SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF CLASS CONFLICT IN INDIA - MARXIST

PERSPECTIVE

3.5 SOCIOLOGY - I

SUBMITTED BY
Ayushi Bhutra
U.I.D.: UG 17-26
2018-19
B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) SEMESTER-III

SUBMITTED TO
Dr. Deepmala Baghel
Assistant Professor of Sociology

MAHARASHTRA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY, NAGPUR

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES............................................................................................................4

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY....................................................................................................4

RESEARCH QUESTION...............................................................................................................4

KARL MARX.................................................................................................................................5

MARX AND CLASS CONFLICT..................................................................................................6

SOCIAL CONFLICT IN INDIA...................................................................................................10

PRESENT-DAY INDIAN SOCIETY...........................................................................................13

CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................15

2
INTRODUCTION

Without the labour power of workers, capitalists can’t make profits. The system can’t function.

Of all the things a capitalist can buy to build their business, only labour power adds value;
meaning the business can produce something worth more than the original cost of the
components that went into the finished product. The time, thought and energy applied by
workers in the production process – whose efforts are only partially compensated by the
employer who keeps the output – is the ultimate source of profit (or surplus value) in a capitalist
economy. Put simply, all profits come from the unpaid work of workers. And of course, the drive
for profit is the beating heart of capitalism.

This revolutionary discovery by Karl Marx paved the way for a comprehensive explanation of
the workings of the capitalist system – identifying exploitation, and therefore injustice, at its
core. It underlies the socialist understanding of the world’s economies and societies today; the
contradictions and antagonisms in social relations and the inherent instability and conflict arising
from the fundamental division of the world into those who own capital and exploit others, and
those who own little or nothing and are exploited; namely, capitalists and workers.

This research paper tries to analyze the Marxist Conflict Theory in relation to the condition of
India.

3
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

This research project had the following objectives -

1. To understand the Marxist theory of Conflict.

2. To analyze the Marxist theory from the perspective of Indian Society.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The researcher has used the doctrinal method of research for this research project i.e. research
used by the information given by the various credible sources which makes the data of the
research admissible to an extent. This project uses all the secondary sources.

RESEARCH QUESTION

The research question of the project was -

“How far does Indian Society adopt the Marxist Perspective of Class Conflict?”

KARL MARX

4
Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818-14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist,
sociologist, historian, journalist and revolutionary socialist.

He was born in Trier to a middle-class family, Marx studied law and Hegelian philosophy. Due
to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile in London, where he
continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and
publish his writings, researching in the reading room of the British Museum. His best-known
titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, and the three-volume Das Kapital. His
political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic
and political history and his name has been used as an adjective, a noun and a school of social
theory.

Marx's theories about society, economics and politics—collectively understood as Marxism

which holds that human societies develop through class struggle.

Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work
has been both lauded and criticized. 1 His work in economics laid the basis for much of the
current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. 2
Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by
Marx's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as one of the
principal architects of modern social science.3

Marx's polemic with other thinkers often occurred through critique and thus he has been called
"the first great user of critical method in social sciences. 4 Marx's ideas have had a profound
impact on world politics and intellectual thought. Followers of Marx have often debated amongst
themselves over how to interpret Marx's writings and apply his concepts to the modern world.

1
"Marx the millennium's 'greatest thinker'". BBC News World Online. 1 October 1999. Retrieved 23 November
2010
2
Joseph Schumpeter Ten Great Economists: From Marx to Keynes. Volume 26 of Unwin University books. Edition
4, Taylor & Francis Group, 1952 ISBN 0415110785, 9780415110785.
3
Kim, Sung Ho (2017). Zalta, Edward N., ed. "Max Weber". Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
Retrieved 10 December 2017. "Max Weber is known as a principal architect of modern social science along with
Karl Marx and Emil Durkheim."
4
Howard J. Sherman (1995). Reinventing marxism. JHU Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8018-5077-6. Retrieved 7 March
2011.

