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Achieving Diversity in Socio-economic Space: An Alternate Strategy of Intervention through the Diversity Index

The present paper postulates the need for an index-based intervention to deal with the serious problems of disparity and discrimination across social, religious and gender groups in accessing livelihood, housing and public services, as envisaged by the Committee headed by Justice Rajendra Sachar. It examines the conceptual framework that has been proposed by the Expert Group for measuring diversity of both public and private institutions. It probes into conceptual issues and the methodology for aggregating the different dimensions of diversity into an index. It discusses the axiomatic framework of the index and elucidates it through illustration. It also overviews the critical issues concerning operationalization of the incentive system and moving gradually to equal opportunities for all sections of society. It argues that the idea of diversity must take root in the minds of the decision-makers at all levels, which alone can erase the deeply entrenched prejudices, resulting in discriminatory practices in the social and economic spheres. The new approach must go beyond creating socially well-represented opportunity spaces in public domains and endeavour to achieve equity in the private spheres. It must gradually take the shape of a social movement.