Straight from the title, “Hidden Apartheid: Caste Discrimination against India’s Untouchables,” you know that the new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) out today is pulling no punches when it comes to qualifying the extent and seriousness of anti-Dalit discrimination in India today. The comparison with apartheid gained significant political cover two months ago when the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, drew the link in public remarks at a conference in Delhi. Here’s the prime minister:
Singh said: “Dalits have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability is apartheid,” he said. “Untouchability is not just social discrimination, it is a blot on humanity,” Singh said.
Calling for a “political, social, cultural and intellectual battle,” against such discrimination, the PM noted that constitutional and administrative measures alone are not sufficient. “Our government is deeply and sincerely committed to the equality of all sections of our society and will take all necessary steps to help in the social, educational and economic empowerment of Dalits. This is our solemn commitment,” Singh said.
Of course the gap between legal remediation and actual practice has been precisely the problem for 57 years, since the Constitution in 1950 outlawed untouchability in all its forms, with further legislation added over the years. The continuing discrimination against Dalits also violates the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which India is a signatory, as the convention covers not just what its title narrowly suggests but in fact “race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.” At any rate, this gap between theory in practice is well known, and the problem has always been to end the actual practices of discrimination, violence, and humiliation that Dalits encounter across India to degrees that perhaps (probably) vary by region and locality but are never, ever trivial.
Consider a few choice quotes from the report’s summary (you can download it or read the whole report online here):
DalitsÂ’ fundamental civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights are routinely violated by state actors and private individuals, in violation of Article 5 of the Convention. Caste-motivated killings, rapes, and other abuses are a daily occurrence in India, resulting in routine violations of DalitsÂ’ right to security of person and protection of the state. The police have systematically failed to protect Dalit homes and Dalit individuals from acts of looting, arson, sexual assault, torture, and other inhumane acts such as the tonsuring, stripping and parading of Dalit women, and forcing Dalits to drink urine and eat feces. surveyed. …
India has failed to address the multiple forms of discrimination faced by Dalit women. Even as compared to Dalit men, Dalit women do not have equal access to employment opportunities or justice mechanisms. They must contend with threats to their personal security, including trafficking and sexual violence. In some states in India, Dalit women are forced into prostitution under the devadasi system and are ultimately auctioned off to urban brothels. This puts them at particular risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. …
The right to own property is systematically denied to Dalits. Landlessness—encompassing a lack of access to land, inability to own land, and forced evictions—constitutes a crucial element in the subordination of Dalits. Land reform legislation is neither implemented nor properly enforced. When Dalits do manage to acquire land, access to it is often denied. …
The denial of the right to work and free choice of employment lies at the very heart of the caste system. Dalits are forced to perform tasks deemed too “polluting” or degrading for non-Dalits. According to unofficial estimates, more than 1.3 million Dalits—mostly women—are employed as manual scavengers to clear human waste from dry pit latrines. Dalits comprise the majority of agricultural, bonded, and child laborers in the country. …
Manual scavengers are routinely exposed to both human and animal waste without proper protection. This has severe repercussions for their health; most suffer from anemia, diarrhea, vomiting, and respiratory diseases. In many cities, Dalits clear sewage blockages without protective gear. Over 100 die each year from inhaling toxic gases or from drowning in excrement.
The difficult thing is that much of the discrimination against Dalits is well known and considered a fact of life. This isn’t the kind of report that breaks major news that everyone can immediately mobilize around. Rather, it’s a compendium of practices and contradictions and hypocrisies that are all too often recognized individually but either shrugged away as a whole, or, just as often, so daunting in their totality that it’s hard to know what to do. Besides, the only effective political mobilization against these practices will come from Dalits themselves, which means overcoming patterns of intimidation and resignation that are age-old and surmounting a collective action problem of enormous magnitude.
The principal author of the NRW report is a desi sister. Her name is Smita Narula and she is an assistant professor of clinical law at NYU, having previously worked at HRW as their senior researcher for South Asia. You can read more about her here. She also has an audio clip in English and Hindi on the organization’s website in which she states the principal findings and the importance of the issue.
