Affirmative Action in India

About the Book

Affirmative Action has been a debatable issue in India since its inception. This is known as policy of reservation in India and is applied for the mainstreaming of weaker sections that had been debarred from getting their rights due to certain past injustices. The socio-economic and educational disparities have created a vast gap between the have and have-nots. Affirmative Action has been brought to bridge the gap of these disparities with the notion of equality before the law and equal protection of law in a uniform way for the all sections of Indian society. The Constitution of India has created a new social order based on distributive justice of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Today reservation in India is considered as a political tool rather than a policy of mainstreaming of marginalized masses of the country. The present book tries to present the critical analysis of this policy approach. The book covers the wide range of topics such as rights of children and women, rights of LGBT communities, rights of disabled persons and more about the complexities of caste and class in terms of definitional aspects related to the benefits of policy of reservation to the weaker sections of the Indian society, etc. Thus the book will be useful to the students of Law, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, and Public Administration, etc., to the policy makers of the country and to all those who wants to know the merits and demerits of this policy approach.

About the Author

Bir Pal Singh (b.1970) is presently working as Assistant Professor (Panchayat Admin. & Nyaya Panchayat) in National Law Institute University, Bhopal (M.P.), India. He obtained Ph.D. in Anthropology from Lucknow University. Besides publications of research papers both in journals of national and international reputes, he has also authored two books titled as Social Inequality and Exclusion of Scheduled Tribes in India and Tribal Culture and Society. His academic and research interest include Tribal and Customary Laws, Legal Anthropology, Sociology of Law, Law and Social Transformation, and Law Relating to Affirmative Action.