Madhav Khosla (Columbia University – Law School) & Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Center for Policy Research (India); Princeton University) have posted Caste Formalism: The Law and Politics of Equality in India on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This Article studies the evolution of “reservations” in India—one of the most extensive affirmative action programs globally. It argues that the reservations scheme has, over time, come to embody a distinct kind of formalism, namely caste formalism. With caste formalism, caste operates as a rigid classification scheme, presuming causal effects on individuals without further specification. Further, purely formal terms define the policy instrument of affirmative action, namely achieving numerical quotas. Ironically, the effort to recognize group-based discrimination and move beyond traditional formal equality—individualist formalism—has led to group formalism. To understand the emergence and implications of caste formalism, this Article attends to the development of legal doctrine, the forms of sociological change and political mobilization, and the nature of identity and citizenship. We underscore how, through structuring political mobilization and by caste quotas serving as a focal point, the dynamics between law and politics and the inner dialectics of the reservations scheme have led to caste formalism. The logic of formal democracy not only fails to eradicate but in fact propagates pre-democratic forms of social organization and recognition, and the legal pursuit of equality in the context of that very democratic logic tends towards the legal construction of inequality in the form of group representation.
Interesting and recommended!