Comprehending Equity

Contextualising India's North-East

Kedilezo Kikhi, Dharma Rakshit Gautam, Kedilezo Kikhi, Dharma Rakshit Gautam

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000442663
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie rurale

This book interrogates the idea of equity in the context of India's Northeast region. The region comprises of diverse ethnicities heralding different socio-political and historical contexts. The present volume attempts to bring to the fore, the ever-widening socio-economic gap between dominant and marginalized groups and the challenges of traversing towards equity and social justice in this context.

The book looks at the socio-economic disparity and exploitation in the region, conspicuous in the form of poor governance, ethnic violence and a sense of marginalisation and disillusionment. Based on case studies and research of different states and communities in the Northeast, the volume discusses the complex and unique socio-economic challenges of the people in the region. It analyses the issues of representation, identity and ethnic dominance, affirmative action, food security, sustainability, access to education, territorial conflicts, ineffective governance, among others. The book offers insights and perspectives into concepts such as equity, justice, fairness and discrimination by juxtaposing the booming global economic order which depicts the extreme levels of deprivation especially among those belonging to the disadvantaged communities.

This volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of sociology, social anthropology, development studies, politics, law and governance, and South Asia studies.

1
Introduction

Equity and differing contexts in North-East India

Kedilezo Kikhi and Dharma Rakshit Gautam

DOI: 10.4324/9781003182726-1

The term “equity”, with its acknowledgement as a key requirement for development, has now become a buzzword among academicians and planners of sustainability. However, there’s a predicament of its true comprehension to be reduced into a definition. This is probably due to the dynamism entailed in the concept of “equity”, making it transcendental; its entanglement with absolute ideals of “equality” has added further obfuscation. However, there’s no denial that the aim of any society to achieve true and holistic development can’t materialise if it is not equitable too. Establishing “equity” is a mindful (albeit arbitrary) act of doing as well as undoing to attain higher, yet common prosperity in each context. The context could be one or many with their demarcation still conjoined at a common horizon of human welfare.

Understanding equity and equality

General comprehension fails to distinguish and therefore allows interchangeable usage of equality with equity. However, conceptually, these are different. Equality insinuates the idea of sameness, while equity includes the idea of justice that brings fairness. Though the latter idea appears to be the most plausible with respect to the establishment of an egalitarian society, there’s no denial that the definition of such an idea should be dynamic to exclude discretionary arbitrariness that has continued till the times of kingdoms and dynastic rule. This is how the principle of democracy gets the desirable conducive environment for its rooted establishment in a state. In this way the tendencies for the status quo subsided, gradually providing opportunities for those who seldom have access to productive resources in a state. However, these people form the masses, while few, had control over the access to resources. It’s noteworthy to mention that the privileged minorities have held their sway over the masses who exercise little or no discretion on any matter pertaining to their own development or well-being, becoming a minority in the political or social discourse. It is important to mention that the majority (who have in turn become a minority) unquestionably think it as natural for the reason presumably of lack of sufficient merit, which largely is constructed as an outcome of access to productive resources.

Interestingly, ownership of productive resources in India is either found to be a natural corollary of existent social stratification on caste lines, or their access is restricted when it is seen as a function of social capital. Further, meaningful access to resources with gainful returns such as education could not transcend the scope determined by cultural capital, and therefore even the hypothetical proposition of equal access, e.g. through RTE (Right to Education) may not help in achieving the substantial change to undo ascriptions based on social stratifications. To put it simply, through various researches it’s found that affirmative action policy of reservation in admission to education could not help with the successful graduation at different levels of education other than the elementary or primary level. Even at the lowest level of education, learning results are far from satisfactory. In this way, comprehension and scope of equity become sufficiently wide that demands its (equity’s) operation at least for the stage of “input” and “processing” whose combination will yield the (desirable) equitable “outcome”. As it’s noticed, there are factors both internal as well as external which influence any production process; therefore, the need is to contain the exclusionary impact of involved factors.

As equity is an approach applied in a context to make it egalitarian, such a treatment inevitably requires a holistic comprehension of the context. Importantly, there’s an existence of unfair or discriminatory treatment that helps in protecting the privilege of the dominant groups. In India, discrimination by the privileged few is conspicuously ubiquitous due to large prevalence of the aforementioned static social structures and multifarious aspects such as ethnicity, religion and region. This is apparent in the socio-economic disparity in the country which further is exacerbating and thus narrowing the scope of establishing an egalitarian society. In such a scenario, economic development, when observed with a myopic lens, is largely nothing more than a misnomer to many people who are clustered historically as well as administratively into different disadvantaged communities such as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and religious minorities.

