Stimulus

In many societies, discrimination based on descent has been outlawed for decades, yet it persists in everyday life. India's Constitution of 1950 abolished untouchability and established a reservation system, reserving seats in legislatures and government jobs for Scheduled Castes, including Dalit communities; reservations in public higher education followed through the First Constitutional Amendment in 1951. This represents a strong de jure commitment: the state formally prohibits caste discrimination and actively promotes representation.

De facto discrimination, however, endures beneath the legal surface. Dalits still face violence, exclusion from land and segregation in some villages, while Roma communities across Europe encounter systematic marginalisation in housing, schooling and employment despite anti-discrimination directives. The gap reveals that formally abolishing descent-based hierarchy does not dissolve the informal networks, prejudices and economic structures through which it reproduces itself.

Adapted from "Abolished by Law, Alive in Practice: Descent-Based Discrimination in the Twenty-First Century" by Professor Ravi Chandrasekaran, Journal of Comparative Social Exclusion (2021).

(d) Evaluate the extent to which affirmative-action policies can overcome descent-based inequality. Base your response on one researched case study and integrate links to at least two HL extension topic areas.