Hema, I tend to agree with you on the religious freedom question, even though it’s harder to separate Hinduism out from its social manifestations than it is with other religions. I vaguely remember the court’s reasoning for intervention in temple affairs was twofold: 1) the important temples and maths were very wealthy and had land endowments and so on, and were important social institutions, so the govt had to audit and supervise their finances to be sure they weren’t being corrupt, and (my memory of this is more tenuous) 2) religious ceremonies and life rituals were so important to Hindus that access to them counted as a basic right or something. Of course, the overarching goal was to fight caste inequality, and try to weaken the socio-religious basis of Brahmin dominance.
i have been asked my caste by americans and europeans thousands of times
intelligent people ask me too before i tell them my family isn’t hindu. but asking is different from caring. in other words, aspects of biography like “i was the only brown kid in my school” or “i was the son of a cabbie” are relevant have shaped us in our interaction with american society. being a rajput is only relevant within the community, and its relevance has to do with status rankings as much as “i’m x so i follow this tradition.”
At least India has laws and had a “dalit” President – K.R.Narayanan. Not because he was dalit, but he was an intelligent foreign service officer who moved onto politics.
Let us first see an African American President in USA and worry later about dalits of India.
Anyone who has followed Chrisian Missionaries attempt to bring resolution on Dalits of India are aware of Smita Narula and her masters.
Perhaps Mutineers living in a country that had no non-white, non-male President for hundreds of years should worry more about what is happenning in their country before commenting on a vatican backed “activist” like Smita Narula. Charity begins at home?
SP, I agree with almost everything you said in #51, but I do have a question about the following:
1) the important temples and maths were very wealthy and had land endowments and so on, and were important social institutions, so the govt had to audit and supervise their finances to be sure they weren’t being corrupt
I can see how this could be useful (at least in theory) for something other than ending discrimination. Couldn’t a state government also use the above reasoning to put the squeeze on a temple or a math in order to seize its finances? Assuming of course that the government is always trying to get its grubby little hands on revenue sources…
iFOB– can we not be concerned about both the enduring racism that exists in our diasporic lands as well as continued struggles for equality in our respective South Asian homelands?
Narayanan was certainly an intelligent foreign service officer, but to say that his subsequent career in politics can be completely disentangled from his identity as a ‘dalit’ is a bit disingenuous. I mean, how and why do we know he was a ‘dalit’ then? I think Indian political parties saw in him someone who could be a good ‘token’ – that can be said without detracting from any of his individual achievements. The President under the Indian system is largely ceremonial anyway, unlike the US counterpart.
whoa! how come i’ve never came across this phenomenon. i havent seen fobs, the 3/2s, or the 2nd genners ever declare their caste, unless they were in the elimination rounds of a speed dating round robin. the ones i keep coming across all seem to casually toss in references to the east coast ivies they slid down from, you know.. oh yeah, i learnt to urinate like that in princeton, yes sir.
Except that that is a bit of a non-sequitur! That is, being non-Hindu does not mean caste is totally irrelevant, across the board. Individual cases vary a little, depending on how much their own family has emphasized this sort of stuff, among other things. Neither Muslims nor Christians nor Sikhs nor Jains, nor even (neo-)Buddhists, can really claim, in the South Asian context, that caste is not an additional identity marker in their respective religious communities.
I’ve noticed that too…people bring up their caste often here, especially if they are Brahmins. I don’t even know the caste of most of my friends in/from India. I think people use the term “Tam-Bram” though because it is a culturally singular entity distinct from just being “Tamilian” so doesn’t necessarily reflect an obsession with caste. And Razib, it’s not true that Americans don’t care about caste. A lot of people are obsessed/intrigued with the idea of caste in India and seem to form preconcieved opinions of people based on their ideas about caste without understanding subtle distinctions.
LOL. That true.
Oh, please. Why can’t people care about Dalits and African-American (or, lack of) presidents in the US? Any FOBs, Indians gonna stop commenting on the US just because India can’t get something right?