5
One of the most powerful sociological explanations of social conflict is that of Karl Marx, who
posited a class struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie intrinsic to capitalist, industrial
society.

MARX AND CLASS CONFLICT

For Marx, the analysis of social class, class structures and changes in those structures are key to
understanding capitalism and other social systems or modes of production. In the Communist
Manifesto Marx and Engels comment that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles.5

Analysis of class divisions and struggles is especially important in developing an understanding

of the nature of capitalism. For Marx, classes are defined and structured by the relations
concerning (i) work and labour and (ii) ownership or possession of property and the means of
production. These economic factors more fully govern social relationships in capitalism than
they did in earlier societies. While earlier societies contained various strata or groupings which
might be considered classes, these may have been strata or elites that were not based solely on
economic factors – e.g. priesthood, knights, or military elite.

Marx did not complete the manuscript that would have presented his overall view of social class.
Many of his writings concern the class structures of capitalism, the relationship among classes
the dynamics of class struggle, political power and classes, and the development of a classless
society, and from these a Marxian approach to class can be developed. According to him, Class
is the manifestation of economic differentiation.

Marx viewed the structure of society in relation to its major classes, and the struggle between
them as the engine of change in this structure. His structure of society was no equilibrium or
consensus theory. His was a conflict view of modem (nineteenth century) society.

According to Marx, a class is defined by the ownership of property. Such ownership vests a
person with the power to exclude others from the property and to use it for personal purposes.

5
Lindsey German, Reflections on the Communist Manifesto, Issue 79 of International Socialism, Socialist Workers
Party (Britain), July 1998.

6
In relation to property there are three great classes of society: the bourgeoisie (who own the
means of production such as machinery and factory buildings, and whose source of income is
profit), landowners (whose income is rent), and the proletariat (who own their labor and sell it
for a wage).6 Class thus is determined by property, not by income or status. These are determined
by distribution and consumption, which itself ultimately reflects the production and power
relations of classes. The social conditions of bourgeoisie production are defined by bourgeois
property. Class is therefore a theoretical and formal relationship among individuals.

Because of which, class interest emerges. Out of similar class situations, individuals come to act
similarly. They develop a mutual dependence, a community, a shared interest interrelated with a
common income of profit or of wages.

As Marx saw the development of class conflict, the struggle between classes was initially
confined to individual factories. Eventually, given the maturing of capitalism, the growing
disparity between life conditions of bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the increasing
homogenization within each class, individual struggles become generalized to coalitions across
factories.7 Increasingly class conflict is manifested at the societal level. Class consciousness is
increased, common interests and policies are organized, and the use of and struggle for political
power occurs. Classes become political forces.

The distribution of political power is determined by power over production (i.e., capital). Capital
confers political power, which the bourgeois class uses to legitimatize and protect their property
and consequent social relations.8 Class relations are political, and in the mature capitalist society,
the state's business is that of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the intellectual basis of state rule, the
ideas justifying the use of state power and its distribution, are those of the ruling class. The
intellectual-social culture is merely a superstructure resting on the relation of production, on
ownership of the means of production.

Finally, the division between classes will widen and the condition of the exploited worker will
deteriorate so badly that social structure collapses: the class struggle is transformed into a

6
http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/s28f99.html, visited on September 15, 2018.
7
Dr. Muhammad Hussein Noure Elahi, Political Science and Political Sociology in Brief, Osmora Incorporated,
2016.
8
Ibid.

7
proletarian revolution.9 The workers' triumph will eliminate the basis of class division in
property through public ownership of the means of production. With the basis of classes thus
wiped away, a classless society will ensue, and since political power to protect the bourgeoisie
against the workers is unnecessary, political authority and the state will wither away.

Overall, there are six elements in Marx's view of class conflict.

 Classes are authority relationships based on property ownership.

