Social Justice

Concept of Casteism in India

• Caste (as a social-structural fact) is different from casteism — the ideology and practice of treating caste as the basis for discrimination, exclusion, or group-based political mobilization against other castes.
• Casteism persists through both overt forms (explicit discrimination, social boycott) and covert forms (informal networking/patronage along caste lines in politics, business, and even matrimonial choices) — the latter is often harder to legislate against.
• Sociologist Andre Beteille notes that even as ritual hierarchy (purity-pollution) has weakened, caste has shown a striking capacity to "convert" into modern forms — as an interest group, a vote bank, and a network for economic mutual aid.

Caste and Politics

• Caste as a vote bank: political parties, especially at the state level, have long used caste arithmetic (calculating which caste combinations can win a constituency) as core electoral strategy.
• Caste-based parties and social engineering: since the 1990s (post-Mandal), several parties have built their core identity around specific caste or caste-coalition constituencies (e.g., OBC-based or Dalit-based mobilization in North India).
• Rajni Kothari's influential observation was that democracy did not eliminate caste in Indian politics — instead, politics 'casteized' and caste 'politicized': caste groups learned to organize as modern interest groups, while political competition gave caste a new, non-ritual significance.

The Reservation Policy Debate

📊 India's current central reservation structure (SC/ST/OBC/EWS)

• Constitutional basis: Articles 15(4)/16(4) enable reservation as an exception to formal equality; the Indira Sawhney judgment (1992) capped total reservation at 50% (with exceptions) and introduced the "creamy layer" concept for OBCs.
• Arguments for: corrects historical exclusion, ensures descriptive representation in governance and institutions, and has demonstrably expanded access to education/employment for reserved categories over 75 years.
• Arguments against: critics argue caste-based reservation can entrench caste identity rather than dissolve it, that benefits may not reach the most disadvantaged within a reserved category (motivating the 2024 sub-classification judgment), and that a purely caste-based criterion overlooks intra-caste economic diversity.
• EWS reservation (2019): the 103rd Constitutional Amendment introduced a 10% quota for economically weaker sections not covered by existing SC/ST/OBC reservation, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2022 — a shift toward partially supplementing caste-based criteria with economic criteria.

Social Justice and Social Development — Linking the Two

Dimension Social Justice Lens Social Development Lens

Core question Is the distribution of opportunity/resources fair Are overall living standards, health, and across groups? education improving?

Primary tool Reservation, anti-discrimination law, targeted Economic growth, infrastructure, universal welfare public services

Risk if pursued alone Can improve group representation without raising Aggregate growth can mask persistent overall living standards group-based gaps

Best practice Combine both: growth-oriented policy plus Same group-targeted correction

Case Study

Current Affairs Connect

Mains Practice Angle