Comment in about 150 words: Affirmative action. (2016, 2021, 10 Marks)
Affirmative action means deliberate measures that favour members of historically excluded groups — women, Black Americans, Dalits, Adivasis, indigenous peoples — in education, employment, contracts and representation, to undo past discrimination and present disadvantage. The phrase entered civil-rights policy through John F. Kennedy‘s Executive Order 10925 (1961); India’s protective discrimination, with antecedents in the Poona Pact (1932), was written into its Constitution in 1950.
Logic and forms
Equality has never meant identical treatment. Aristotle held it equally unjust to treat unequals equally, and Article 14 permits reasonable classification on relevant grounds. Positive discrimination is therefore a corollary of equality, not a breach of it. Its forms range from hard quotas (India’s reservations) to weighted preferences, targets and outreach.
Justifications
- Compensatory: groups excluded for centuries are owed redress for that wrong.
- Distributive: present starting points are unequal, so shielding disadvantaged candidates from open competition with the privileged corrects a current unfairness.
- Liberal egalitarian: Ronald Dworkin wants distribution to begin from a just initial share that offsets unchosen disadvantage, and defended racial preferences as consistent with equal concern and respect. Amartya Sen‘s capability approach asks more — building the capacities (schooling, health) that let people use the places offered.
- Diversity and legitimacy: institutions drawn from the whole society decide better and command trust.
Critiques
- Libertarian: on Robert Nozick‘s entitlement theory, imposing a pattern sacrifices liberty to equality — though his own principle of rectification concedes that historical injustice may justify redress.
- Neo-conservative: Nathan Glazer‘s Affirmative Discrimination (1975) is the classic statement of the reverse discrimination charge. Critics add that preference weakens respect for merit and authority, and that today’s applicants did not commit their ancestors’ wrongs.
- Practical: elite capture, stigma on beneficiaries, and the hardening of caste identity as groups compete for listing.
India and the United States today
India’s scheme is constitutionally entrenched (Articles 15(4)–(6), 16(4), 16(4A), 16(6), 330, 332), yet its need is contested amid scarcity and mass poverty. The Supreme Court keeps reshaping it: the 50% ceiling and creamy layer of Indra Sawhney (1992), the EWS quota upheld in Janhit Abhiyan (2022), and sub-classification of Scheduled Castes in State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh (2024). The caste count in Census 2027 will supply the missing data. The US has retreated: Students for Fair Admissions (2023) ended race-conscious admissions, and Executive Order 14173 (2025) revoked the federal-contractor mandate.
Conclusion
Abandoning affirmative action would mean looking away from entrenched injustice. The live debate concerns its design — who benefits, by what criterion, for how long — not whether a society of graded inequality needs it.