 A class defines groupings of individuals with shared life situations, thus interests.
 Classes are naturally antagonistic by virtue of their interests.
 Imminent within modern society is the growth of two antagonistic classes and their
struggle, which eventually absorbs all social relations.
 Political organization and Power are an instrumentality of class struggle, and reigning
ideas are its reflection.
 Structural change is a consequence of the class struggle.10

Marx's emphasis on class conflict as constituting the dynamics of social change, his awareness
that change was not random but the outcome of a conflict of interests, and his view of social
relations as based on power were contributions of the first magnitude.

He classified the various stages of society -

1. Primitive Society

This system was the first and the lowest form of organization of people. In this system of very
low level of forces of production, the relations of production were based on common ownership
of the means of production. Therefore, these relations were based on mutual assistance and co-
operation

In such a situation, exploitation of man by man did not exist because of two reasons. Firstly, the
tools used (means of production) were so simple that they could be reproduced by any one. 11

9
Ibid.
10
R.J. Rummel, Marxism, Class Conflict and the Conflict Helix,
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CIP.CHAP5.HTM, visited on September 15, 2018.
11
Rashmi Priya, http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/marxs-sociology-theory-of-class-struggle/43763,
visited on September 16, 2018.

8
Secondly, production was at a low scale.12 The people existed more or less on a subsistence lord.
Their production was just sufficient to meet the needs of the people provided everybody worked.

2. Slave- owning Society

In the slave-owning society, primitive tools were perfected and bronze and iron tools replaced
the stone and wooden implements. The development of this type of forces of production also
changed the relations of production.

These relations were based on the slave owner’s absolute ownership of both the means of
production and the slave himself and everything he produced. The owner left the slave only with
the bare minimum necessities to keep him from dying of starvation. 13 In this system, the history
of exploitation of man by man and the history of class struggle began.

3. Feudal System

The Progressive development of the productive forces continued under feudalism. Man started
using inanimate sources of energy, i.e. water and wind, besides human labour. The production
relations were relations of dominations and subjection, exploitation of the serfs by the feudal
lords.

Nevertheless, these relations were more progressive than in slavery system, because they made
the labourers interested to some extent, in their labour. 14 All this led to the need and growth of
mass scale manufacture.

4. Capitalist Society

Large-scale machine production is the specific feature of the productive forces of capitalism.
Under capitalism, the producer, the proletariat, is legally free, being attached neither to the land

12
Rashmi Priya, http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/marxs-sociology-theory-of-class-struggle/43763,
visited on September 16, 2018.
13
Rashmi Priya, http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/marxs-sociology-theory-of-class-struggle/43763,
visited on September 16, 2018.
14
Rashmi Priya, http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/marxs-sociology-theory-of-class-struggle/43763,
visited on September 16, 2018.

9
nor to any particular factory.15 Bourgeois possessing no means of production, they are compelled
to sell their labour power and thereby came under the yoke of exploitation.

Due to this exploitation the relatively free labourers became conscious of their class interest and
organize themselves into a working-class movement.16 This working-class movement intensified
its struggle against the bourgeois class. This paves the way for a socialist revolution which would
lead to a new stage of society i.e. Communism.

SOCIAL CONFLICT IN INDIA

A leading international business consultancy firm reported a few years ago that 680 million
Indians live in deprivation. These people - half the Indian population are deprived of the basics
of life such as food, energy, housing, drinking water, sanitation, health care, education and social
security. Most of Indians workers and peasants are among the deprived. 17 Ninety percent of
India’s workers are in the informal sector, where protections at the workplace are minimal and
their rights to form unions virtually non-existent.

