Conservative force or contradictory resource? Education and affirmative action in Jharkhand, India

Higham, Rob; Shah, Alpa

doi:10.1080/03057925.2012.746897

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Mehta and Hasan (2006) find that lower completion rates at secondary level of education and economic status are more important factors that need to be addressed in this context than providing reservations based on social identity. Some (for example, Higham and Shah, 2013) have argued that affirmative action policies in India have been conceived as a ‘contradictory resource’ — while on one hand, weaker sections benefit from these policies in securing admission in schools, they nevertheless do not address the deep-seated and historical inequalities; after all the weaker sections, even through these policies, do not necessarily get admission in high quality institutions; besides they result in a division amongst the weaker sections between those who benefit from these policies and those who do not, and remain locked in the vicious circle of exclusion. On the whole, it is widely felt that given the structural nature of caste, religion, ethnicity and class inequalities in contemporary India, the extent to which affirmative action policies can fundamentally redress highly structured patterns of inequality remains doubtful (Syed et al, 2013, p. 715).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Inclusive Is Higher Education in India?

Tilak

2015

Social Change

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In the broad context of inclusive growth policies in India, an examination of the growth and inequalities in the country's higher education is attempted in this article with the help of rich data available from the National Sample Survey (NSS) in several rounds between 1983 and 2009-10. The article is primarily concerned with inequalities in higher education by gender, by social groups-caste and religion, by region-rural and urban and by economic groups of population classified by monthly per capita household expenditure. Considering two important indicators on higher education, namely, gross enrolment ratio and higher education attainment-percentage of adult population having completed higher education, the article examines whether inequalities in higher education have increased or declined overtime. It also throws light on the groups that have improved most over the years in their higher education status and on the decline or increase of inequalities between groups.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Inclusive Is Higher Education in India?

Tilak

2015

Social Change

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“…Both consumption and investment in education, as expressions of middle-class aspirations, are also part of what Higham & Shah (2013) have called a 'culture of emulation'. 12 Higham & Shah describe how young adivasis with public sector jobs in the education sector have begun to emulate the values, norms, and ways of life of higher-caste and -class groups.…”

Section: Consumption and Lifestylesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rajkumar, too, would rather his wife did not go out to work "in the sun and dust", but stayed at home. Indeed, in CCL-employed households women's participation in manual labour is generally viewed more dimly, which reflects an adoption of new -and more caste-like -notions of gender (see also Higham & Shah 2013). The withdrawal of women like Sikanti from paid work can, of course, have both practical and personal reasons -higher household income through CCL salaries, for example, and personal work/leisure preferences.…”

Section: Gender Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public sector employment, class mobility, and differentiation in a tribal coal mining village in India

Noy

2020

Contemporary South Asia

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India's adivasi, or tribal, communities have most often been depicted as homogeneous and egalitarian, at least compared to the entrenched social hierarchies that characterise rural caste society. This article draws on fieldwork in a mining-affected adivasi village in Jharkhand, eastern India, to consider how compensatory public sector employment for mining-induced land dispossession has contributed to new processes of stratification within adivasi society. On the one hand, compensatory employment allowed those who attained it to pursue increasingly common middle-class aspirations, and a considerable degree of class mobility. But on the other hand, it fostered new, enhanced forms of intra-adivasi differentiation -not only in terms of income but also consumption and lifestyle, education and children's life chances, and household and gender dynamics. New internal disparities, in turn, have acted to erode pre-existing elements of adivasi society that revolve around values of egalitarianism.

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“…These jobs, trades, and, increasingly, government development and procurement contracts are no longer simply the preserve of the outsiders who for decades maintained control over the state. Whereas once their ancestors sought to keep the state away (Shah 2010 a ), some of the new generations of Adivasis and other lower castes are slowly seeking a share of the pie and diversifying their means of reproduction beyond subsistence farming and wage labour (Higham & Shah ).…”

Section: The Muck Of the Past: Ideology At The Cost Of Political Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The muck of the past’: revolution, social transformation, and the Maoists in India

Shah

2014

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article analyses revolutionary social change by exploring how people attempt to create a radically different future by taking action in the present, and the challenges that beset this transformation. Examining the relationship between the future, the present, and the past, the article takes the case of the spread of armed underground Maoist guerrillas in India to ask two questions: First, why does India hang on to this form of utopianism when the rest of the world appears to have abandoned it? Second, how and why does the 'muck of the past' influence the production of a radically different future? In answering these questions, this article suggests that for both processes of radical social change and our theories of them, we need to reinsert our analyses of politico-economic conditions into our ideologies of social change.Both for the production on a mass scale of ... communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessarily, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.Marx & Engels 1846 [1970]: 94-5, original italics, bold added Anthropology has spent much time thinking about the present, and the past in the present: that is, the extent to which the past has affected and is reflected in the present. The future has also increasingly troubled scholars (see, e.g., Guyer 2007; Maurer 2002; Munn 1992; Zaloom 2009). But the question of how people create a radically different future in the present through revolutionary action, and the challenges that beset this, the subject of this Malinowski Lecture, demands greater attention. 1 Towards the end of his life, Malinowski was deeply concerned about the future. Disturbed by Hitler's National Socialism, he lectured on the disastrous consequences of totalitarian regimes for humanity. At the time of his death, he was writing Freedom and civilisation (1947), laying out the dangers to democracy and freedom in modern societies. Their advanced political organization, he argued, always came with the potential to abuse power for the benefit of the few and the denial of freedom for the many. In * Malinowski Memorial Lecture, 2012.

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Conservative force or contradictory resource? Education and affirmative action in Jharkhand, India

Cited by 10 publications

References 14 publications

How Inclusive Is Higher Education in India?

How Inclusive Is Higher Education in India?

Public sector employment, class mobility, and differentiation in a tribal coal mining village in India

‘The muck of the past’: revolution, social transformation, and the Maoists in India

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