Tuesday, May 25, 2010

[ZESTCaste] A Way Of Reinventing Identities (Opinion)

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/A-Way-Of-Reinventing-Identities/articleshow/5969667.cms

A Way Of Reinventing Identities
Kanchan Chandra, May 25, 2010, 12.00am IST

The main question raised by the prospect of a caste-based census is
not whether to collect census data based on caste but how to do it in
a way that does not trap citizens in caste identities. We need data
based on caste to address inequalities based on caste. Not everyone
agrees. Some argue the best solution to the problem of inequality is
to target `economically disadvantaged' populations the poor or the
landless or the jobless without classifying them by caste. If those
from subordinate caste groups are more likely to suffer from economic
disadvantages, the argument goes, then they will also automatically be
the likely beneficiaries of such policies.

This argument ignores the fact that caste identity is not only
associated with inequalities, but can also be constitutive of those
inequalities. Counting citizens on the basis of purely economic
categories, then, would not address the root cause of the problem.
This does not mean that the state should not use economic categories
in conjunction with caste, to distinguish between more and less
disadvantaged members of individual caste categories. But to do this,
it needs to count those citizens based on caste in the first place.

The problem is that a caste-based census, while intended to help
citizens escape inequalities based on caste, can imprison them in
caste itself. Why is this a problem? In part because being trapped in
caste categories especially those with stigmas attached has material
and social consequences. In part because it can produce a divisive
problem of politics. But most of all, because the freedom to choose
how we are defined to be who we want to be, and to become who we want
to become is fundamental to democratic politics.

Obviously, none of us are completely free to choose our caste
memberships. But we should at a minimum have the freedom to choose
whether we want to be defined by caste at all and, if we do, which of
our caste identities we want to claim. A daughter of Nishad parents in
UP, for instance, cannot choose to call herself Jat or Brahmin. But
she should still have a choice in whether she defines herself by caste
at all. She should have a choice in which of the many available
aggregate caste categories she might subscribe to: current
possibilities in UP include Bahujan, OBC, MBC and SC. And she should
also have the choice to construct new categories that define her.

How can a caste-based census in India avoid setting its own identity
traps? At the very least, what such a census should not do is use a
single set of uniform nationwide aggregate caste categories for
counting. What it should do is to collect data on caste at a highly
decentralised and disaggregated level, and make these decentralised
and disaggregated data widely available. Further, census authorities
should also construct and publicise local level cross-tabulations
between caste and other ethnic and economic categories such as income,
language, literacy, landlessness and so on. These data could then be
aggregated differently for different policy purposes at different
levels of government. They could not only be used to construct uniform
nationwide aggregates, but also local, block or district specific
ones. Different aggregations could well employ different categories.

The solution to the problem of entrapment, in other words, is not to
collect no data, but to collect more data. The more caste-based data
we have, the finer the grain in which these data are collected. And
the more these data allow the analysis of caste in conjunction with
other categories, the better we will do both in addressing the root
cause of inequality and in preserving or providing the freedom of
self-definition.

The principal users of these data are likely to be politicians as much
as bureaucrats. This should be a cause for optimism rather than fear.
In just the last two decades, political parties have taken us through
a large variety of caste constructions, including Dalit, Bahujan, OBC,
MY, Most Backward, Extremely Backward, Forward, Backward among
Forward, and Forward Among Backward. Others are sure to follow. This
fluidity was produced not by the mainstream politics of the Congress
but by 'caste parties' such as the BSP, the SP and the RJD. Silence
about caste in the political sphere stabilised caste identities and
inequalities at the local level. Caste-based parties, by openly naming
caste categories in politics, have also continually reinvented them,
and unsettled old inequalities in the bargain. If other parties follow
suit in the wake of a caste-census, the process of reinvention should
continue.

But the ability of political parties to continue to propose fluid
forms of self-definition is contingent on the categorisations used by
the government. A census which only counts citizens according to a
small set of uniform categories will produce a politics that only
mobilises people according to a small set of uniform categories. That
will surely be divisive. A census that uses many and various
categories, on the other hand, also makes it easier for political
parties to mobilise many and various selves. Such a census should
widen the options for self-definition instead of narrowing them.

The writer is associate professor of politics at New York University.

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