Only 4 percent of the Indian workforce is in unions. If these unions merely fought to defend their
tenuous rights, their power would erode even further. Union power has suffered greatly since the
Indian economy liberalized in 1991, with Supreme Court judgments against union democracy
and with the global commodity chain pitting Indian workers against workers elsewhere.18

The class struggle is not the invention of the unions or the workers. It is a fact of life for labor in
the capitalist system. The capitalist, who buys the labor power of workers, seeks to make that
labor power as efficient and productive as possible.19 The capitalist retains the gains from this
productivity, sloughing off the worker to their slums at night to find a way to get the energy to
come back the next day. It is this pressure to be more productive and to donate the gains of their
productivity to the capitalist that is the essence of the class struggle.20 When the worker wants a
15
Rashmi Priya, http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/marxs-sociology-theory-of-class-struggle/43763,
visited on September 16, 2018.
16
http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/s28f99.htm, visited on September 15, 2018.
17
Vijay Prasad, the class struggle is real: India is making labour history with the world’s largest general strike,
Alternet, September 10, 2016.
18
https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/globallabour/article/view/1067/1126, September 16, 2018.
19
Mark Gould, The Devaluation of Labor Power, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26 (1981).
20
Mark Gould, The Devaluation of Labor Power, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26 (1981).

10
better share of the output, the capitalist does not listen. It is the strike — an invention of the 19th
century — that provides the workers with a voice to enter the class struggle in a conscious way.

In India, the first strike was in April-May 1862, when the railway workers of Howrah Railway
Station struck over the right to an eight-hour work day. 21 What inconveniences the strike
produces to the middle class has to be weighed against the daily inconveniences that the workers
endure as their extra productivity is seized by the capitalists. Those workers in 1862 did not want
an interminable 10-hour shift that depleted them of their life. Their strike allowed them to say:
we will not work more than eight hours. 22 The critic of the strike will say, surely there are other
ways to get your voice heard. No other way has been shown to the worker, who had neither the
political power to lobby nor the economic power to dominate the media. It is silent, but for these
festivals of the working class.

According to Karl Marx: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the
working classes themselves. The struggle for the emancipation of the working class means not a
struggle for class privileges and monopolies but for equal rights and duties and the abolition of
all class rule.23

The Indian working class has been undergoing a long state of oppression and exploitation. The
class struggle in India was in motion in everyday reality long before the British invaded our
country. Before the capitalist revolution began in India in the hands of the British imperialists,
class oppression was a concrete reality that continued in the Indian feudal society which was
divided into castes. The casteist hierarchy is a socio-economic hierarchy based on the unaltering
division of labour (It is also the division of labourers, according to Bhimrao Ambedkar, a noted
social thinker and activist) in which the so-called upper castes, the only “learned” castes, own all
the wealth and receive all the privileges whereas the so-called lower-castes or untouchables (as
the parasite upper castes call them) have to work for them and serve them unquestionably; they
also have to accept their position as well as their condition to be inevitable and unchangeable.

21
Vijay Prasad, India made labor history with the world’s largest general strike, People’s World, September 12,
2016.
22
Vijay Prasad, India made labor history with the world’s largest general strike, People’s World, September 12,
2016.
23
The International Workingmen's Association 1864 General Rules, October 1864.

11
This led to a state of class conflict because caste is an enclosed form of class, as can clearly be
observed. The “untouchables” or lower castes or dalits (oppressed) represent the working-class
population of India. Their struggle for freedom, liberty, equality and justice is continuing even
today.

Under British colonial rule, the Indian workers and peasants, that is, the Indian working class,
suffered miserably. Innumerable famines caused by the British land policies led to hundreds of
rebellions, including both successful and unsuccessful ones to some extent. Majority of those
rebellions were organized by the oppressed people, who were compelled to work according to
the demands of the British imperialists. During the middle and the end of the nineteenth century,
India saw various peasant rebellions in different parts of the country because of unimaginable
economic exploitation (The most significant among them was the Santhal Rebellion of 1855-56,
which was led by mighty leaders like Sidho and Kanho.

Other than that, what is generally accepted as the “first war of independence” (1857), began just
after the Indian sepoys, working under the British, openly disobeyed injustice.

