Despite the lack of clear data to support a worsening picture, the national conversation on caste has taken a curious turn backwards
Bibek Debroy
The focus should be on removing the barriers to inclusion and empowering individuals, gradually making caste identity irrelevant. Moneycontrol
Recently, at an event in Pune, I had the opportunity to hear Milind Kamble, chairman of the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DICCI). DICCI was established in 2005 with the objective of empowering Dalits to become entrepreneurs. Their mission is to shift the paradigm from being job seekers to becoming job givers. The aim is to fight caste with capital. As he was reeling off figures demonstrating the success of Dalit entrepreneurs, the message resonated with the attendees.
I met Kamble after close to 20 years. I used to know him many years ago when DICCI had just been set up. At that time, Chandra Bhan Prasad and D Shyam Babu (a former colleague) had introduced me to him. Chandra Bhan Prasad, a journalist and author, used to annually celebrate Thomas Babington Macaulay’s birthday on October 25. I myself have attended several such celebrations in the past. But why celebrate the birthday of the much-maligned Macaulay? Because Chandra Bhan Prasad believes the spread of English education served to empower Dalits, who had been disempowered by the earlier traditional educational systems.
Therefore, at the Macaulay birthday celebrations, there used to be an image/portrait of goddess “English”, holding a laptop in one hand and a pen in the other. Both Milind Kamble and Chandra Bhan Prasad spoke of empowerment and removing impediments along that path.
I remember the work done by Chandra Bhan Prasad and Shyam Babu for Devesh Kapur. That was a book published some ten years ago, titled Defying the Odds. It profiled Dalit entrepreneurs who had broken the shackles of exclusion, using entrepreneurship as social empowerment. In a parallel exercise, Chandra Bhan Prasad, Shyam Babu, Devesh Kapur and Lant Prichett published a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2010. This paper documented practices in the Azamgarh and Bulandshahar districts of Uttar Pradesh, demonstrating how the economic empowerment of Dalit households challenged traditional social norms and knocked them for a six. In 2011, I wrote an essay for a book edited by Shyam Babu and R S Khare. The broad thesis of the book was similar: caste is a reality in India, and historically, there has been discrimination based on caste. The solution lies in making caste increasingly irrelevant, as has been happening in urban India. Recall the SECC (Socio-Economic Caste Census) of 2011-12. Although caste was mentioned in the census heading, it was not used in the actual Census. The SECC had (and still has) seven indicators of deprivation. While one of these is SC/ST status, the rest are all indicators of household deprivation.
Think of the discourse between, say, 2005 and 2014. Deprivation is certainly an issue, but it is primarily an individual or household-level issue. It is inadequately addressed through a collective category like caste. Equating deprivation solely with caste results in two types of errors, akin to what statisticians refer to as Type I and Type II errors. The exclusion mistake occurs when a deprived person is excluded because the collective caste category is inaccurately applied. Conversely, the inclusion mistake happens when a non-deprived person is included simply because they fall within the correct collective caste category. This discourse does not deny the historical deprivation based on caste; rather, it advocates for affirmative action based on individual or household attributes, aligning broadly with the empowerment approach of Milind Kamble, Chandra Bhan Prasad, and Shyam Babu.
The focus should be on removing the barriers to inclusion and empowering individuals, gradually making caste identity irrelevant. I may be accused of making a sweeping generalisation—nothing is entirely binary. However, if you revisit the literature and commentary from that period, I believe, on balance, you will agree with my assessment. This discourse aligns with the creamy layer argument and the Supreme Court’s recent observations about sub-categories within SCs/STs.
Has the economic situation of SCs/STs worsened since 2014? While the answer depends on the metric, I believe it would be difficult to substantiate a worse-off hypothesis, both in absolute and relative terms. (Post-Covid, and even before that, there has been an employment issue, but that is gender-neutral.) Therefore, it is odd that caste should be back on the mainstream agenda as something that continues to be relevant and is becoming more so. The SECC database is outdated and needs to be updated, yet we witness the reluctance of States to do so, except for the renewed focus on the “C” that was relatively ignored in the original SECC.
Circa 2019, there was also a book by Rajesh Shukla, the late Sunil Jain, and Preeti Kakkar, titled Caste in a Different Mould. Using NCAER data, this work documented discrimination but sought to refine affirmative action through an inclusive agenda, with education being the most important factor. Ergo, some ten years ago, we used to think of caste in a new and different mould. The wheel has come full circle, and we now prefer to think of caste in that old mould. Why has this happened? I have no satisfactory answer, except the spectre of political expediency.
As I have said, I have seen no evidence that SCs/STs are worse off now compared to ten years ago. Milind Kamble’s voice, which I heard in Pune about a fortnight ago, is refreshingly different, but it is becoming rarer.
Courtesy : Firstpost
Note: This news is originally published in firstpost.com and is used completely for non-profit/non-commercial purposes especially for human rights.
Trending Now
