A CONVERSATION BETWEEN D SHYAM BABU AND RICHA BANSAL
PODCAST IDENTITY DISCRIMINATION POLITICS

Listen to the full CPR podcast, ThoughtSpace (above) featuring Senior Fellow, D Shyam Babu, where he discusses the Lok Sabha bill that aims to provide 10 percent reservation in government jobs and education to the economically backward section in the general category.

Through the amendment of Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution, the bill seeks to allow states to make ‘special provision for the advancement of any economically weaker sections of citizens’.

In an article in ‘Times of India’, D Shyam Babu questioned whether ‘one should treat the exercise as a bold attempt at social reform, or as a cynical politics of divide and rule?’ Shedding light on the ironies of the policy, he highlighted that ‘the same social groups who ridiculed the quota system as ‘vote-bank politics’ have now become the recipients of quota benefits.’