The British rule in India continued for nearly two hundred years, a time in which different
changes took place. These changes brought forth an untold amount of suffering and misery for
the Indian working class. The introduction of anti-people laws, the barbaric land settlement and
revenue policies along with the increasing amount of wealth in the hand of the capitalists made
the conditions of the Indian working class awful.24 This period was mainly characterized by the
drain of India’s wealth solely for the private benefit of the imperial “lord”, Britain. To meet this
aim, the Britishers inhumanly stressed on the need for the production of cash crops which led to
capitalistic commercialization of agriculture, turning land into a commodity. This increased the
pressure upon the toiling class, which made their lives more severe.

Apart from this major fact, another important fact is the imperialist methods of control which
were employed by the British colonialists in India. To divide the working class up, they applied
the ‘divide and rule’ policy, which was completely based on political motives but was built
intentionally on religious considerations that led to two great partitions, one of Bengal (1905:
The Great Bengal Partition) and then of the whole country (1947), in two different decades.

24
Akbar Bandyopadhyay, Class Struggle in India : Now and Then, socialistfight, April 28, 2017.

12
These partitions destroyed thousands of innocent lives of the oppressed people who fell prey to
imperialist conspiracy.

PRESENT-DAY INDIAN SOCIETY

In 1971, out of the total population of 547.9 million, 180.4 million persons were classified as
workers.25 Workers whose gainful activity is conducted within the framework of household; in
other words, whose relations of production are pre-capitalist. They comprise mainly three
groups: cultivators that are peasants, agricultural labourers mainly landless, and persons engaged
in the household industry that is artisans and handicraftsmen. In 1971, their numbers were as
follows: cultivators (78.2 million), agricultural labourers (47.5 million); and artisans and handi-
craftsmen (6.3 million). They add up to 132 million which is more than 70 per cent of the
working population.26

It is only the balance of 47.5 million workers who may be said to have entered into production
relations of the capitalist economy. Even these cannot all be classified into the two Marxian
classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. There is a substantial middle class. They are neither employ-
ers of wage-labour nor are they wage-labour themselves.

It is in the context of this class composition, that we should examine the nature of class conflict
that is evident in the Indian society. The explicit evidence and the form of the conflict are to be

25
Ganesh Ramrao Bhatkal, Contemporary India: G.R. Bhatkal Memorial Lectures, 1975-1995.
26
http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/society/nature-of-class-conflict-in-indian-society/38633, visited on September
16, 2018.

13
seen in the numerous strikes which are now a common feature of the Indian polity. They cover
the white-collar workers as well as the blue-collar workers.

Their number in the country is 29.5 million which is just about one-sixth of all workers is. The
proletariat in this country today is thus a small minority though a sizeable one.

The present period is the growth of political consciousness and emancipation from the political
domination of bourgeois nationalism. In spite of illiteracy, isolation, the workers are adopting
Communist revolutionary working-class aims.27

For instance, in March 2012, while the Manesar plant was facing wage negotiations between the
new union and the management, two workers shocked the managers with their statistical
knowledge.28 The workers knew exactly that between 2007 and 2011 while the Maruti Suzuki
workers’ yearly earnings increased by 5.5%, the consumer price index (for the Faridabad centre,
Haryana), went up by over 50%. Since 2001, profits for the Maruti Suzuki company increased by
2,200%.29

So, in any case, the Maruti Suzuki management was throwing crumbs at the workers. The
workers’ salary was in no way, by any yardstick, commensurate with the rise in the company’s
profit. Yet the Manesar plant management was not ready to grant even a minuscule wage
increase. Here, while contract labour got Rs 7,000 a month, regular workers survived on a mere
Rs 17,000. Manesar workers were demanding a wage increase of Rs 15-18,000, which the
management was resisting, even when Honda workers were getting similar pay scales.30

In this period of global crisis, the Maruti section (Swift and Dzire cars) was contributing more to
Maruti Suzuki’s super profits. There seems to be immense pressure on the management to reduce
wages in the name of increasing productivity.

