Details Published on Sunday 17 July 2022 10:10 Written by Radical Socialist
Adopted by the All-India Conference of Radical Socialist, May 27-29, 2022
We support reservations as part of measures to reduce social oppression as a strong form of affirmative action. We support the demand for extension of SC/ST reservation to Muslims and Christians wherever applicable.
- Reservation is not a purely economic, job-creation measures, so reservation is not the road for tackling economic deprivation, and particularly not a measure intended for economically less advantaged persons from oppressor castes (which means we oppose EWS).
- The tensions over reservations conceal the reality that reservations in education and jobs exist only for government, public sector and state-aided institutions. For the last three decades and more, governmental expenditure to create jobs and educational opportunities (new schools and colleges, UGC grants, and other forms), have been shrinking. As a result, right now the reserved jobs amount to around 1.5% of the total number of salaried jobs in India. We therefore condemn the attacks on reservation as casteist and motivated.
- We demand the application of a properly formulated roster system for recruitment in reserved categories, with prescribed penalty for managements who do not follow this.
- We demand an expansion of overall jobs, and educational opportunities, especially permanent jobs in government/public sector/government aided sectors, through increase in public expenditure.
- We demand a reversal of the privatization of education.
- We demand the expansion of reservations to the private sector as well.
- We demand affirmative action in other forms, notably greater investment in schools, hostels etc. for the Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs.