.
(ii) Monopolies: Firms with a high market share are able to set higher prices for consumers.
(iii) Under-provision of public goods: Goods such as defence and law and order, which are
non-rivalrous and non-excludable, are under-provided.
(iv) Under-provision of merit goods: Goods with positive externalities (benefits enjoyed by
third-parties), and services whose benefits are under-estimated, such as health and
education, are under-provided.
(v) Information failure: There may exist a lack of information about the best way to use
resources, e.g. hazards in insurance.
(vi) Private sector more inefficient in providing public services: E.g. the US pays high
administrative costs for private health insurance.
(vii) Instability: John Keynes argued capitalism has a tendency of boom and bust economic
cycles, which leads to periods of mass unemployment. Hyman Minksy suggested
financial markets were inherently unstable due to forces of irrational exuberance.
(viii) Over-production of negative externalities: E.g. environmental pollution and congestion,
which lower living standards, go unchecked.
(ix) Over-consumption of demerit goods: Consumption of goods of which people ignore or
under-estimate costs, such as tobacco and alcohol, is not restricted.
(x) Unsustainability: Free markets are concerned with the present moment but ignore
implications for long-term ecological stability, e.g. free markets lead to the over-use of
natural resources.
Socialism and the Indian Constitution

By: Salil Tripathi (2 February 2015) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/XKcwMBM2WpKX7TM20yPBBP/Why-
secularism-and-socialism-are-integral-to-the-Indian-cons.html
The word “socialist” was introduced in the Indian Constitution during the Emergency by
Indira Gandhi’s government, which had questionable legitimacy and was keen to prove that it
was true to the spirit of the Constitution, even when its conduct was undermining the
protections for civil liberties that were enshrined in the same Constitution. The word
“socialist” was added to reassure the nation that the moneyed class would not dominate the
economy.
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A long-respected doctrine of the Indian Constitution says its basic structure cannot be altered
by Parliament. It is rooted in the seminal 1973 case, known as Kesavananda Bharati. There,
the Supreme Court ruled that even if Parliament amended any part of the Constitution, it
could not change its basic structure. The power to amend is not the power to destroy, it ruled.
Various judges have given differing definitions of the basic structure. But the key phrases
include supremacy of the Constitution; mandate to build a welfare state under the directive
principles of state policy; provision of socio-economic justice; and equality of status and
opportunity. The basic structure doctrine, in other words, already contained within it the
principles of socialism.
But Indira Gandhi wanted to assert parliamentary supremacy over the judiciary, and she felt it
necessary to amend the Constitution to make this idea part of the Constitution’s preamble.
Another explanation of her actions is that her government had severely weakened civil and
political rights so she was probably keen to demonstrate her commitment to social and
economic rights. And to do so, she wanted to enshrine the idea of a socialistic pattern of
society and give it a scope that went way beyond what was envisaged in the times of her
father Jawaharlal Nehru. She had also abolished the privy purses of former princely states,
and nationalised banks during her radical phase in the late 1960s.
The Preamble embodies the Republic’s founding values, providing a reference point to
interpret the Constitution. The Articles of the Constitution as well as the spirit of the
Preamble both underscore the spirit of socialism. In the Preamble, the people of India
specifically resolve to secure all citizens social, economic, and political justice.
Noises from certain political parties that socialism be dropped or suggestions that it is worth a
debate are both part of a larger ideological project. Discarding socialism from the
Constitution would provide the government the excuse to dismantle the rather weak social
protection the government offers to the poorest. Besides, it would enable the State to remove
protection for minorities from discrimination, by citing reverse discrimination.
This is not to suggest that India has a great record in promoting socialism. In the first
44 years till 1991, when India embarked on economic liberalisation, growth was slow and
India was redistributing not wealth but poverty. During that period entrepreneurial instincts
had to be restrained and curbed and the pernicious permits and license raj grew, which
spawned corruption. (The reality is not much different after liberalisation: crony capitalism
survives, but there is real economic growth, and tens of millions have been lifted out of
absolute poverty in the past 23 years.)
The Preamble is an aspiration, a collective resolution. But successive judgments have relied
upon it because the Preamble is what gives meaning to the sovereignty of the Indian
Republic. Indira Gandhi’s purpose of introducing the word “socialist” may have been cynical,
but it made explicit the commitment the nation had already made to itself. But the removal of
explicit assurance can in theory weaken the resolve of subsequent governments, and possibly
judiciaries, to protect and extend the rights of the vulnerable. Of greater danger would be
attempts by the government to dismantle actual constitutional provisions or laws that give
meaning to those rights—that’s the real battle Indians must fight.
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Decline of Communism in India

