POLITICS OF INCLUSIVENESS: A STUDY ON THE ROLE PLAYED BY 73rdAND 74th AMENDMENTS IN ENSURING THE EMPOWERMENT OF DALITS IN INDIA

Abstract

Democracy stands for inclusiveness. It's the form of government and way of social life to be inclusive enough to accommodate a society's diverge sections. Ensuring the weaker and vulnerable sects properly and adequately represented in the spaces of power thus forms the necessary pretext for the success of democracy. Inclusive politics thus form the core tenet of real democracy. Only through constitutional measures can the exacerbating socio-political conditions of Dalits and other weaker sections in India be adequately resolved. Even though local self-governing institutions started functioning in 1959, it continued to be non-participatory and less inclusive for almost three decades. The entire project was dominated by upper castes, expelling Dalits from the centres of power and decision making. But with the 73rd and 74th amendment of 1992, the unfair picture happened to change as provisions were encapsulated in these amendments to assure easy and fearless access of Dalits and weaker sections to grass-root power edifice, which had been anti-Dalit for centuries. This article attempts to analyse how the 73rd and 74th amendments of the constitution contributed in terms of achieving the ultimate goal of inclusive politics