*You know, when it comes to love of, and defense of, country, Americans and Indians are quite startlingly similar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
This is kind of a crude attack on the Indian Government. What will this HRW report do, encourage the Bush Admin to invade India and bomb it back to the stone ages? I think this is a response to India making an arms deal with Russia right after the nuke deal with the USA. Totally agree with IFOB at 53
Srange that HRW didn’t have the time or inclination to figure this out.
I think this is because most can’t get a handle on what the “rules” of Hinduism might be, since their own religions are so rule bound.
Social layers have existed in every society, in Sweden you had the nobility, priests, the bourgeoisie and the farmers. The outcasts where the farmers in serfdom. Add to that the gypsies that came later. These layers existed all over Europe. The nobility has kept score of whos whom, but it’s a private affair and since the nobility no longer has the political and economical power it’s lost it’s glory almost totally.
Whats so unique in India is the rigidity and persistence of the system. Maybe it’s a matter in larger Indian cities caste has very little meaning, while in rural India it’s as strong and oppressive as ever. My impression is that rural India is as alien to urban India as it is to us who live outside India. They too are shocked by stories of brahmin men raping a dalit girl as punishment for her father having stepped over some rule, and when confronted with it by outsiders the kneejerk reaction is defence. It’s not better in Europe, you have racism bla bla bla. Fact is when I’m confronted with by a non-indian my reaction is often the same.
Still I do believe that the situation isn’t going to be changed in Lok Sabha. It’s about ecnomical development. When dalits come to Calcutta or Bombay they can escape the caste discrimination that the face from land owning brahmins on the country side. They are still dirt poor, but they do not live under the repression of the higher castes as they do in the village they came from.
Sweatshops might look as a really bad work place for us in the west, but to the it’s one step up from oppression.
iFOB said :
Ha.
I probably shouldn’t feed the trolls, but your argument is not helped when you mistakenly lump progressive-human-right-lawyer-types, with the Catholic church and protestant evangelicals. They are distinct groups with distinct agendas.
I dont think the Supreme Court argued that Brahmin institutions were too powerful. Rather, they balanced the freedom of religion clauses against the constitutional mandate to promote social equality. The also read the prohibitions against learning the Vedas and temple procedures as not a bar to qualification, but a restriction that would prohibit a fair ascertainment of whether non-Brahmins were qualified to be priests:
If traditionally or conventionally, in any Temple, all along a Brahman alone was conducting poojas or performing the job of Santhikaran, it may not be because a person other than the Brahman is prohibited from doing so because he is not a Brahman, but those others were not in a position and, as a matter of fact, were prohibited from learning, reciting or mastering Vedic literature, rites or performance of rituals and wearing sacred thread by getting initiated into the order and thereby acquire the right to perform homa and ritualistic forms of worship in public or private Temples.
Here is the full text of the decision.
I obviously shouldn’t have stopped reading at msg 30, the kneejerk reaction was here as well. If you cannot recognize oppression of dalits in India, you probably have not been in India at all. The treatment of african-americans is completley beside the point, we have an Emmet Till case in India once everey month. at least!
This is kind of a crude attack on the Indian Government. What will this HRW report do, encourage the Bush Admin to invade India and bomb it back to the stone ages?
C’mon, don’t be paranoid. India will likely do what it always does when an international organization critiques it. It will tell them to buzz off. Yes, NGOs and “rights” bodies are annoying, but sometimes there is truth in what they’re sayiing.
It is fun to read the Dalit sob stories by human rights watch. There was a website “www.dalitstan.org”, unfortunately that site stopped working . Somebody forward this to Mayawati. She’s talking about helping the poor upper castes in UP when she comes to power..
Ofcourse, discrimination occurs in different places and at different levels in India. But that doesn’t mean you take a single brush “Dalit discrimination” and paint it all over India.
I liked the comment that someone saw “Gandhi”, had high opinions on Hinduism, then saw “Maya” and changed to very low opinions.. Looks like a “ripe” target for minting money in the name of “Dalit upliftment”. 🙂
Before someone lectures on “upper caste” arrogance, let me say that I belong to a low caste in the Hindu hierarchy and have Dalit relatives.