By: B.R.P. Bhaskar (8 March 2018) (Edited excerpts)
Source: https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/all-thats-left-behind/299903
Within seven years of the rout in West Bengal after a continuous reign of 34 years, the
CPI(M) suffered a similar fate in Tripura, which it had held for an unbroken 25 years. The
country’s largest Left party is now left with a stake in power only in Kerala, where a front
headed by it has been taking turns with a Congress-led combine to form the government since
1980. The CPI(M)’s fall considerably shrinks the space of the Left in the Indian polity.
The Left’s founding fathers were mainly from the class of landlords and social elites, which
naturally led to some contradictions. It is said the membership card then party secretary
P. Krishna Pillai issued to E.M.S. Namboodiripad, a future ideologue, general secretary, and
Kerala CM, mentioned that he belonged to the bourgeoisie. When Bihar’s then Congress
government moved the Zamindari Abolition Bill, for limited land reforms, Communist
legislators, mostly big landlords, opposed it saying it did not go far enough. And the Bengal
leadership came from the hallowed Bhadralok ranks.
In 1952, as the largest Opposition party in the first Lok Sabha, the undivided CPI seemed to
be the potential alternative to the Congress. Its seizure of power through the ballot box in
Kerala in 1957 reimbursed that impression. It retained its primacy on the Opposition benches
of Parliament in 1962 too, but lost it after the split in 1964—a result of the schism in the
international Communist movement, and differences on the attitude towards the Congress.
Later, the CPI(M) emerged as the main Left party, outstripping the parent organisation in the
Left strongholds of West Bengal, Tripura, and Kerala. As fronts under its leadership gained
power in Bengal in 1977 and Tripura in 1993, retaining it in election after election, while
alternating in power with the Congress-led outfit in Kerala, it commanded attention
nationally as a player in the power game, although its popular base shrank geographically. In
the 1950s, it had been able to grab a few seats from the big industrial cities. When the
influence of trade unions declined, its urban pockets vanished.
When the Emergency generated a backlash and an alternative to the Congress became an
urgent necessity in 1977, it was an amalgam of non-Congress, non-Communist parties, which
Jayaprakash Narayan helped create, that occupied the spot. That entity did not last long. In
1989, with the elections throwing up a hung Lok Sabha, the question of an alternative came
to the fore again. A centrist combination led by V.P. Singh seemed the best bet, and the BJP
and the CPI(M), forgetting their differences over secularism, jointly sustained his government
by supporting it from outside. BJP president L.K. Advani and CPI(M) general secretary
Harkishen Singh Surjeet met informally with V.P. Singh every week to ensure coordination.
Advani’s Rath Yatra on the Ayodhya issue and V.P. Singh’s decision to implement the Mandal
report, which had been gathering dust in the PMO for more than a decade, brought the
Left-Right tango behind the scenes to an end.
The issue of an alternative government came up again in 1996, when Atal Bihari Vajapayee
had to bow out barely a fortnight after being sworn in as PM as he could not muster majority
support in the Lok Sabha. The quest now was for a non-Congress, non-BJP government.
Since the BJP had 161 seats and the Congress 140, the support of one of them was necessary
for the government to survive. Surjeet was the prime mover behind the consensus-making
effort. What equipped him for the task was not his party’s strength—it had 32 Lok Sabha
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members, 23 of them from West Bengal—but the Left’s image as a progressive force. He
found that the leader most acceptable to the motley gathering of parties was his own
colleague, Jyoti Basu, who had been the Bengal CM for nearly two decades.
Basu’s Left Front government had put through land reforms, which successive Congress
governments had failed to do, and devoted special attention to rural development. The
militant trade union activity, which had helped the CPI(M) establish itself as a revolutionary
party in the eyes of the working class, had caused long-established industries to flee the state.
He offered incentives to attract domestic industrialists, but that did not meet much success.
His clean image was what appealed most to the small national and regional parties looking
for a PM under whom they could unite.
The consensus in Basu’s favour posed a dilemma for the CPI(M). The party invariably had a
dominant position in the coalitions it formed in the states, but its strength in Parliament did
not permit such a luxury at the Centre. The politburo decided that the party should not
participate in a government in which it did not have a lead role. The opportunity of a
CPI(M) prime minister was lost. Years later, Basu described the party’s decision as a
Himalayan blunder. It is, of course, possible to find material in Marxist literature to justify
that decision. But, then, how much in accordance with the principles of Marxism has
Communist practice been in India (or, for that matter, anywhere else)?
