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Neera
Chandhoke/Living with diversity
Chandhoke
began by pointing out one of the ideas related
to democracy: the demand for quotas. In the political
realm, this means that only a Dalit can represent
Dalits, and so on with other groups. Her presentation
focused on the experience of India to help Nepal
approach quotas and other methods of addressing
long-standing inequities.
A
conceptual shift takes place when a person is
seen as an individual victim of history to when
a body of people is viewed as a group victimised
by history. Liberals have often been suspicious
of group identities and privileges, in part because
they seem to be the mirror of other advantages.
But liberals in recent decades have shifted their
position.
The
second shift that has taken place in the move
from the individual to the group as a holder of
rights is collective culpability and collective
victimhood. No one can argue for exemption as
an individual from these patterns, either in guilt
of victimisation. The idea driving this is we-versus-they:
we, the beneficiaries of history, must pay a price
to those who have suffered. But this is not egalitarianism;
it is humanitarianism. Can humanitarianism assist
democracy? This assumes the transfer of resources
though the underlying forces and structures may
not change. It may just create a new elite among
the disadvantaged who participate with society’s
elite.
Egalitarianism
is not founded on the idea of ‘we owe something
to them’, but instead on the notion that
each person in society has an equal claim to resources.
Assertion here is a matter of rights, not a question
of victimhood. Egalitarianism is a relational
concept: the relation between the worst-off and
the best-off. Egalitarianism is not only about
bleeding hearts. It is about fundamentally re-ordering
rights in society. Affirmative action has been
designed at a group level rather than at an individual
level as an attempt to achieve this.
Chandhoke
said that a second problem is that it is easy
for a political elite to entrench its power by
co-opting the leadership of oppressed groups.
This also has the important effect of preventing
fundamental change, such as land reform, because
the new elite has a stake in the existing system.
Third, the politics of reservations has actually
divided politics: everyone is a victim. Everybody
competes in defining themselves as victims, even
Hindus. This serves the elite, because everyone
is competing for victim status. Four, reservations
address inter-group inequality but not intra-group
inequality. Poor Dalits remain poor, even while
better-off Dalits enjoy the benefits of reservations.
Fifth, rather than weaken the state, reservations
empower the state. This occurs through the powers
of patronage and the process of creating and fashioning
group identities.
These
measures can be inimical to democracy. Democracy
is about much more than respecting the identities
of citizens, though it is this also. It is about
a common vision and common effort to move toward
certain goals. Chandhoke said it is necessary
to transcend barriers that prevent engagement.
Without a common set of values, the common space
suffers. Given the proliferation of group identities,
democrats spend most of their time sorting out
competing claims. She asked if people subscribe
to anything more than a formal concept of democracy?
That is to say, in the construction of rights,
the difference between positive and negative freedoms.
Radical democracy involves the search for common
goals. Unless some values are privileged over
others, the status quo will simply be maintained.
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