‘Caste’ Grouping is New Social Justice in Andhra Pradesh 2009 Elections

When Chiranjeevi, the leader of 6 month old Praja Rajyam party started with hopes on unconditional support from his Caste group, Kapus, and started openly addressing caste based groups during campaigns, I feared that ‘Caste’ will become a much bigger issue than it already is in this 2009 elections. And unfortunately, I was right.

Caste based polarization has reached the peak in this elections already. And Praja Rajyam gave a new name to this ‘Caste’ based grouping and exploitation; It calls the concept, Samajica Nyayam, or Social justice. Now every party started talking about social justice.

In essence, Caste will be called Social Group or Samajika Vargam. And parties are attempting to allocate seats based on % of people belonging to a specific caste. So in effect, they are envisioning the demographics of population based on Caste will be the demographics of the Assembly too.

In essence, primary qualification to contest in elections through any of these political parties is YOUR CASTE. It is quite unfortunate that we still believe social justice is justice based on Caste groups.

I am not against representational politics. I am 100% against manifesting that representation based on caste or gender. Why not we aim for a representational politics based on what we do. We are 60% agriculture based economy. Why not have 60% of farmers in the Assembly.  If political parties really believe in representational politics, then, more than 50% of the seats must be allocated to Women. How many seats are allocated to Women?

Its pure exploitation and political manipulation to get elected. And Praja Rajyam party is becoming the champion in this new game. And it already became just another corrupt political party,  blurring the line between itself and other alleged corrupt political parties.

Did Mother Theresa served the people based on their caste? Did Gandhiji ever said Social justice is a justice done based on your caste group? Did APJ Kalam stand for Caste based politics as the way Youngsters approach politics? Is this the type of politics that inspire the generations, the formed President was talking about? And Chiranjeevi keeping those great people images behind him, doing what they never would have done. 

Making ‘Caste’ the primary qualification for public service.

Shame on you Chiranjeevi. Shame on you all political parties that are imitating Chiranjeevi and started preaching about social justice in the name of Caste exploitation.

Ambedkar did approach the issue, in essence, in this way almost 60 years ago. Its a living proof that it did not work. Otherwise, we shouldn’t be talking about the same issue today. Its unfortunate, we are trying the same solution again. It will be totally foolish to do the same thing and expect different results.