in focus: affirmative action vis a vis reservations

Starting later today, I will be focusing on drawing distinctions between 'reservation' (on whatever criteria) and the significantly broader concept of Affirmative Action.

This has been an issue close to my heart for at least the last couple of years, and particularly since the Union Human Resource Development Minister, Mr. Arjun Singh announced that central government funded institutes of higher education all across India will extend the benefit of 27% percent reservations to the so-called "other backward classes".

Over the course of the largerly acriminous debate that followed this announcement, I have noted several instances where facts are being misrepresented or altogether obfuscated, in order to confuse people so that they think of Affirmative Action (AA) and Reservation to be one and the same. Later today (that is, Friday the 10th of November) I will post the first part in this series which will focus on the primary distinctions between these two concepts.

I will also be briefly examining how affirmative action is applied in the United States, and how a prominent Dalit leader has been consistently obfuscating facts regarding the implementation of AA in the USA.