I thought we where Indians discussing India, lets worry about people making sweeping comments abouth the desh when it happens. I’ve seen the difference between Jalpaiguri District and Kolkata in terms of caste discrimination. I know it’s not a clear picture, but it never the less exists, and to such an extent that we all should be a shamed. That said I’m dead against the quota system.
I have heard this idiotic comparison ad nauseam from apologists for casteism. These same hindu fundoos also boast that indians treat women far better than americans because India had a woman President while America has not! As if this somehow exonerates hindu brahminism from its crimes against women, children, low castes and outcastes: widow shunning, widow burning, devadasism, untouchability, child marriage etc
While at the “Dalit” topic, don’t you folks think “Ahmadiyas” in Pakistan are the neo-Dalit Muslims?. In India we have laws enacted after Independence that prevent discrimination against Dalits, allowing entry into temples etc..etc., though it is not effective in the rural settings.. In Pakistan, we have laws enacted after independence that explicitly makes Ahmadiyas non-Muslims. It is funny in the sense that they added “religion” column in Pakistani passports explicitly to prevent Ahmadiyas from entering their holy temple (ok holy mosque in Arabia). Any ideas on the percentage of Ahmadiyas in the South asian Muslim community. They could qualify as the neo-Dalit Muslims..
Jolly good fun, old chap. A barrel of laughs!
Yes yes, I know. The good thing about India is that unlike many parts of the world, people are willing to change and move beyond old prejudices. But that does not mean that nothing further needs to change.
Jolly good fun, old chap. A barrel of laughs!
Yeah buddy.. ain’t it. 🙂
It is funny in the sense that they added “religion” column in Pakistani passports explicitly to prevent Ahmadiyas
About a year ago, I applied for visa to Pakistan.
Their application form is different, not to say the least.
There are categories for religion, including separate for Ahmadi and Qadiani.
You have to give the name, and occupation of your father and husband (if applicable). Past and present nationality of theirs too.
What a beastly thing to say! It’s not at all the same. Not in the least! Any civilized person is outraged at the thought of innocent children being brutalized in this way for the purpose of appeasing some satanic idol. But those horrible people in that town in India were actually thrilled to have that precious little girl “consecrated” to by those repulsive priests. They were stuffing their faces the whole time this was going on! How can you be so cold hearted to make such a glib comparison?
Well, Change is inevitable. Some people are willing to accept and some are unwilling. The good thing about India is the democratic model. Dalits along with the other backward castes constitute the major bulk of population. Once they get organised everything falls in place. That’s why I like the Kanshi ram / Mayawati model. Dalits don’t need to beg for privileges. They should be in a position to offer privileges like Mayawati is doing now. 🙂
You see, it happens we are all Satan worshippers.
I’m down for the brown and all that but I’m not sure about India being caught up in the ‘winds of change’. I went to India for the first time in 2005 and I thought I was set cause I’ve been in Mexico and Puerto Rico , but whoa!!! India in is a whole other world of hurt. I saw things that could make a Marine drill sargent bawl like a kid. The way they treat poor people and Dalits in India is worse than we treat serial murderers and rapists even out in Texas. On the way to the hotel we say hundreds or thousands of poor people sleeping on the street. I saw a lady with litteraly no face begging outside the hotel and another time I saw a dude with no arms and no legs sleeping in the divider in the middle of the road and nobody seemed to notice. Wtf? People kept telling me that India is “modern” now compared to how it was before. I hate to think what it was like back ‘in the day!
You see what you look for.
Hundreds? Or thousands? It certainly sounds like one of them exaggerations.
Yes, there are beggars in India. As there are in the US. But yes, there are more in India.
But obviously someone noticed/cared, and also fed him and took care of him, else he’d be dead very soon, no?
But I like your style.
yaa yaa. Giuliani made sure that it was illegal to be homeless in Manhattan. Everything is neatly swept away under the prison rug.
.