Apart from these, there are universally acknowledged categories on the grounds of gender and physical disabilities. All of these when taken together forms the masses, albeit their individual and collective disadvantage varies according to culture and region operating at meso and micro levels in a vast country like India. Using an analogy to explain the situation, it appears there are numerous pyramids that are operating with a wider base of disadvantaged masses carrying the miniscule minority at the top. These may be operational; however, they are not sustainable given the intensity of interconnectedness among different entities in a macroeconomic relationship, thanks to the universal growth of capitalism. Such interdependence may succumb to disparity in the long run and also to the situation of shortfall of demand disrupting harmony of optimal operation for different sectors in an economy at macro level. Economic hardships have a challenge for establishing equality in existing social stratification, while vice versa is equally true.

Here, the most important phrase is “justice”, which has perennially remained elusive. Probably, the eternal bias in its establishment has made it non-achievable. The perspective of the privileged section was always considered and defined as the measure for justice. Thereafter, everything done appears to be natural for everyone, especially when sensitivity to varied (existing) perspectives is arbitrarily controlled under the guise of “merit”, which largely is primordial. An example is the prevalence of the system of castes in India, with its archaic meaning in general as well as in academic sense, without a serious challenge being posed to its continuation. Interestingly, the concept of justice has never broadly undermined the “fairness” concept. The only difference relates to the usage of the concept, either by conservatives or by others. Conservatives held their opinion that prohibits any change which they believed shall lead to decline from the ideal pristine world. They thus supported the wisdom of aristocratic class to ensure fairness in their kingdom. The advancement of the modern state on the global horizon, and especially the mark of the French Revolution, challenged notions of the status quo, putting forth the idea of individual liberty in the comprehension of justice. Such an idea was not truly liberal, as the idea of “merit” was furthered to the middle classes, and therefore justice largely remained commutative when seen under the ambit of redistribution. However, the insight for social justice, i.e., where collective good is taken as the ideal, sporadically surfaced but was forced into the oblivion by the liberalist tendencies which made individual merit and the associated benefits-worthy principles for defining fairness in the redistribution of resources with their productive returns. Such an idea became accelerated and widely accepted, as it was found conducive for the growth of capitalism which gradually tends to become exploitative, making the gap of classes explicit. When seen in the formal structure of the functioning of a state, this brings forth the fact that the general prevalence of comprehension about the merit gets reproduced in policy matters, thus truncating the very philosophy of justice when seen in a holistic manner.

Despite all of this, the silver lining needs to be mentioned. This pertains to the underlying dynamism which forces the evolution in comprehension and implementation of the idea of justice. Such evolution is credited to various strands of movements highlighting the perspectives of the disadvantaged community which has remained untouched while the comprehension of justice is being done and deliberated. Movements happened both sporadically as well as in an organised manner in different parts of the world (especially after the 19th century), compelling redressal in the context while sensitising at the global level. The ordering of redressal and sensitisation is not fixed and holds potential to foreshadow the alteration by inclusion of the (unheard) voices when the redistribution of resources is being carried out at either the local or global level. Therefore, the demand is to prioritise an approach that may yield equality of status as the final outcome gradually if not immediately.

The need may then be to understand the (existing) reality to the furthest micro level and from the lens of equitable allocation. This will have non-uniform and non-generalisable interventions in differing social as well as spatial contexts, though the replicability stands non-zero chances especially when such realities are a part of a single country. India can be a perfect example for understanding such a proposition where analysis of exclusionary experience on the basis of caste can infer towards knowing the phenomenon of exclusion for other disadvantaged categories in different societies of the country. Because of huge cultural and spatial diversity, and a peculiar system of social stratification, India provides innumerable contexts of deprivation demanding vehement discussion under the broader umbrella of equity.

Context of North-Eastern region

The North-Eastern region of India holds potential for a special mention due to its unique geographical position vis-à-vis other parts of India where its value as an integral unit apart from political association was deferred until recently. Apart from geographical difference, this region largely comprises ethnic tribes who have remained disadvantaged due to its history of aloofness from the mainstream populace. As a result, there are several contexts that necessitate affirmative action policies to check the arbitrariness in appropriation and resulting social reproduction of the statuses. Affirmative action policies are nothing but equity measures in a context to make it conspicuously egalitarian.