The Marxist belief that Communists can come to power only through a violent revolution had
been disproved when the Centre allowed the CPI to form the Kerala government in 1957. In
Bengal and Tripura, the CPI(M) entered into alliances only with other Left parties. But in
Kerala, as early as 1967, Namboodiripad opened the way for tie-ups with even those who had
engineered the mass agitation leading to his first government’s dismissal. The new party line
set the stage for dilution of land reform and abandonment of educational reform. It also
led to the party aligning itself with powerful regressive elements for short-term electoral
gains and working against the interests of the state’s small, dispossessed Adivasi population.
Half a century later, the state party still pursues that line.
The Bengal debacle was a direct consequence of the attempt by Jyoti Basu’s successor,
Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, to push neoliberalism down the throats of the people. The violence
at Nandigram and Singur alienated not only the masses, but also the intelligentsia. There
were no comparable incidents in Tripura, but the electoral verdict points to the possibility that
there was discontent, which the party failed to notice. In Kerala, which has seen steady
erosion in the CPI(M)’s traditional support base among Adivasis, Dalits and backward
classes, the party has been adopting tactics designed to cover the losses by attracting other
sections. Success in this effort could entail further loss of the party’s Left character.
In a book published posthumously in 2015, journalist Praful Bidwai took a critical view of
the history of the Indian Left to find out why left-wing politics has not flourished to the
extent that might be expected in a society “with a million injustices and growing inequalities,
recently worsened by Hindutva and neoliberal capitalism”. Noting that Left politics has
shrunk in range and variety, he argued that the Left was facing its phoenix moment and the
ability of its national leadership to overcome the grave crisis it confronted was on test. Sadly,
there is no sign of a young phoenix rising from the ashes.
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Social Entrepreneurship
Source: https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/re-defining-capitalism-a-role-for-social-
enterprise
Market fundamentalism with its idea of creating freedom of choice, and citizens needs being
served simply by supply and demand, is naive. It forgets about the consequences of market
failure for communities and the structural issues that affect disadvantaged people. Not
everyone can have the freedom so eagerly promised under capitalism. The status quo is not
an option anymore; we need things to change and we need to change them fast.
Can social enterprises become this transformational force? Social entrepreneurship does not
operate any more in a niche market, but is becoming more of a global movement, using
existing business models to achieve its social goals. A social enterprise is a business that
operates in the markets to fulfil its social and/ or environmental purpose and it re-invests the
majority of its profits into realising its social and/ or environmental mission. They
characteristically are businesses that are open and transparent in their actions and often
involve their stakeholder groups in ownership, governance, and decision making structures.
A social enterprise combines the best of two different worlds: it is a mixture of the private
sector’s dynamism, nimbleness, and self-sufficiency, and of the public and social economy
sectors that are more value-based. It is an individually, socially, and environmentally
sustainable business model that “does good” in the society. To be able to do good in the
society and in the world, a social enterprise needs to be a viable business, but it does so with
a conscience. It is still important what figure is on the “bottom line” but it strives towards a
double, even a triple, bottom line approach. The social, and increasingly ecological, success
of the business is measured, and hence, people, planet, and profit are equally important.
Social business is a concept, not a legal form. Its legal forms are diverse in different
countries. The term social enterprise may be new but the idea itself is not. There are different
ways or routes of getting into social business:
(i) Trading by NGOs and voluntary sector: To be sustainable and free from dependency on
grants, many NGOs have started a value-based business.
(ii) Public sector spin-outs or organisations providing public services on contract: Some
countries have externalised their public services and often big multinational companies
win contracts. Increasingly, social enterprise models are seen by commissioners and
procurement officials as a more ethical option of using taxpayers’ money.
(iii) New value-based businesses: Especially young people are more interested in ethical
business models than in businesses that exist purely for raising shareholder value.
(iv) Local economic development: Communities (urban and rural) start delivering services
that either the local authority or a private business no longer wish to deliver. The
localised energy production sector, e.g. community-owned wind farms and biogas
plants, has seen many social enterprises being set-up.
PAGE 111 OF 116