Very interesting. So essentially the Supreme Court is saying that the only reasons non-Brahmins have not been allowed to be priests is because they did not previously have access to the education necessary to become priests, possibly because of the vagaries of the caste system. That does suggest, at least indirectly, some attempt to break the Brahmin monopoly on the priesthood.
I understand where the Court is coming from, but would the Court ever suggest who should or should not be eligible for priesthood in the Catholic church? In CSI?
Any attempt to condition social behavior of non-Hindus in India has met with so much resistance (like the Shah Bano case, for example). It really bugs me that the government is an instrument for social change only to the extent that it’s Hindu social change. Maybe it’s just that Hindus don’t protest as loudly.
In a scarey way that kinda proves my point. Take a street person sleeping in the gutter with dogs and rats in India, fly them to the US and lock them up in any prison over here and they would think they’re in a luxury hotel – with 3 squares a day, including a protein, bread, two veggies and a desert. Plus in prison you get free cable, free weight room, free education, free medical care, you name it. Like I said, we treat criminals better than the way the treat poor people over in good ol’India.
I understand where the Court is coming from, but would the Court ever suggest who should or should not be eligible for priesthood in the Catholic church? In CSI?
The Indian government has always regulated Hinduism in India, sometimes wisely, sometimes ludicrously. The Constitution is a self-cosnciously reformist document. But that’s a whole nother thread. The ruling on priests had wide support, even from the RSS.
Re American Dalits. One place where many dalit activists congregate is the Ravidas Gurudwara in Queens.
subha n texas
Who is “they” who are mistreating the indian poor? Most indians are poor or maybe you dont yet understand that. Do you think there is some kind of conspiracy to keep down the “poor and dalit”?
As for your pride in Texas, hmmmm, please find a history book and learn the truth about your own origins. Maybe that will help you grow up.
After all the hype and overabundance of articles on India’s progress, someone had to point out the dark side of the story and now we have it.
The Dalit and untouchability problem always has been there. However I believe it’s going to sort itself out. No one would argue that untouchability has seen major decline in the past few years and Dalits have progressed in society. We have to remember the country that is India is only 50 years old. Before that the Unity aspect was alien until of course the British arrived and introduced the concept. Even today people who have their origins in the North are still mystified by the South. For many, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh etc is ‘south Indian’ and people often mistake one for the other. Even in the US, folks of Indian origin are surprised at me being a ‘Hindu’Malayalee. They assume most if not all Malayalees are Christian.
But i’m getting a bit off track here. My point is with the changes in Indian society it won’t be long before a majority of the Dalits obtain some type of education and start becoming part of India’s growth. There are many Indians of lower caste who have risen through the problems of untouchability to create prosperous lives for themselves. Some migrate to big cities where they start a new life and thats that. With areas of India becoming Industrialised the problem of Dalits will take care of itself.
Dude, don’t get your dhoti in a twist. Like I said, I’m proud of my desi roots but I can’t mangle that to then go and say that India (even in the cities) is a utopia of opportunity and equality, cause that would be stretching things a whole hell of a lot. When I say “they” treat the poor like shit, I mean society in general. The whole society is structured like that. And I don’t believe that nobody has money to treat poor people better. I seen the glitzy shops in south Calcutta while meanwhile you come out of the restaurant and there’s people begging in the street. Didn’t somebody say Show me how you treat the poorest among you and I’ll tell you how great your culture is?
Yeah, by raping them. Yeah lets spend the tax money on feeding prisoners 3000 calories/day so they can rape each other.
Oh yeah, also comes with free anal rape every day and an HIV infection too.
Seriously, anyone from Texas should really be focusing on progressing that state into the nineteenth century first before commenting upon others. Perhaps one thing Texas prisons can learn from Indian is this.
Ask me, you’re smoking crack.
That makes indian culture by far the worst in the world.
Wrong, Sherlock! That honour goes to the Land of The Free and Home of The Brave.
Educate yourself: 1.2.3.
