Can a democratic society pursue a policy of compensatory discrimination without forsaking equality or sliding into a system of group quotas? For over thirty years, India has been engaged in a massive effort to integrate "untouchables" and other oppressed peoples into the mainstream of Indian life. This book is the first comprehensive study of the Indian experience with policies of systematic preferential treatment. Galanter includes a discussion of the relation of the courts to public policy in his analysis of the choices and tensions in the Indian policies of compensatory preference.