4/2/24, 10:40 AM Indiscriminate Extension of Reservations Is a Lazy Form of Politics.

What We Need Is Redistribution

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Indiscriminate Extension
SECURITY LAW

of Reservations
SCIENCE Is a Lazy
SOCIETY
Form of Politics. What We
CULTURE
Need Is Redistribution
Neera Chandhoke
5
13/Nov/2022 min
read

Extending reservations to the 'upper castes' who are

poor or singly disadvantaged delegitimises the concept
of double disadvantage: social marginalisation and
economic ill-being. Latest
MEDIA
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Netanyahu…
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ENVIRONMENT
Redistribution implies that resources have to be extricated from
Most of India W
the grasping hands of capitalists and distributed fairly: from the
Witness Above
creation of employment, fair wages, limits on land holdings,
progressive taxation, and wealth tax. Credit: Danish Aathira Perincher
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GOVERNMENT
Modi Says Ele
Bond Enabled…
The state of politics in our country has thrown up
Sravasti Dasgupta
an issue of great importance: the enormous need to
incorporate into university academic syllabi a course
on political concepts used in everyday political
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4/2/24, 10:40 AM Indiscriminate Extension of Reservations Is a Lazy Form of Politics. What We Need Is Redistribution

vocabularies. This will allow university students, SECURITY

POLITICSpassion or professional
whatever be their academic Search news
China Rename
ambition, to understand that all political concepts More Places in
ECONOMY
are,We
in the celebrated
need words
your support toof W.B.
keep Gallie,
journalism independent. KNOW The
MOREWire Staff2 m

‘contested’.
WORLD
SECURITY LAW
It is alarming to discover that the most learned of
SCIENCE
political commentators use concepts such as
egalitarianism, equal SOCIETY
opportunity, democracy,
justice, and particularly, social justice, as if each of
CULTURE
these is self-explanatory. They are not.

Plato in ancient Athens set about conceptualising

the idea of justice. We are still debating the virtue of
procedural justice versus substantive justice,
egalitarianism versus equalitarianism, and freedom
versus equality. We cannot use political concepts
unthinkingly. For in the process we scar and
diminish them.

Take the concept of democracy which has been

reduced to a pathetic common denominator:
elections and majoritarianism. The majority
principle is merely workable, it is not morally
justifiable. And elections have catapulted into power
people with criminal records. How can these two
principles add up to democracy?

Today there is concern about the way the policy

pronouncement on 10% reservations in education
and public jobs for the poor of any caste, except
those who are already the beneficiary of
reservations, is justified. Normative political
theorists assume that policies that adversely or
positively affect our fellow citizens have been
announced after considerable reflection on the
advantages and disadvantages of the proposed
policy, consideration on what they portend for the
future of the country, and how policies enhance
democracy.

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4/2/24, 10:40 AM Indiscriminate Extension of Reservations Is a Lazy Form of Politics. What We Need Is Redistribution

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Stupefying
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VIEWSCIENCE
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SOCIETY
We are naïve. Today policies
CULTURE are announced, notably
on the eve of elections. And everyone who is in a
position to command a modicum of attention in the
public domain rushes to justify them ex post facto.
Hitherto independent institutions have been
reduced to public relations firms, upholding
executive decisions that are ill-thought out and
dangerous.

This is not to suggest that poverty is not a bad or an

‘ugh’ word in political theory. No society that prides
itself on its democratic credentials should be able to
tolerate the spectacle of poor people, our fellow-
citizens, huddled on pavements on cold winter
nights. There are ways of dealing with poverty that
are a precondition of reservations, i.e.,
redistribution.

Reservations alone are a soft option; a prime form of

lazy politics and lazier political thinking. The
appropriate concept to tackle poverty is
redistribution. Democratic governments should take
redistribution seriously to ensure that every citizen
is in a position to compete for educational and
employment opportunities from a position of rough
equality. This is but fair.

Logically, if the economic ordering of society is

responsible for poverty, and for the ill-being that
accompanies poverty, then society is obliged to
remedy the wrongs that it has visited upon the
heads of the poor. This constitutes a basic code of
justice.

