In its latest report, NCRB stated that from 5,412 ‘illiterate’ juvenile offenders in 2016, the number has come down to 4,324 in 2017. Delhi tops in crime by juveniles.
Uttar Pradesh tops the list in cyber crime, with a majority of the cases for fraud, while Mahrashtra saw the most number of sexually-motivated cyber crimes.
‘Jihadi terrorists’, Naxals were added under a new section that also details instances of violence by ‘north-east insurgents’, ‘anti-national elements’ and ‘other terrorists'.
Uttar Pradesh registered over 3 lakh cases in 2017, accounting for 10.1% of crime in the country. Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala were the other states in top 5 ranks.
BJP’s fate in the second phase of 2024 Lok Sabha election will be decided in Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, where it performed very well in 2019 but faces a stiff competition now.
The private lender's shares tumbled to be top Nifty 50 loser after India's central bank barred it from taking on new customers through online and mobile banking channels.
Another addition to military cooperation has been the Strategic Space Dialogue, inaugurated in Paris in 2023. Last month, India participated as an observer to France’s AsterX.
Merit argument helps the upper castes in 2 ways:
1. The narrative against reservations dominated by savarnas and OBCs is purely against SCs, STs and lower strata of OBCs. This leads to overshadowing of all other issues like unemployment, environment etc. as the reservation narrative pushes upper castes to believe that reservations are the cause of every ruin. They however, won’t raise the question of increasing number of seats and jobs but rather to remove reservations. This makes upper castes to portray reservations as ‘evil.’ It in the end, leads to the complete negligence of other issues pertaining to electoral politics, so the political parties though appearing to be standing with the Bahujans, won’t touch the ‘merit’ discourse.
2. It protects the privileges of upper castes and the political elite. It is because of the outright domination of resources by the savarnas. they will always appear to have top ranks and hence, ‘merit’. The middle class upper caste which is ‘non-elitist’ are the torchbearers of anti-reservation narrative because though they enjoy religious and social privileges, capital is where they can be defeated by the middle class Bahujans. This leads to an outright neglect of their privileges in turn, helping the upper caste(including OBCs) to protect their prvileges and attacking reservation at the same time.
Merit argument is a fallacy. Education system is crap in India, if upper caste think they are best at cramming books and getting great results(which also isn’t so) then I won’t call it merit by any slant.
It took me 35 years to realize that using swear words in front of a woman constituted sexual violence, if the woman thought it did. That last part shifts the power structure a bit, doesn’t it?
I do not agree with the merit argument because it talks only about output, whereas it should also include input i.e. the number of resources at the disposal of each candidate. That is where the bar shifts, i think.
I do not know how Dalits feel about this insult thing or whether it is the right thing. But, like the sexual violence discovery i made, maybe this insult thing is also a form of violence.
Will keep it in mind. Thank you for the information and perspective.
I cannot agree enough with the arguments of Mr. Prakash. Most upper caste people never realise the privileges that they received all their life – somewhat akin to the white privilege prevalent in America. The deep rooted impacts of black slavery are well documented and researched but I haven’t come across a similar study of the impact of social deprivation faced by our own brethren, the impact of which can be scarcely imagined. No amount of social hand-holding and positive discrimination can be criticised in view of this deprivation.
I do agree that questioning a person’s capabilities based on their background, caste or otherwise, is humiliating. If someone were to question a person’s capabilities based on their religion then that would be treated as bigotry – the same could be applied to caste as well.
I just hope that newer people are allowed to reap the benefits of a policy of positive discrimination, instead of it becoming a fief of the earliest beneficiaries – I would hedge that children of Meira Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan do not need the support of reservation to make a mark and that they could voluntarily give up the benefits of such a policy to allow more needy to benefit.
Why can’t there be talk of merit and how is merit an insult? Merit is a number, a rank. Though SC or OBC may circumvent the entry from the normal merit rank, it does not mean that their relative merit should be suppressed in conversation. Ultimately, public service is about efficiency, about getting work done well.
