On Organizing Equity: Are Solutions Really the Problem

Abstract

Ensuring a fair distribution of public resources has been the concern of planners and socially conscious academics for a long time. The limitations of market forces in catering to such needs of people, which at the current level of deprivation and scale cannot became "reasonable" demand is well recognized. However, the obstacles which come in the way of organizing equity are not merely social structure, bureaucratic inertia and political will. The explicit and implicit assumptions behind various dominant paradigms legitimized by the academics and public policy analysts are a major influence on attempts of state to organize equity. The paper presents an alternative socio-ecological paradigm for public policy analysis, and provides on illustration of the author's own encounters with planners at various levels. The difference between "feasible politics" and "politics of making alternative feasible" is resolved with the help of this framework.