Notable Social Entrepreneurs in India

Source: https://in.thehackerstreet.com/social-entrepreneurs-2
Ajaita Shah: Her company Frontier Markets is a rural marketing, sales, and service
distribution organisation providing access to affordable and quality consumer durables to
low-income households. Frontier Markets started operations in rural India and is working
with clean energy products like solar lighting and smokeless stoves. To date, Frontier Markets
has sold over 20,000 clean energy products in Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.
Harish Hande: He is the co-founder of SELCO, which works to put solar power technology
within the reach of the poor. He believes that providing sustainable technologies to the rural
population is the key to poverty eradication. A SELCO system consists of a panel, a battery,
and a charge regulator. It can power low wattage appliances such as lights, fans, television
sets, mobile chargers, and radios. Harish is known for successfully lighting up 145,000
households, small businesses, and community projects in Karnataka, Kerala, and Gujarat.
Trilochan Sastry: Formerly the Dean (Academics) at IIM Bangalore, he is the co-founder of
Centre for Collective Development, a Hyderabad-based organisation working to cut out the
middleman to pass on maximum value to farmers. He has successfully set up
50 co-operatives with 2,500 members over two districts of Andhra Pradesh—Adilabad and
Anantapur. Till 2010, the co-operatives in Adilabad did a turnover of INR 2.4 crore and
generated a surplus of INR 40 lakh.
Akanksha Hazari: Her pursuits in solving the problem of global water shortage in the form
of m.Paani led her all the way to be honoured by Bill Clinton. She is working towards
empowering underserved families with the skills, knowledge, and tools necessary to achieve
the life they aspire. This is being done through a mobile-based rewards program that connects
their spending and positive behaviours to valuable points that are redeemed for social impact
rewards, such as safe water, education, health care, and energy.
Shaheen Mistri: The founder of the Akansha Foundation, her objective is to educate the
unprivileged. Shaheen started the first Akanksha Centre in Mumbai with 15 students and one
teacher. In the next 16 years, Akanksha set up 60 after-school centres in under-utilised spaces,
each staffed with professional teachers, volunteers, and workers at the service of over 3,000
underprivileged children. In 2008, she founded Teach for India, with an audacious vision of
providing an excellent education to children across India through building a pipeline of
leaders committed to ending educational inequity. The Teach for India fellowship enlists
India’s most promising college graduates and young professionals to spend two years
teaching in low-income schools and attempt to bridge the educational gap in the country.
Aditya Baran Mallik: His initiative, The Institute for Quality Skill Training, aims at helping
skilled youth from low-income homes in Jharkhand to ensure a better livelihood. The institute
has trained and placed nearly 10,000 candidates from underprivileged families. Even
adjoining states like Mizoram and Manipur are showing interest in the unique venture. With a
turnover of INR 2.5 crore, the institute has been funded by Kitendo Capital.
PAGE 112 OF 116

Co-operative Societies in India

Multiple Sources:
- https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/cooperative-movement-and-
cooperative-societies-in-india-1511436454-1
- https://www.livemint.com/Companies/rwqCFPbRHZ62WXstomFjdO/The-architect-of-
the-white-revolution.html
Co-operative societies are autonomous associations of persons united voluntarily to meet

