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Paper short abstract

This paper shows how elite experts shape “inclusive” policy in Haryana, turning caste injustice into numbers and sidelining the real on-the-ground issues. The process may reproduce social stratification and overlook who is actually able to claim affirmative-action benefits.

Paper long abstract

Development policy increasingly speaks the language of inclusion, positioning states and donors as guarantors of justice and participation. However, the making of “inclusive” policy is mediated through elite actors such as consultants, researchers, NGOs, bureaucrats, and commissions. Their claims to neutrality define what should count as valid knowledge and whose problems matter. On similar lines, the current study examines the debates on the sub-categorisation of Dalits to show how questions of historical injustice are translated into technical issues of measurement, targeting, and efficiency.

Using policy documents, court judgments, and qualitative interviews with Dalit communities, the paper discusses how statistics on “shares in employment” and ideas of merit are used to justify redistribution within already marginalised groups. In this process, policymakers overlook the fundamental question of what actually enables (or prevents) communities and individuals from claiming affirmative-action benefits in the first place. These processes elevate expert opinion and institutional authority while sidelining everyday experiences of exclusion (Rao, 2024). Instead of removing politics from caste, technocratic inclusion may reshape and reinforce wider patterns of social stratification.

Placing the Haryana case within broader changes in the development sector, the paper shows how inclusion operates both as a moral claim and as a tool of governance. The paper ultimately attempts to ask: who speaks for inclusion and whose futures are shaped by it?