Also, how much does our public policy encourage diversity pro-actively? ‘Public interest’ is often defined in a sanitised manner as if it refers to an abstract category called ‘people’, oblivious of their myriad diversity.

The fate of the Indian languages testifies to this: have we ever thought of giving special encouragement to the student who would learn an Indian language other than her mother tongue? While learning of foreign languages thrives — and it should — we have allowed our education policy to become a prisoner of linguistic chauvinism.

Three, the pressure of democracy has made us somewhat alert to the need to make our ‘political’ power structures more diverse in character but this awareness has yet to penetrate the insulated portals of the bureaucracy, military, judiciary and so on. Some time ago, senior women IAS officers from the Maharashtra cadre formally wrote to the CM that women officers normally do not get key postings involving policy-making and governance. Surprisingly, there has been no public debate on this at all.

Besides, we are almost shy of talking about the diversity profile of our non-state public institutions such as the corporate management, media and voluntary sector. One suspects that these are the least diverse sectors of our public life, but the entire focus is limited to structures of the state. And this is not only restricted to issues of caste or religion; women, persons with rural background, those from the Northeast, are some other segments that may be inadequately represented in our public institutions — both state and non-state.

... contd.