Wednesday, February 03, 2016

Yogendra Yadav on Social Justice

Yogendra Yadav delivered a lecture on 'the changing politics of social justice' in Chennai a few days ago. It was both scholarly and pragmatic. He looked at social justice within the confines of presently popular fashion of caste-based social justice.

In his view, development of social justice has got stagnated and also fragmented. He regretted that lower echelons of dalits and adivasis have not benefitted from the scheme of reservation which has been usurped by OBCs and better-placed dalits.

He was against the clamour for reservations in promotions. Obliging the creamy layer at the cost of the really oppressed was repugnant to his understanding of social justice. He wanted reservation to apply beyond the decaying public sector. He wanted the OBCs / EBCs/ Dalits to work jointly for their welfare instead of confronting one another.

His vision for the future was to go beyond the narrow definition of caste-based social justice and to ensure class, gender and village based social justice.

Expectedly, he spoke about the suicide of Rohith Vemula also. He understood Rohith's life as one crying for universalisation of social justice.

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