The Statesman, India
Thursday, 21 September 2006
Special Article
Affirmative action-I
Experiments In The Former Soviet Union, Japan &
America
By Dipak Basu
"If our political progress is to be real, the underdogs of our society
must be helped to become men" (Rabindranath Tagore, Letters from
Russia) The debate on affirmative action in India tends to drag and
isn’t always geared to the desired objective: creation of equality of
opportunity. As with secularism, the reservation system in India has
a different political aim ~ to make the system more unequal than what
it is. Secularism, far from making the state independent of religion,
is intended to provide special privileges to certain religious
groups. Similarly, the affirmative system is politically designed to
provide restricted, not equal, rights to some chosen people.
The policy was perhaps started in India by Lord Curzon in 1905 by
banning the employment of Hindu Bengalis in government services. The
official argument was that they were too advanced and others,
particularly Muslims, would be deprived of job opportunities. Later it
was extended to the military services by giving preferential treatment
to Muslims and Sikhs who were branded as martial races.
Divide population
Reservations in government jobs were introduced in 1918 in Mysore
in favour of a number of castes and communities that had little
representation in the administration. In 1909 and in 1919 the system
was introduced for the Muslims in British India. In 1935, political
reasons prompted the government to provide job reservation for the
backward castes.
The real idea was to divide the population of India into several
warring groups along religious, ethnic and caste lines by granting
special rights so that India of the future would be divided and weak. A
number of prominent politicians had acted as agents of the Raj to
implement that line of action. Among them was BR Ambedkar. Although
today he is regarded as a founding father of the nation, the writer
of the Constitution and the cult figure of the backward castes with
four universities named after him, he took no part in the freedom
movement. Instead, like EVR Periyarer of Tamil Nadu, CP Ramaswamy Aiyar
of Kerala, Jinnah and Mohammed Iqbal, he was a staunch loyalist of the
empire, hand-in-glove with the British to divide India along caste,
religion and tribal lines.
The followers of the same person today include the Communists who,
forgetting the essentials of the Marx-Lenin ideology, are supporting
job reservation along caste and religious lines.
Equality of opportunity is the basis of a true democracy and as such
affirmative action is required to equalise opportunities among people
who are endowed differently. Even in the USA, affirmative action
was promoted first by President Lyndon Johnson in 1974 to promote
American blacks, who were deprived of most opportunities. However,
it was not a success. The countries where it was most successful are
Japan, the former Soviet Union and other former socialist countries
of East Europe along with Cuba and Vietnam.
India should take a lesson from them to implement a proper policy on
affirmative action.
The success of the Soviet society regarding affirmative action was
observed by Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote: "Throughout the ages,
civilised communities have contained groups of nameless people.
They toil most, yet theirs is the largest measure of indignity. They
are deprived of everything that makes life worth living. I had often
thought about them, but came to the conclusion that there was no
help for them… In Russia at last. Whichever way I look I am filled
with wonder. From top to bottom they are rousing everyone up without
distinction".
Immediately after the revolution, Lenin proclaimed the affirmative
action known as korenizatsiia to provide affirmative preferences
for non-Russians, backward ethnic groups and poor Russians. To gain
the support of the non-Russian, who were largely illiterate except in
Georgia and Armenia, a Sovietization in three phases was developed. In
the first phase, the respective cultures were promoted. This aroused
their national conscience. This eventually led to the second phase
which was rapprochement and finally to the third phase which was
merger. Non-Russians were awarded their own administrative territories
and accorded preference in educational and promotion policies. This
policy led to the creation of massive educational facilities in the
republics of the backward people, employment for the representatives
of the ethnic intelligentsia, foundation of republican academies of
science and research centres supporting ethnic unions of writers,
painters and film-makers. The policy was applied uniformly to create
elites, which, like their culture, would be national in form, but
with the same content in all units of the union.
However, there was no fixed quota in admissions to the educational
establishments or in jobs. Instead, education was made free at all
stages and compulsory up to certain ages depending on their ethnic
background. Every qualified student was entitled to scholarship to
cover his or her costs of maintenance.
Education was taken to the people where they lived.
Even mobile schools and libraries were established for the nomadic
populations of central Asia. A certain number of students from
the backward areas of the Soviet Union was taken to the very best
universities and institutes of higher learning. They got separate
training so that they could compete effectively with the more advanced
Russian students.
Due to this social engineering, within two decades the Soviet Union
had eradicated illiteracy and had the best educated population in
the world. It wasn’t a reservation system for the backward people,
but completely free education and massive extension of education. Both
the Soviet Union and Japan improved the lot of the totally uneducated
without any formal reservation or quota system but through compulsory
free education on a massive scale.
Japanese system
The guiding principle of the Japanese system of education is
uniformity, conformity and integration.
There is no room for special rights or reservations in that regimented
system, which is available equally for everyone.
In the USA, the term affirmative action was first used in the
Executive Order 11246, issued by President Johnson. The order called
on federal government contractors to "take affirmative action to
ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated
during employment, without regard to their race, creed, colour, or
national origin." However, those who were already educated or advanced
financially among the blacks or Hispanics, equivalent to the creamy
layers in India, got the benefits. Thus, the affirmative action could
not change the basic nature of the most unequal society. There was
considerable opposition to the system in the days of Reagan. Today,
nearly 26 per cent of the population is functionally illiterate. Social
mobility is on the decline. There is widespread homelessness and
poverty among the blacks and Hispanics. In a word, affirmative action
hasn’t changed the characteristics of American society.
(To be concluded)
The author is Professor in International Economics, Nagasaki University