Conclusion

Abstract

The preceding chapters have tried to map the variety of cultural diversity in India, and to provide an account of the various policies and institutional mechanisms devised to manage it. They have demonstrated that these policies and institutions have not been an unmitigated success, and there are at least three signifiers of this contention. Firstly, as we saw in Chapter 4, the institutions of the public sector are not representative of religious minorities, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in a way that adequately mirrors their proportion in the population. Secondly, though the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes do enjoy constitutionally mandated reservation in public institutions, including the bureaucracy and legislative bodies, the substantive policy outcomes that could have been expected from these policies have not ensued. Lending credence to this contention is the evidence (noted in Chapter 2) of the continuing material inequalities that overlap with social disadvantage. Finally, India has witnessed mobilization as well as conflict along lines of caste and community, ironically coming full circle with recent demands for reservations for upper castes!