Social Churning in India-The Manthan!

Social Churning in India-The Manthan!  By Animesh Banerjee*

Successive Indian governments, since independence have spent significant funds on the social development activities for upliftment of the deprived segments of the society. Nevertheless, the top driven social development approach followed by every government had lead to trickling down of policies vis-à-vis funds, through the different layers of its implementation structure. Consequently social development as contemplated had hardly benefited the targeted segments of the society.

Another important social development initiative was the reservation policy enshrined in our constitution to empower the socially backwards who have been facing the curse of stratified Indian society, over the centuries.  The reservation policy had underpinned a social churning, in a time-bound manner, ensuring the underprivileged to come at par with the privileged casts in India. Nonetheless, the reservation policy though contemplated to be phased out with the attainment of the social up-gradation but eventually it became an instrument of providing largess to garner political mileages. Such pretentious generosities perpetuated by the successive governments have widened demands for cast reservation especially following ‘Mondal agitation’’ when unscheduled ‘Other Backwards Casts (OBC)’ were brought under the reserved category.

With the passage of time a new demographic dynamics emerged due to the ever increasing population pressure on land and corresponding reduction in per capita land availability. Consequently a grater shift from rural hinterlands to urban India, in search of livelihood, started taking place which has pushed unemployment cum livelihoods demand- availability position, in the urban India, at its lowest ebb! Whilst much needed reservation policy of social churning became an instrument for providing government munificence, even the socio-economically secured casts like Jats in northern states and very recently Patiders (Patels) in Gujarat have struck their claims on the OBC reservation pie-perhaps days to come several others may jump into fry! 

Arguably, in this competitive globalised twenty first century, if the government reservation policy continues in its present form  ignoring several other vulnerable sections of our society, who too have been aspiring socio-economic empowerment, it may foster greater social disorder instead harmony which is likely to benefit our divisive politics ultimately!  It is, therefore, high time to revisit cum restore our overall social empowerment policies stressing on free & quality education cum enlightenment to all venerable sections of the society. Needless to say that the overall socio-economic empowerment cannot be promoted by mare extending endowments without ushering enlightenment  as well developing available skills & resources . I conclude by quoting an extract from John F Kennedy, “…Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future…”

(* Former Executive Director NDDB & Past President Indian Dairy Association; Chairperson dairy sub-group 9^th10^th& 11^th Plans of GOI ; Former Chairman, Technology Vision 2020- dairy vision, TIFAC,GOI. Views expressed are personal)