Changing Dialectics of Dalit Aspirations: Demand for Affirmative Action (Invited Article‪)‬

Positive Discrimination Vs Affirmative Action The Indian Constitution provided protective discrimination or reservations to historically disadvantaged social groups such as the scheduled castes or dalits, an end product of the struggle for separate representation led by B.R. Ambedkar in the colonial period based upon consciousness of a low caste identity distinct from the caste Hindus. This salient issue underlay the disagreement between Gandhi and Ambedkar and left its imprint on future political debates. In the post-independence period reservation has been the single most important policy for the upliftment of dalits. However, with the globalization of the economy in the 1990s a contentious, often impassioned, debate among scholars and activists has emerged on the need to move from policies of protective discrimination to those based on the principle of affirmative action. A new, post-independence, educated, upwardly mobile and politically aware dalit middle-class, itself a product of reservations, believes that this traditional policy is no longer useful following liberalization and emergence of a competitive market. Attracted by an expanding private sector this growing middle-class is keen to introduce preferential policies of affirmative action to obtain a share in the expanding industrial/business sectors of the economy.