Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

Analyzing COMPETING EQUALITIES: LAW AND THE BACKWARD CLASSES IN INDIA. By Marc Galanter.** Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. 625 pp. $36.50.

The United States and India both are heterogeneous societies attempting to incorporate disadvantaged groups into the mainstream of the national economy. Although both countries have addressed the problem by prohibiting intentional discrimination against protected groups, each has taken a different approach toward encouraging integration. India grants preferential treatment to its underprivileged groups (compensatory discrimination). The United States instead prohibits employers from using employment criteria that arbitrarily bar qualified minorities from employment opportunities.

This article will briefly compare American employment discrimination law with Indian compensatory discrimination as described in Marc Galanter's book Competing Equalities and suggest ways in which each system might learn from the other. Although the book is not organized solely with comparative analysis in mind, it provides most of the information needed to compare the structure and effectiveness of India's policies with our own. Galanter's study also contains a great deal of information which, although tangential, helps in understanding the extent to which one can meaningfully compare the Indian and- American experiences. The book is an excellent general sourcebook regarding government preferences in public education and employment. One might wish to learn more about India's statutory scheme for preventing and redressing private discrimination and about India's responses to sex discrimination. Competing Equalities, however, offers some fascinating food for thought on the question of appropriate legal responses to the exclusion of racial and ethnic minorities from a nation's workforce.

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