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4/2/24, 10:40 AM Indiscriminate Extension of Reservations Is a Lazy Form of Politics. What We Need Is Redistribution

If I, while driving on the highway, suddenly halt my

POLITICSI am solely to blame, and
car and cause an accident, Search news
have to compensate the driver whose car has been
ECONOMY
damaged.
We needButyour
if another
supportdriver bangs
to keep into my independent.
journalism car, KNOW MORE
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which is stationary at a red light, the said driver is
SECURITYobliged
at fault, and for that reason LAW to compensate
me. Matters are not so neat when it comes to
SCIENCE
monopoly capitalism.
SOCIETY
The concept of redistribution
CULTURE warns us that
resources of a country have been unjustly
monopolised by a small minority through unfair
means, such as proximity to political power. The rest
are left out in the cold because they are the unseen
and the unheard. This is unjust because every
citizen, by virtue of being born into a society, has
rights over some portion of resources that enable
her to live a life of dignity.

ALSO READ
What Does the
Caste Wealth
Gap Look Lik…

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Redistribution implies that resources have to be

extricated from the grasping hands of capitalists and
distributed fairly: from the creation of employment,
fair wages, limits on land holdings, progressive
taxation, and wealth tax. Those who benefit from a
society and its unfair hierarchies have a putative
obligation to those who lose out for no reason except
that they have been born into a family that lives in
want, and that survives on personalised doles by
politicians.

Redistribution goes hand in hand with democracy

and its principles of freedom and equality. All that
egalitarians ask for is that all citizens should be
given an equal chance to access opportunities that
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4/2/24, 10:40 AM Indiscriminate Extension of Reservations Is a Lazy Form of Politics. What We Need Is Redistribution

enable them to hone their skills and their talents, so

POLITICS
that they can also benefit from social and economic Search news
transactions. All that ECONOMY
egalitarians ask for is the
recognition
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journalism KNOW MORE
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institutions systematically disadvantage many
persons and deny them SECURITY
access LAW
to structures of
opportunity.
SCIENCE

To be poor in a societySOCIETY
that worships wealth, to be
born into a lower caste family in a casteist society, to
CULTURE
belong to a religious minority in a communal society,
or to be born into a race that is discriminated
against in a racist society, is a curse. This has to be
rectified. The redistribution of resources via, say,
progressive taxation, can be justified in terms of the
putative obligations we owe our fellow citizens only
when the concept of redistribution is grounded in
the basic precept of democracy, i.e., equality.

We don’t need reservations for this, we need

redistribution. Background inequalities seriously
compromise democracy, they have to be eradicated
through redistribution of resources.

Notably, however, the causes of poverty in the

country are not merely economic. A major
proportion of the poor belong to the Scheduled
Castes, while some groups of the ‘backward’ castes
and the Scheduled Tribes have historically been
outside the caste system. Members of the so-called
‘lower’ castes are poor not only because they lack
skills and resources. They lack skills and resources
because they belong to a caste that has been wilfully
denied such access in the past.

Though in the post-independence period, the

government has institutionalised policies that ban
caste discrimination and introduced affirmative
action or protective discrimination in education and
in public employment, the legacies of history are not
so easily neutralised. Economic marginality in this
specific case is the outcome of discriminatory social
practices.

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4/2/24, 10:40 AM Indiscriminate Extension of Reservations Is a Lazy Form of Politics. What We Need Is Redistribution

It flows from social marginality. In this case, we

POLITICS
need both redistribution and representation through Search news
reservations. Reservations
ECONOMYare meant for the double
disadvantaged through
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redistribution as well as representation.
SECURITY LAW
Extending reservations to the ‘upper’ castes who are
SCIENCE
poor or singly disadvantaged delegitimises the
SOCIETY
concept of double disadvantage: social
marginalisation and economic
CULTURE ill-being.
Reservations cannot be a substitute for
redistribution.

The first step towards redistribution is that all

citizens have the right to basic goods on non-market
principles (assurance of income, free education,
subsidised or free food, free healthcare,
accommodation, and political and civil rights). These
can help emancipate them from poverty.

The second step is reservations for the doubly

disadvantaged. Reservations have to be taken
seriously and employed sparingly. They have to be
invoked only for the doubly disadvantaged. To
substitute reservations for redistribution is to
engage in, as suggested above, a lazy form of
politics.

Poverty is unacceptable because it massively

violates our basic convictions that no one should be
compelled to lead a life that is distinctively inhuman.
But, more importantly, poverty is a violation of the
fundamental axiom that human beings possess equal
moral worth. This proposition generates a principle
of distributive justice that concentrates on giving to
the disadvantaged what they have a right to.

It also generates a principle of representation for

those who have been left out of the social order of
caste hierarchy. Let us not mix up concepts only to
justify ill-thought out policies.

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4/2/24, 10:40 AM Indiscriminate Extension of Reservations Is a Lazy Form of Politics. What We Need Is Redistribution

Neera Chandhoke was a professor of political science

at Delhi University. POLITICS Search news
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