Equal opportunity for growth

Sujit De

I was in a state of shock after reading the article, "Equal opportunity for growth" by Kajal Chatterjee (Herald, Other Voices, April 14, 2018). When a crime is committed against a Dalit every 15 minutes and 6 Dalit women are raped every day in our country, must we say - "What are the Dalits so afraid about?" Can we ignore that the purpose of the law is to protect the victims? 

How can we ignore that we have totally failed our Dalits and women? There has been a 66 per cent growth in crime against Dalits during the period from 2007 to 2017. In such a scenario, must not we ensure that there should be stringent act to protect not "them" but our very own Dalit brothers and sisters? Must not it be ensured that there should be palpable presence of Dalits in government administration so that such laws are properly executed without any hatred towards Dalits? 

On the other hand, when child sex ratio (0-6 years) comes down from 945 girls for 1000 boys in 1991 to 914 in 2011 census, must not we also ensure sufficient representation of women in the executive so that the anti-foeticide and anti-infanticide laws become effective?

Dalits and women of our country have been exploited and tortured for thousands of years. Now, it is too much to expect that there will automatically be enough presence of Dalits and women in public administration. 

So, reservation is the only way to ensure their participation. Not only do we need reservation for Dalits but for women as well in government sector which is a tiny part of total job market.

As a matter of fact, absolute equality means no equality at all or just equality of "might is right" in a jungle raj. So, laws have been enacted to do positive discriminations in favour of some who need protection for survival.

 Roads could have been much wider had there been no footpaths. But in that case, many pedestrians would have been killed in a free-for-all equality for both pedestrians and cars. So, footpaths have to be sliced off from both sides of a road to get it reserved only for the pedestrians.