Caste and deprivation in India

S Subramanian

A WIDELY-RECOGNISED basic indicator of the socio-economic status of a population is its infant mortality rate (IMR), or the proportion of the population under age one that fails to survive. The census data for 1981 (as analysed in collaborative work with Manabi Majumdar) again suggest that, other things equal, a group with SCs and STs has a higher IMR than a group with ‘Others’; and a group with rural members has a higher IMR than one with urban members. The combination of being  SCST and rural is deadly: at the all-India level, the IMR for this group is 121 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, which is nearly twice the IMR for urban ‘Others’, at 63.

A second very rudimentary demographic indicator of the socio-economic status of a society is the ‘agedness’ of a population. One can speak of the ‘agedness of the population’, as one might speak of the ‘the poverty of a population’. Employing a very conservative cut-off age of 49 years, we find from the census data for the year 1991 that various agedness indices for the SCST group are systematically lower than for the ‘Others’ group in every single state of the Indian Union. Furthermore, it is found that in every state of India, and for every agedness index, the contribution of the SCST group to the total population outweighs the group's contribution to total agedness. Taken together, the demographic indicators of agedness and of infant mortality clearly reveal that the dice are loaded against the Scheduled Castes and Tribes in the matter of both living and dying. 

The examples of disproportionate deprivations suffered by the SCST group can be multiplied over and over again: no doubt these dully repetitive numbers are both boring and tedious for the reader; but I dare say that the existential facts which the numbers describe are a good deal worse than just boring and tedious for those that have to live under the burden of these facts. 

Even more scandalous than the failure of positive freedom is the failure of negative freedom experienced by the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. This is reflected in a history of repeated denial, to this segment of the population, of certain ordinary rights to life and liberty. 

A grisly feature of the violation of negative freedoms is constituted by the phenomenon of caste atrocities, which are violent acts of arson, destruction of property, rape and murder. A (seriously incomplete) roll-call of infamy, in this regard, would be constituted by the following list of dates and locations of violence against the SCST community: Kilvenmani, Tamil Nadu (1969); Bathani Tola, Bihar (1996); Laxmanpur Bathe, Bihar (1997); Melavalavu, Tamil Nadu (1997); Jhajjar, Haryana (2002); Muthanga, Kerala (2003); Khairlanji, Maharashtra (2006); Jhabhar, Punjab  (2006); Nayakankottai, Tamil Nadu (2012). S. D. Prasad Rao points out, employing data from the National Crime Records Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs, that in 2011, out of 33,719 recorded crimes, 11,342 were crimes under the SCST Prevention of Atrocities Act. This makes for a proportion of one-third — a massive number, even if one does not allow for the fact that many crimes against the depressed castes are not reported for fear of reprisal, or that reported crimes are simply not registered by the police. 

Decades ago, Dr Ambedkar had observed: “I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.” It is hard to speak of progress when rape is so central a feature of a woman's life, as it is for the Scheduled Castes. In a grievously stark statistic put out in a 2005 issue of People’s Democracy, it is reported that between 1992 and 2000, on average, three Dalit women were raped and six disabled every day.

The right to freedom of religious conviction is another libertarian right that is frequently a casualty for the SCST community. This is nowhere more clearly reflected than in the intolerant and often violent resistance displayed by upper-caste Hindus to religious conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism or Christianity or Islam which Dalits and tribals resort to as a means of liberation from the oppression of the caste system. The case of Kandhamal in  Orissa, in 2007, is a case in point.

To these violations of libertarian rights to life, bodily integrity and freedom of religion, must be added the routine, everyday restrictions placed on freedom of mobility and association, and the right to treatment with the same respect and consideration as any other person. A list of humiliations to which the disadvantaged castes are systematically subjected would include residential segregation; denial of access to public sources of drinking water; denial of entry into places of worship; denial of access to  crematoria and burial places; segregation of students at midday meal sessions in schools; the operation of the 'two-glass' system in tea-shops; the continued practice of manual scavenging even after it has been banned under the law; and the routine infliction of abuse and insults.  

This essay began with the proposition that a meaningful way of assessing deprivation in a society is to regard the phenomenon as a failure of both positive and negative freedoms, a failure which is rendered the more acute when there is evidence of an inequitable distribution of these freedoms across well-defined socio-economic groups within the population. I have attempted to provide a factual account of caste and deprivation in India by pointing to the systematic bias which obtains against the Scheduled Castes and Tribes in the distribution of positive freedoms, whether we speak of freedom from monetary poverty, or ownership of assets, or participation in the fruits of economic growth, or attaining to a decent age, or enjoying a reasonable prospect of surviving early death, or avoiding the rigours of school-less-ness. These failures of positive freedom for the SCST community are compounded, and ratcheted, by systematic violations of ordinary libertarian rights to life, to bodily integrity, to freedom of religious persuasion, and to what the philosopher of jurisprudence Ronald Dworkin has called equal treatment and treatment as equals. 

Caste-consciousness often comes to the fore only in the form of upper-caste resistance to caste-based reservations in education and employment; or in the form of elaborately devious arguments constructed to deny, at forums such as Durban, that caste is race; or in the form of opposition to collecting and presenting census data on the socio-economic status of the population by caste. This essay on caste and deprivation in India — as has already been clarified at the outset — is not intended to promote knowledge, for I imagine it says little that is not known; but it is intended to promote acknowledgement, which must be regarded as a first and necessary step in any move toward rectification. Shame, after all, cannot be erased by neglect or forgetfulness: there is therefore every reason to be continuously mindful — until it is no longer a truth — of the truth of Dr Ambedkar’s observation: “Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path.”

— This is the second and concluding part of the article based on the Ambedkar Memorial Lecture S Subramanian delivered in the University of Madras in 2013