The problem is that post-liberalization India has no idea of 1857, India’s first war of
Independence. The Bengal Army of the East India Company, which remained at the forefront of
the war’s long and torturous course, comprised of soldiers from the Haryana, Delhi, Uttar

27
Clemens Dutt, The Class Struggle in India, Labour Monthly, Vol. 11, July 1929, No. 7.
28
Shaikh Zoaib Salee, Maruti, labour unions negotiate revised wage agreement, Financial Express, July 7, 2015.
29
Prasenjit Bose, Worker’s Struggle in Maruti Suzuki, The Hindu, September 28, 2011.
30
Amaresh Misra, Manesar: Class Struggle of the 21st Century, http://www.insafbulletin.net/archives/1481,
September 18, 2018.

14
Pradesh and Bihar belt.31 They rebelled against what was seen as the insensitivity of a
multinational company—the world’s largest that managed a huge country like India plus other
colonial stations—towards the sense of dignity, pride and religion of both Hindus and Muslims.

The management brought in hundreds of bouncers to beat workers to submission. In fact, the
official statement of the Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Union, states that the bouncers started the fire
that killed a senior manager.

CONFLICT BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN WORKPLACE

Females are raised to become nurturers and to build relationships While men are expected to be
aggressive, even rude, in their climb up the corporate ladder, women who act the same are
viewed in an unfavorable light. Gender differences in access to economic opportunities are
frequently debated in relation to gender differences in labor market participation.

Far from being a simple decision about whether or not to join the labor force, participation in market
work involves reallocating time across a variety of activities—a process that can be difficult and costly,
particularly for women.
Despite significant progress in female labor force participation over the past 25 years, pervasive and
persistent gender differences remain in productivity and earnings across different sectors and jobs.
Gender differences in labor productivity and earnings are primarily the result of
differences in the economic activities of men and women—although gender differences in
human Capita and in the returns to worker and job characteristics also play a role. Gender
segregation in access to economic opportunities in turn reinforces gender differences in time use
and in access to inputs, and perpetuates market and institutional failures. For instance, women are
more likely than men
to work in jobs that offer flexible working arrangements so that they can combine work with
care responsibilities.
Women in India earn 20 per cent less than men, indicating that gender plays an important
parameter while determining salaries in India.32 According to the latest 'Monster Salary Index'
(MSI), men earned a median gross hourly salary of Rs 231, compared to women, who earned
only Rs 184.8. 33

31
Amaresh Misra, Manesar: Class struggle of the 21st century, Times of India, July 22, 2012.
32
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/gender-pay-gap-scenario-daunting-in-india-women-get-
paid-20-less-than-men/articleshow/63204351.cms
33
ibid

15
The causes for gender pay gap can be -

 Discrimination and bias in hiring and pay decisions.

 Women and men working in different industries and different jobs, with female-
dominated industries and jobs attracting lower wages
 Women’s disproportionate share of unpaid caring and domestic work
 Lack of workplace flexibility to accommodate caring and other responsibilities,
especially in senior roles
 Women’s greater time out of the workforce impacting career progression and
opportunities.
 Assumption that women are less productive than men.

The genders pay gap starts from the time women enter the workforce. The pay gap, together with
time out of the workforce for caring reasons and women’s higher likelihood of part-time work,
impacts on their lifetime economic security. Thus, it seems

CONFLICT BETWEEN SMALL-SCALE AND LARGE-SCALE INDUSTRIES

Industrialisation in India, like in all other countries, started with small industries based on arts
and crafts, e g, handlooms, metal work, leather processing, oil expelling, etc. There are many
benefits of a small-scale industry. First of all, there is the belief that small-scale industry will
provide the best solution to the great problem of employment generation in our country.
Secondly, it is argued that small-scale industry will make less demand on important resources
like capital and land, which are scarce in our country. Thirdly, it is held that the spread of the
small-scale sector will prevent the concentration of economic power in a section of society. But
sadly, after globalization, the competition has increased.
This had an adverse effect on small-scale industries which does not have enough resources and
technology to compete with the large-scale industries as well as MNC’s.
At the same time, various steps are taken by government to promote those small-scale industries
and to provide relief to them because of the constant conflict between them. The steps taken are -
 Providing easily accessible loans.
 Promoting research and development.
 Developing Infrastructure and

