> Untouchables in new battle for jobs
> India's lowest class raises its sights from the gutter
I think this happened long ago. But we still have a long struggle ahead of us.
> Randeep Ramesh in Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad is capital of Gujarat. Gujarat hasn't had a strong tradition of social reform movement like other parts of India.
> Sunday October 3, 2004
> The Observer
I will skip the irrelevant stuff.
> Their experience is part of an increasingly heated debate in India, where
> the government has announced that it will consider extending public-sector
> job quotas for people from the lowest castes to the private sector.
That decision may be challenged in courts. Andhra Pradesh government decision to reserve jobs for muslims was declared illegal recently.
>Dalits, the lowest caste, have endured centuries of discrimination and
>violence because of a social order that consigns them and their
>descendants to jobs nobody else wants to do and a tradition that all
>humans are created unequal.
Yes. No question about it. Hindus coverted to Islam, Buddhism, Christianity and Sikhism haven't been able escape the caste system. AFAIK, even Buddha was proud of his upper caste background !
> The ingrained unfairness of the caste system has brought pressure for
> reform on human rights grounds against Western firms doing business in
> India.
Intel (India) and GE (India) will provide job quotas to dalits in India?
>Unions have written to 300 companies in Europe which outsource work
> to India to check that their subcontractors do not discriminate on the
> basis of caste.
India's exports to EU are about 2% of the GDP.The Left is unlikely to agree if Western firms are be allowed to decide on India's internal affairs.
> 'There are many parallels with the situation in South Africa in the
> Sixties, when foreign companies needed to be persuaded to address the
> discrimination in the system of apartheid,' said David Haslam, the
> London-based chair of the Dalit Solidarity Network.
What are these parallels?
Ulhas