If the author is so much concerned, why not put resources into improving the merit rank or numbers, instead of criminalizing the discussion of merit and hurting free speech, etc? I suspect Ambedkar would not have agreed with this author at all. Ambedkar himself was meritorious, nobody denies his place. Dalits should learn from that instead of perverting the conversation through perverted laws.
LOL! nice way to spin the evil that is “reservation”. If you don’t like “merit” you will be called out on it, don’t assume people are going to go easy on you when you leech off of their seats with half the credentials.
Merit argument helps the upper castes in 2 ways:
1. The narrative against reservations dominated by savarnas and OBCs is purely against SCs, STs and lower strata of OBCs. This leads to overshadowing of all other issues like unemployment, environment etc. as the reservation narrative pushes upper castes to believe that reservations are the cause of every ruin. They however, won’t raise the question of increasing number of seats and jobs but rather to remove reservations. This makes upper castes to portray reservations as ‘evil.’ It in the end, leads to the complete negligence of other issues pertaining to electoral politics, so the political parties though appearing to be standing with the Bahujans, won’t touch the ‘merit’ discourse.
2. It protects the privileges of upper castes and the political elite. It is because of the outright domination of resources by the savarnas. they will always appear to have top ranks and hence, ‘merit’. The middle class upper caste which is ‘non-elitist’ are the torchbearers of anti-reservation narrative because though they enjoy religious and social privileges, capital is where they can be defeated by the middle class Bahujans. This leads to an outright neglect of their privileges in turn, helping the upper caste(including OBCs) to protect their prvileges and attacking reservation at the same time.
Merit argument is a fallacy. Education system is crap in India, if upper caste think they are best at cramming books and getting great results(which also isn’t so) then I won’t call it merit by any slant.
I am a brahmin man.
It took me 35 years to realize that using swear words in front of a woman constituted sexual violence, if the woman thought it did. That last part shifts the power structure a bit, doesn’t it?
I do not agree with the merit argument because it talks only about output, whereas it should also include input i.e. the number of resources at the disposal of each candidate. That is where the bar shifts, i think.
I do not know how Dalits feel about this insult thing or whether it is the right thing. But, like the sexual violence discovery i made, maybe this insult thing is also a form of violence.
Will keep it in mind. Thank you for the information and perspective.
I cannot agree enough with the arguments of Mr. Prakash. Most upper caste people never realise the privileges that they received all their life – somewhat akin to the white privilege prevalent in America. The deep rooted impacts of black slavery are well documented and researched but I haven’t come across a similar study of the impact of social deprivation faced by our own brethren, the impact of which can be scarcely imagined. No amount of social hand-holding and positive discrimination can be criticised in view of this deprivation.
I do agree that questioning a person’s capabilities based on their background, caste or otherwise, is humiliating. If someone were to question a person’s capabilities based on their religion then that would be treated as bigotry – the same could be applied to caste as well.
I just hope that newer people are allowed to reap the benefits of a policy of positive discrimination, instead of it becoming a fief of the earliest beneficiaries – I would hedge that children of Meira Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan do not need the support of reservation to make a mark and that they could voluntarily give up the benefits of such a policy to allow more needy to benefit.
Why can’t there be talk of merit and how is merit an insult? Merit is a number, a rank. Though SC or OBC may circumvent the entry from the normal merit rank, it does not mean that their relative merit should be suppressed in conversation. Ultimately, public service is about efficiency, about getting work done well.
If the author is so much concerned, why not put resources into improving the merit rank or numbers, instead of criminalizing the discussion of merit and hurting free speech, etc? I suspect Ambedkar would not have agreed with this author at all. Ambedkar himself was meritorious, nobody denies his place. Dalits should learn from that instead of perverting the conversation through perverted laws.
LOL! nice way to spin the evil that is “reservation”. If you don’t like “merit” you will be called out on it, don’t assume people are going to go easy on you when you leech off of their seats with half the credentials.