Niraja Gopal Jayal. Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. xix + 239 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4039-8612-2.
Reviewed by Omar Khalidi (MIT)
Published on H-Asia (February, 2010)
Commissioned by Sumit Guha (The University of Texas at Austin)
Ethnicity and Governance
Students of development studies increasingly recognize that inequalities among groups constitute a more potent source of violent conflict than inequalities among individuals. The core theme of state reform that is often defined as good governance and efficiency may be harder to achieve if the public sector is strife-ridden. The societal conflict has the potential for further aggravation if elites are dissatisfied with the rules that determine selection to state institutions or if they hold or express fears about exclusion. The relationship between various types of diversity and opportunity in public sector employment, judicial courts, legislatures, and the executive branch of the government generates passionate debate in India as well as nations across the globe. In this book, Niraja Gopal Jayal explores the theme of diversity and public institutions' governance in five empirical chapters: "Mapping Diversity in India"; "Managing Diversity: Institutions, Policies and Politics"; "Promoting Diversity and Protecting the Vulnerable"; "Negotiating Diversity: Parties and the Electoral System"; and "Representing Diversity in the Institutions of Governance."
Backed by an impressive set of statistics, Jayal demonstrates that India's public institutions do not mirror the diversity of the society. In the national and state legislatures, the Scheduled Castes and Tribes are elected mostly from constituencies reserved for them. In the past six decades, only a handful of men and women of Scheduled Castes and Tribes have been elected from general, unreserved constituencies, but the political reservation has assured at least a set number of seats, proportionate to the groups' population percentages. Unlike the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, India's Muslims, the third largest Muslim population in the world, have consistently been underrepresented in legislature at both national and state levels. The Muslim population is nearly 13 percent, whereas their representation rarely has exceeded 5 percent in legislatures. The Scheduled Castes and Muslims rarely receive important portfolios of finance, defense, home, education, and the like in Council of Ministers; instead, they often get lightweight portfolios of jails, sports, and religious endowments, all inconsequential in public affairs. India's armed forces still recruits the bulk of its manpower from "martial races," to the exclusion of Christians, Dalits, and Muslims (p. 183). Public employment is similarly unrepresentative of the societal diversity. Upper-caste Hindu groups dominate higher levels of state employment, whereas the Scheduled Castes and Tribes fill in menial positions. A staggering 87 percent of lowest level of public employment in the central secretariat in Delhi is filled by members of Scheduled Castes.
As I have demonstrated in Muslims in Indian Economy (2006), Muslims do not have reservation in public employment. In conformity with the Indian Presidential order of 1950, reservation in employment is confined to a person professing Buddhism, Hinduism, or Sikhism. In other words, public employment in India is based on religions originating in India only. If a Scheduled Caste student or government employee converts to Christianity or Islam after obtaining financial help as a Scheduled Caste student or gets employment on the basis of being a Scheduled Caste person, s/he forfeits that status on changing religion! Interestingly, upon reconversion to Hinduism, the person can resume the status of a Scheduled Caste person. However, other categories of reservation are religion-blind: for example, for Other Backward Classes and the Scheduled Tribes.
There is hardly a country in the world where public employment and social diversity is evenly matched. However, in India, the private sector is also largely dominated by upper castes; therefore, it is unsurprising that there is such clamor for reservation in public employment from those currently outside the system. The founding fathers' idea of India was a state intrinsically diverse and plural but not one privileging one group over the other on grounds of religion, caste, or ethnicity. Yet the constitution recognized the necessity of accommodating the claims of some disadvantaged groups as long as they were (or required to be) within the Hindu fold. Thus, reservations were made for Scheduled Castes on grounds of economic poverty and social stigma, but similar claims have been denied to Christians and Muslims. In fact, the Indian state and society is generally averse to debate on the uneven distribution of economic resources and political power. This book fills a huge lacuna on the question of who is getting what in India's transition to a world economic power. I trust Jayal will make a similar study of India's burgeoning private sector, showing the social composition of both employers and employees.
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Citation:
Omar Khalidi. Review of Jayal, Niraja Gopal, Representing India: Ethnic Diversity and the Governance of Public Institutions.
H-Asia, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2010.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25087
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