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What ?Affirmative Action? Means Around The World...

... For example, Jamaica:

Chairman of the Jamaica Association of Young Professionals, Junior Rose, is calling for the introduction of an ?affirmative action? policy which would require companies in the island to have a minimum percentage of their workforce aged 20-29.

No ?diversity? drivel, no squeamishness about or attempt to disguise quotas.

... and India:

Presently, there is 13 per cent quota for scheduled castes, three per cent for denotified tribes, eight per cent for nomadic tribes and seven per cent for scheduled tribes, and 19 per cent for OBC [Other Backward Classes] in public employment, leaving just half seats for the general category. Worse, many states don?t even follow that direction of Supreme Court and reserve more than 50 per cent.

Do liberals, who tend to reject ?American exceptionalism? as a jingoistic myth, think American affirmative action is exceptional? Would they like it, as they would like so many other American anachronisms, to conform to the standards of the rest of the world?

In India, by the way, like here, affirmative action was supposed to be temporary, a time-limited provision

for bringing the unequal at par with others and should remain in existence till equality is attained. Unfortunately, our self seeking politicians would never let that happen. They have turned the sensitive issue into a popular political strategy. The political parties tend to appease the minorities and fill up their vote banks by including quota provision in their election manifesto. It has become an extremely handy tool in their hands to sway the gullible electorate....

And what has it accomplished to end divisiveness and reduce stigma?

A few years back, the announcement of 27 per cent OBC quota in higher educational institutions made the students come to streets in two distinct groups ? forward and backward. They probably would not have been aware of such distinctions any time before. The pro and anti agitations have divided our youth to the detriment to nation's integrity.

The abusive language and sense of contempt against the reserved category is but a natural fall out, as many of the deserving candidates fail to receive their due just because they are not reserved. We, not very long back, saw Gujjars of Rajasthan lobbying for their inclusion in the reserved category. This brings home the strange race of being declared backward than others because being ?backward? eventually ?pays? in terms of reservation. Already, there have been numerous cases of obtaining fake certificates of SC/ST identity. What does this bode for global India?

That it is becoming more like the United States?

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 15, 2010 (boomark / email).