(Read Part 1: Examining Religion)
Before we discuss reservations, let’s understand the socio-economic structure of our society. The dominant castes (DC) make up approx 26% of the total population but occupy almost twice the amount of teaching positions in educational institutions.
DCs also have the lowest levels of landlessness, the highest academic qualifications, and earn the most (an average of Rs 35,000 vs Rs 19,032 for SCs) amongst all social groups. Even if we remove caste as a category and only consider low economic status, DCs still rank high in completing graduation.
Furthermore, some jobs are assigned only to SCs and STs. Almost half or more than half of their population is employed in bonded labour, sanitation workers, cleaners, and other menial jobs.
“Then, why can’t they just stop doing those jobs?”
Such jobs, especially jobs like ‘corpse-burner’ (done by the Dom community in Varanasi) and manual scavenging (which is supposedly illegal in India), are assigned based on caste. They cannot simply quit because no DC individual will ever work in these positions. It, therefore…