their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned
and democratically-controlled enterprise. India laid the foundation for the biggest
co-operative movement in the world, where the need for profitability was balanced by the
needs of the members and the wider interest of the community.
The co-operative movement was started by the weaker sections of society to protect their
members from the clutches of profit hungry businessmen. The term came into existence many
years before the British enacted the Co-operative Credit Societies Act, 1904, when the
farmers of Poona and Ahmednagar spearheaded an agitation against moneylenders charging
exorbitant rates of interest.
Jawaharlal Nehru had strong faith in the co-operative movement. In his speech at an
international seminar on co-operative leadership in South-East Asia, he said, “My outlook at
present is not the outlook of spreading the co-operative movement gradually, progressively,
as it has done. My outlook is to convulse India with the co-operative movement or rather with
co-operation to make it, broadly speaking, the basic activity of India, in every village as well
as elsewhere; and finally, indeed, to make the co-operative approach the common thinking of
India…The whole future of India really depends on the success of this approach of ours.”
After independence, co-operatives became an integral part of Five-Year Plans. In 1958, the
National Development Council recommended a national policy on co-operatives, training of
personnel, and setting-up co-operative marketing societies. In 1984, Parliament enacted the
Multi-State Co-operative Societies Act to remove the plethora of different laws governing the
same types of societies. In 2002, the Government of India announced a National Policy on
Co-operatives. The objectives of the policy were to provide support for promotion and
development of co-operatives; reduce regional imbalances; and strengthen co-operative
education, training, and human resource development.
Co-operatives play a very important role in rural India, particularly for farmers. They provide
agricultural credit and funds where the State and private sector have not been able to do
much. Besides, co-operatives provide farmers with quality fertilisers, seeds, insecticides, and
pesticides at reasonable prices. Farmers are also supported with marketing, warehousing, and
transportation facilities. Service co-operative societies help poor and marginal farmers by
providing them with tractors and threshers on rent. Rural co-operative societies are now also
entering the real estate, power, insurance, healthcare, and communications sectors.
One of the most well-known success stories of the co-operative movement is that of the white
revolution pioneered by Verghese Kurien, who turned the dairy brand Amul into a household
name in India. Amul is the flagship of the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation
that counts at least three million farmers from some 12,000 villages as members. The first
dairy co-operative union in Gujarat was formed in 1946 with two village dairy co-operative
societies as its members. The number of member societies has now increased to 16,100, with
PAGE 113 OF 116

3.2 million members. With the co-operative movement, Kurien helped create a model not
only for India, but for developing countries throughout the world. A significant feature of it is
that milk is purchased largely from women, empowering them economically and socially.
The Cooperative Principles

Source: https://www.nipco.coop/we-are-member-owned/the-coop-difference/the-7-
cooperative-principles
Cooperatives around the world operate according to the following core principles and values,
which are traced to the first modern cooperative founded in Rochdale, England in 1844:
(i) Voluntary and open membership: Cooperatives are voluntary organisations, open to all
persons able to use their services and willing to accept the responsibilities of
membership, without gender, social, racial, political, or religious discrimination.
(ii) Democratic member control: Cooperatives are democratic organisations controlled by

their members, who actively participate in setting policies and making decisions. The
elected representatives are accountable to the membership. In primary cooperatives,
members have equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and cooperatives at other
levels are organised in a democratic manner.
(iii) Members’ economic participation: Members contribute equitably to, and democratically
control, the capital of their cooperative. At least part of that capital is usually the
common property of the cooperative. Members usually receive limited compensation, if
any, on capital subscribed as a condition of membership. Members allocate surpluses
for any or all of the following purposes: developing the cooperative, possibly by setting
up reserves, part of which at least would be indivisible; benefitting members in
proportion to their transactions with the cooperative; and supporting other activities
approved by the membership.
(iv) Autonomy and independence: Cooperatives are autonomous, self-help organisations

controlled by their members. If they enter into agreements with other organisations,
including governments, or raise capital from external sources, they do so on terms that
ensure democratic control by their members and maintain their cooperative autonomy.
(v) Education, training, and information: Cooperatives provide education and training for
their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees so they can contribute
effectively to the development of their cooperatives. They inform the general public
about the nature and benefits of cooperation.
(vi) Cooperation among cooperatives: Cooperatives serve their members most effectively
and strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through local, national,
regional, and international structures.
(vii) Concern for community: While focusing on member needs, cooperatives work for the
sustainable development of their communities through policies accepted by their
members.
PAGE 114 OF 116

Cooperatives may include businesses owned and managed by the people who use their
services (consumer cooperatives), organisations managed by the people who work there
(worker cooperatives), multi-stakeholder or hybrid cooperatives that share ownership
between different stakeholder groups that might also include non-profits or investors
(e.g. care cooperatives where ownership is shared between both care-givers and receivers),
multi-tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives, and platform cooperatives
that use a cooperatively owned and governed website, mobile app, or a protocol to facilitate
the sale of goods and services.
Globalisation vs. Internationalism: Summary of K. Satchidanandan’s

Arguments in his essay Future of Our Past: Towards a Critique of
Globalisation and Culture Industry
What is Globalisation?—Different views:
Dominant view (favourable): Global closeness, international interaction/ integration, free

transfer, broader outlook, healthy exchange of ideas and culture
Alternate view (critical; anti-globalisation)

- Baudrillard: “The greatest form of violence in our times”
- Noam Chomsky: Façade for western dominance, especially US imperialism/ hegemony
Amartya Sen’s views (moderate)

