ABSTRACT
In the last two and half decades, India has re-moulded in the direction of a wider open market economy whereby borderless exports and imports of all types of goods and services are to work as a central apparatus of development leading to unfettered and extraordinary change in the society. The justification forwarded for liberalisation and globalisation largely argued that structural reforms would bring even-handed competition and optimal efficiency into the economy resulting in engagement of labour, surge in incomes and inclusive affluence. It was also expected that impact of globalisation will extend to touch facets of the life situation that are not only restricted to economic sphere as it will proliferate into the key elements of social living, environmental usage, social identity and delimiting the role of the state. However, it has been observed that globalisation has a differential impact from country to country, from region to region and from community to community. Thus it has made it difficult to identify the beneficiaries, measure the scale and direction of development, or assign value of the overall growth. In India studies have revealed that the political and economic transformation resulting in last 25 years show that inequity and un-sustainability are the two major features that have deprived communities from sharing the riches and in achieving justice. Furthermore, due to varying personal and interpersonal oriented perceptions of development and justice among communities has resulted in disintegration in the perceptions about development reached from different perspectives. Though upholders of globalisation would like us to believe that we may perceive egalitarian growth within and beyond our country, nevertheless a differentiated measurement frequently exposes that perception about development and justice is actually an amalgamation of dissimilar variables socially constructed by community sub-dimensions dependent on the cultural context and their historical experience. Under these arguments, the present chapter engages with the question as to, can we at all have a uniform idea, construction and application of social justice where multiple reality of Dalits (as we have various categories of Dalits with respect to class, gender, region, religion, language, aim, status, occupation and so on) exist in the contemporary globalised world and within a democratic-capitalised Indian state? It further examines that how globalisation has changed (if at all it has changed) the status of Dalits and the idea of social justice with respect to them? In doing so, the chapter examines the importance and need of social justice in caste ridden contemporary India, with specific reference to Dalit conceptualisation and the changing idea and construction of social justice from the pre-independence to the post-independence period.
