Untouchable bureaucracy. Unrepresentative bureaucracy in a North Indian State.

Abstract

<p>\n\n</p><div>\n\n<p>Under the impetus of “reservations” -an elaborate government policy of\naffirmative action- over the past six decades hundreds of thousands of Indian\nuntouchables -individuals ranked extremely low in the Hindu caste hierarchy-\nhave managed to secure highly valued civil service jobs. The question explored\nin this study is why these untouchable bureaucrats are not much inclined -as those\nwho introduced reservations had hoped and anticipated they would- to use their\nnew-found positions of power and influence to extend special help to\nuntouchable clients outside bureaucracy. In an effort to account for this\npuzzling phenomenon of unrepresentative bureaucracy the author conducted prolonged\nethnographic fieldwork in a dust-level rural development bureaucracy in north India. He introduces\nthe reader to a complex and vibrant local universe in which an array of actors,\nfactors and considerations conspire to simultaneously limit untouchable bureaucrats’\nopportunities and motives for acting as active representatives of untouchable\ninterests and constrain untouchable clients’ possibilities for claiming special\ntreatment. Affirmative action in civil service recruitment, it is concluded,\nseems to be of doubtful use as a social engineering tool, at least in the case\nof stigmatized ethnic minority groups in\npatronage democracies.</p>\n\n</div>