16
  Promoting education and training through schemes such as, Skill India Mission.

CONFLICT BETWEEN THOSE WHO GET AND THOSE WHO DON’T GET
RESERVATIONS
The principal of ‘Positive Discrimination’ has been used around the world, to help the minorities.
This principal does have its advantages in short to medium term but in long-term they are
potentially hazardous, as it starts causing discontent among the larger communities.

The Indian policy of reservation was propagated during the time of independence with the view
to end discrimination and promote equal opportunities. the idea was good but it is doubtful that
anybody had calculated the human cost of this in current context. There were people who self-
immolated in 1990 against this policy, but students are still committing suicide secondary to this
policy and numerous more are left damaged and mentally scarred by this that their lives are
ruined.

More than that, I believe that reservation has become an excuse to hide the incompetence of
successive governments to promote equality. It is also a reflection that 72 years of governance
has not been able to implement education for every child and to improve the State Education
system to compete with private education. Reservation was always meant to be a short-term fix
but it has been so politicized that governments are scared to even contemplate reducing it.

It is estimated that 35000 crore rupee damage was caused by the Jat stir in Haryana and several
thousand crores in the Patel agitation in Gujarat, but it is nowhere compared to the human costs
of the reservation system in India.34

The Patidar agitation — which erupted a month before Bihar state elections where caste plays a
dominant role — forced prime minister Narendra Modi to assure that quotas were here to stay. 35
The 2006 Indian anti-reservation protests were a series of protests that took place in India in
2006 in opposition to the decision of the Union Government of India, led by the Indian National
Congress-headed multiparty coalition United Progressive Alliance, to implement reservations for

34
Vipul Rastogi, The Unseen Cost of Reservation, Times of India, April 29, 2016.
35
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/is-original-objective-of-caste-based-reservation-
lost-in-muddied-waters-of-entitlement-politics/articleshow/49460477.cms

17
the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in central and private institutes of higher education. 36 These
protests were one of the two major protests against the Indian reservation system, the other one
being the 1990 anti-Mandal protests.

CONCLUSION

In Marxism, Marxian class theory asserts that an individual’s position within a class hierarchy is
determined by his or her role in the production process, and argues that political and ideological
consciousness is determined by class position.37

In truth, the validity of Marx’s theory of class struggle has been borne out by the history of the
working-class movement. Under capitalism the class struggle has intensified. The 20th century
saw far more revolutionary movements than any other, including the first successful socialist
revolution in Russia in 1917 (a revolution that was later betrayed, but nevertheless happened).
The 21st century has already experienced a profound crisis for the capitalist system, and indeed
has seen its fair share of significant mass mobilizations of workers, poor and young people
around the world. These movements resemble movements of the past in many ways, but in
many other ways are completely novel, which brings with its new challenges for Marxists.

Nothing is surer than that the greatest events in the history of the class struggle lay ahead of us,
not behind. But it’s worth remembering that the aim of the socialist movement for Marx and
Engels was to engage in the class struggle on the side of and as part of the proletariat, which they
sought to make “conscious of the conditions of its emancipation” and to finally bring the class
struggle to an end by sweeping away “the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and
of classes generally and in place of the old bourgeois society by having association, in which the
free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.38

This is what a society strives to achieve.

36
http://jacindia.co.in/blog/2017/12/15/history-of-reservation-in-india/, visited on October 8, 2018.
37
Parkin, F. Marx’s Theory of History: A Bourgeois Critique. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
38
Eddie McCabe, Karl Marx’s Theory of Class Struggle: The Working Class and Revolution, Socialist Alternative,
May 5, 2018.

18