Meritocracy and Democracy

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2959596
AutoresAjantha Subramanian (0000-0002-0477-3786, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen31
Número2
Páginas275-288
Fecha de publicación2019-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPublic Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0899-2363 • E-ISSN: 1527-8018
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/08992363-7286825
OpenAlexW2943560699
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas4

From 1951 to 2008, India moved toward an embrace of caste quotas, or reservations, as a necessary mechanism of recompense and redistribution. At the same time, the focus on the appropriate criteria for determining “backwardness” left largely unaddressed the social bases of “merit.” The effects of this asymmetry are evident in the popular politics around reservations in which the claim to merit on the part of upper castes is taken largely at face value. Across this period, we also see the consistent stance of the southeastern state of Tamilnadu as a political outlier in its disregard for the liberal norm of formal equality and embrace of a model of demographic representation. In this article, the author takes up the tensions between these different approaches to democracy and their implications for addressing historical inequalities

Democracy · Meritocracy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Balkans: History, Politics, Society · Law · Soviet and Russian History · Turkey's Politics and Society