Far from weakening over the course of six decades since the transfer of power from British rule, the caste system thrives in India today, and is indeed strengthened by the prevailing economic processes. We describe below the condition of Dalits, but they are not the only victims of the caste system.
The condition of Dalits, or scheduled castes (SC) is one of acute poverty and social oppression. Both poverty and oppression are linked to the question of land. In the rural areas, 57 per cent of the SC households cultivate no land at all; 21 per cent cultivate under one acre (0.4 hectares); and another 13 per cent cultivate between one acre and two and a half acres (1 hectare). That is, 91 per cent of the SC households in the rural areas are either landless or operate what are termed ‘sub-marginal’ or ‘marginal’ holdings. In urban areas, 51 per cent of SC households spent less than Rs 675 per head per month; whereas only 28 per cent of all classes (including SC) spent below that level. Literacy and enrollment levels too were lower for Dalits than for ‘all classes’.21
With the post-1991 liberalisation of banking, Dalits were swiftly excluded from bank credit. (In other words, they experienced a somewhat sharper form of what the poor and middle peasantry had to undergo in this period.) The credit per capita of small borrowal accounts of Dalits fell from Rs 495 in 1993 to Rs 225 in 2004. Dalits’ share of the amount outstanding on such accounts fell from 12.4 per cent to 4.6 per cent. Thus the share of rural Dalits’ loans from informal sources (such as moneylenders) rose from 36.6 per cent in 1992 to 55.2 per cent in 2002. Unsurprisingly, debt with a high interest rate (20 per cent or more per year) soared from 27.8 per cent to 45.5 per cent of their total debt.22
The Public Distribution System (PDS) has been to a large extent dismantled over the post-1991 period. This process accelerated with the introduction of the Targeted PDS in 1997, which divided consumers into so-called Below Poverty Line (BPL) and Above Poverty Line (APL) households. Prices for the latter were raised to virtually the level of market prices, effectively driving them out of the PDS. By various methods, including the use of the fraudulent official poverty line, the majority of the poor were simply excluded from the BPL category; being the poorest sections, the Dalits and Adivasis were particularly affected. By 2004-05, less than 40 per cent of Dalit households in rural areas had either a BPL card or an Antyodaya card (a scheme for the ‘poorest of the poor’). Among landless households (which describes the majority of rural Dalit households), 51 per cent did not have a ration card at all, and another 24.5 per cent had an APL card.
The actual social condition of rural Dalits, however, is hardly conveyed by such statistics. The Dalit settlement is situated outside the village; it is frequently without a water source, and without electricity. Dalits frequently do not even have land of their own on which to relieve themselves, but must use the fields of the dominant communities with their consent. They are still compelled to perform traditional services, including the skinning of dead animals and manual scavenging (cleaning and disposal of excreta from dry latrines). According to a recent study by a study team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Gujarat-based NGO, the number of manual scavengers in Gujarat is actually increasing, even as their social segregation remains intact.24
Crimes against Dalits are not properly captured in official statistics. Many are not reported to the police for fear of reprisal, and because the police are almost uniformly partisan with the dominant social sections. Moreover, the caste character of many of these crimes is often ignored.25 At a recent national consultation of the National Commission on Scheduled Castes in Delhi, office-bearers of the Commission admitted the State’s complete failure to bring down atrocities against Dalits despite the existence of two legislations for the purpose; even untouchability, ‘abolished’ under Article 17 of the Constitution, persists. The police let off the culprits, and those tried are not convicted; indeed the conviction rate is going down in some states.26
http://www.rupe-india.org/44/people.html
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