There are primarily two aspects which are plausibly responsible for the success of a policy which remain true for policy for equity. One is the successful implementation of the policy formulated, and the other is true identification of the context and cause for injustice which demands the exploration of the need for such policy. However, due to dynamic pattern of social living, both aspects appear mostly to be entangled, i.e., lack of holistic implementation can in the course of time become the cause of injustice. For example, reservation of women in elected seats was thought of as an instrument to empower the voices of women, but in the wake of non-challenged notions of patriarchy, such a policy could not liberate women from the subtle lying subjugation. Exploring the issues that highlight concerns for equity become important in this case, to ensure that the possibility of equality is on the horizon even if it is not achieved immediately. The North-Eastern region of India and its underlying issues are largely unnoticed due to its aloofness and possibly due to its small representation in the parliament.

Elements of arbitrariness can easily become operational due to limited willingness of policy makers in sustainable development of the region and for the reason of proxy representation. There appears to be enough scope for manoeuvring, for those who get access to policy makers and are successful in convincing them with their (limited) understanding, thanks to paucity of research on several aspects associated with this region. As a result, the realities of the region are themselves a cause of contestations and conflicts among people belonging to different ethnic groups and between ethnic and non-ethnic groups. Such examples include arbitrary drawing of boundaries, assignment of scheduled status to groups and communities, non-proportionate political representation, etc. Apart from these, there are certain irrefutable modern compulsions of migration which has had many implications on the traditions and culture of the region.

Also, in the name of modernity and development, safeguards meant to preserve unique tribal culture through community/individual ownership of land are taken away, leading to ethnic clashes as happened in Manipur. The clashes which have become more frequent hold their origin in improper distribution of resources and failure of public welfare schemes as public distribution system (PDS). Coming to the gendered aspect, this is largely understood as an issue which is out of context when seen in the North-Eastern region as grossly misplaced. Though lying at subtle level, societies are empirically gendered in nature like other parts of the country. Gendered aspects get highlighted in the tribal polity and in the collective ethnic movements. The polity, despite having reservation for women, could not empower the voice of women for their own good and has buttressed a patriarchal mindset, though by proxy means. Embedded patriarchy in tribal societies do get overshadowed in collective ethnic movements where individual voices of suffering become marginalised under the pressure of collective good for the community in the context of redistributive tussle with other communities.

Therefore, it is unproductive to understand a phenomenon from a uni-perspective, and at the same time it’s worrisome when observed from women’s standpoint as an aggregate reality emerging from the micro-level situation. More painful is the subjection of women to physical torture when their trafficking is being witnessed as a rampant phenomenon in different parts of the region. There could be economic aspects associated with this apart from other phenomena of tourism and aloofness from mainland India. Thus, the grim economic situation of the majority of the people, making them vulnerable to become prey, could not be easily dismissed. This has made the region more dependent on the grants and policies governed by the centre.

The region in this way has turned out to be peculiar for lack of financial reforms which could have ensured self-sustenance to take care of their different aspects, including education, which holds potential for real development. Despite the fact that there’s good literacy, the region lacks the necessary requirement for universalisation of secondary education and massification of higher education. The reality is changing, though, with a greater number of enrolments from different sections of society. However, whether it is an example of inclusion remains a pertinent question, as mixture of students from different ethnicities and classes has posed a real challenge leading to desperation in continuation of the strategy of reservation. It may be empirically true as an instant consequence due to diverse cultural as well as educational experience. Then, what should be done becomes another important question to grapple with.

From the research and global experience, it appears that greater inclusion at different associated fronts could be the key to resolving maximum challenges instantly and more so gradually. The important fact here is that due to the gradual nature of the explicit returns/results of such a strategy, support of the state is inevitable, as all the successful institutions (educational and others) in the country grew with the foundational support of the state. When looking at a federal country like India, the concept of inclusion (as an implementation strategy) of disadvantaged from the North-Eastern region should be a part within region and with equal resonance at different institutions of the country.

Overview of the present volume

In a way, the concept of equity involves judicious distribution of available resources ensuring positive access and avoiding over- and underconsumption in the process. Therefore, the most prominent underlying aspect here is “justice”, a concept which itself is ever evolving since time immemorial, though it has remained an essential ideal for a state marching towards peace and prosperity. The important questions that emerge here spontaneously are, justice of what, for whom and how? Further, it could be noted that these questions rest on a more fundamental query of “why” this is needed at all. The hypothesis which has emerged is that concentration of available resources (natural as well as created) will accentuate existing imbalance and lopsided (undesirable) development of a state.

All the developing states fall in rudimentary and nascent stag...