- There is a need for a proper critique of globalisation
- Agrees there is an absence of global morality in dealing with international issues
- However, cannot equate globalisation with dominance of the west (past examples of
knowledge moving from east to west)
- Rejecting globalisation/ sectarian irrationality would deprive countries of many benefits
(shooting our own foot), e.g. the benefits of science cutting across borders
- Knowledge has always travelled across the globe; never the property of one region
- Wrong to hold globalisation solely responsible for inequality, deprivations, divisions
- Problems worsened due to domestic failures (social, political, economic arrangements)
- Global capitalism has widened rift between rich and poor, causing discontent/ violence
- Benefits of a global economy should be fairly distributed
- Global fronts needed to fight class, race, gender inequalities and environmental problems
Author’s view
- Globalisation a recent phenomenon (post Soviet collapse and changes in East Europe)
- It has resulted in a new global imperialism
- Positives of globalisation argued by Sen properly belong to “internationalism”
- Need to make a clear distinction between internationalism and globalisation
PAGE 115 OF 116

Globalisation Internationalism
1. Monologue of power; dominance of one Believes in dialogue; co-existence of all
nation nations
2. Achieved through commands and threats Exchange in terms of equality between
using hegemonic machinery nations and regions
3. Emphasis on the market; world seen as a Emphasis on culture; world seen as a
consumer chain creative space
4. Export of a single lifestyle (mono- Cultural pluralism, mutual recognition of
acculturation), homogeneity and lifestyles, respect for differences and
standardisation, e.g. in food habits concern for identities
(Coca-colonisation/ McDonaldisation),
clothes, language, behaviour patterns, arts,
information systems and perspectives
5. New form of colonisation; in favour of Democratic decentralisation, respect for
central control and a command economy people’s real needs (may be opposed to
where people have little voice ‘national’ needs presented by governments
with specific interests)
6. Export of war, creating war situations, Main agenda is peace, work towards
producing fear psychosis; imperialists creating goodwill between countries,
benefit by supplying weapons and post- ensuring prosperity
war ‘reconstruction’; intent to weaken
economies, e.g. Vietnam, Iraq, Pakistan
7. Careless indifference to environment, Concerned about material and spiritual
greedy and profit-driven, no concern for ecology, fights against eco-fascism and
future generations, export of polluting techno-fascism, stress on creating a green
industries/ dangerous drugs to developing planet, advocates pollution control as part
countries of development projects
8. Follow a monolithic pattern of mega Each country chooses own pattern of
development development
9. Destruction of traditional knowledge Epistemic exchange, freedom of each
systems (epistemic violence) and culture to opt for its own understanding of
indigenous worldviews, exclusion from the world, high regard for folk and art
history, west seen as the reservoir of all traditions
knowledge, countries forget their creative
past (cultural amnesia)
10. Re-colonisation (bringing back colonial De-colonisation, recognise traditional
forms through domination), ethnicity advances in various fields
reduced to a brand name, past culture
anthropologised (limited to studies)
11. Languages a major casualty, mother Emphasis on multilingualism—languages
tongues ignored, English is important but preserve cultural memories, death of a
ends up dominating (language of power, language results in death of a culture
world market, The New Information order,
and aggressive imperialism)
PAGE 116 OF 116

“ On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to
enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we
will have equality and in social and economic life
we will have inequality. In politics we will be
recognizing the principle of one man one vote and
one vote one value. In our social and economic
life, we shall, by reason of our social and
economic structure, continue to deny the principle
of one man one value. How long shall we continue
to live this life of contradictions? How long shall
we continue to deny equality in our social and
economic life? If we continue to deny it for long,
we will do so only by putting our political
democracy in peril. We must remove this
contradiction at the earliest possible moment or
else those who suffer from inequality will blow up
the structure of political democracy which this
Assembly has so laboriously built up.
— B.R. Ambedkar

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COMPILATION OF ESSENTIAL READINGS IN

This document is a compilation of edited excerpts from various publicly available

Learning Outcome: On completion of the course, learners will be able to:

Level of Knowledge: Conceptual knowledge

UNIT TOPICS FOR MID-SEMESTER EXAMINATION PAGES

Unit 2 Structural Socio-Economic Disparities in India 15 – 32

UNIT TOPICS AFTER MID-SEMESTER EXAMINATION

Unit 5 Commerce and Ecology 74 – 101

Unit 6 Counter-Narratives: Exploring Alternate Economic Models 102 – 116

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