Ever since Dr Ambedkar and the proclamation of Universal Suffrage, India as a society has treated dalits much better than the US has treated non-whites, especially blacks. Show me anything that even comes close to the reservation policy in education, jobs, as well as elected public offices to ensure representation. Dalits today have real power in India and if you don’t understand the momentousness of someone like Mayavati offering spoils of the office to upper castes, you must be either blind or a Chstirian missionary. Just to put this in perspective, the equivalent would be this : imagine a poor black woman born in the hoods becoming the governor of Texas and then offering spoils of the office to Wasps in Houston and Dallas.
What is pissing off about the shril over-the-top nonsense like this HRW report is exactly this : it is biased, takes no account of the reality in the Indian society and panders to just poverty-oppression-voyerism that makes its way to Congressmen funded by missionaries aroused into condemning India. Of course, I went to the HRW website and looked very hard for any equivalent substantive study on race relations in America or an equivalent condemntion of the American society. Of course, I found nothing. Which basically just proves that this whole thing is nothing but a piece of motivated propaganda.
Sure, there are problems but the trends have been positive and getting ever stronger. Caste is virtually irrelevant in most Indian cities and talking about caste is not something one’s expected to do in politce company. Number of not only inter-caste but also inter-state and inter-whatever marriages has increased very much. You find dalits in all walks of life. Sure, poverty, discrimination etc goes on a lot in India but the fraction of it that can be attributed purely to caste-based motives has decreased dramatcially. Formerly lower castes are now, in fact, some of the most powerful people in India including people like the favourite whipping boy of this blog, Narendra Modi.
Unlike blacks in the US, dalits in India are rising, confident and powerful. But that doesn’t matter to the propagandists. You can waive your dalit chief justice of Indian Supreme Court, Dalit ex-president, muslim current president, Sikh prime minister, white-chrsitian most powerful person, chief ministers, IAS/IFS officers etc etc until you are blue in the face but it doesn’t matter to those who just want to use the caste issue in their broader war against Hinduism.
texas!! that is the place they dragged a so called n—– under a pick up truck for a mile or two and had a beer afterwards
Yeah, the poor in India are movin’ on up! Whatever dude. Give any rational agent a choice between being an average black person in the US or living the life of the average dalit in India, and what do think that calculation would say?
Give any rational agent a choice between being an average black person in the US or living the life of the average dalit in India, and what do think that calculation would say?
First of all, you seem to be assuming that poor = Dalit. That’s fine, for the purpose of this discussion, but goes too far otherwise, IMO.
Second, the average black person in the United States does not have it great. In the 90s, there was an oft-quoted statistic about how 1 out of 3 adult black men were in jail. The average black kid growing up among the urban poor is likely to be from a single parent home. He is three times as likely to be exposed to drugs and street violence as the average non-black kid. He is three times more likely to be convicted in a criminal trial than a non-black defendant. Then, when he finally gets out on parole, he’s three times more likely to be back in jail within 5 years.
Contrary to what you think, not every poor Indian is a limbless torso lying in a ditch somewhere.
Certainly, if that rational person would like to ever 1.run for the governor of a state 2.get elected into any house of legislature (state or federal) 3.make it into a university of higher education 4.get a government job 5.live in a city in a respectable non-ghetto 6.hope to see his children not die dealing drugs or get sot either by gangs or cops 7.have a life expectancy that’s more or less the same as the average population 8.live without constant daily reminders of his caste status 9.see movies that don’t portray stereotypes about them being over-sexed, crime-lovin’ playas.. …etc etc – I could go on and on, but I am sure you get my point – then India offers a much better deal to that person. If they want to get strung up from a tree or dragged under a pickup truck, I suppose India and US offer an equal opportunity.
I said rational agent that looks at cold hard numbers and probabilities, not a coked-up agent strung out on crack that just cherry picks the facts to fit their case. I don’t have time to write a term paper on this, but it’s painfully obvious anyway, clear as mud, as they say. Just one statistic – the poverty rate for blacks in the US is 25% percent and understand that poverty in the US is a relative concept, not absolute, skin sticking to your ribs poverty like in India. Not read this article:
Scheduled Caste population in Uttar Pradesh may feel elated over a dalit woman holding the reins of the state, but this has not improved their socio-economic status any further.
In a state where 1.59 lakh population of the SCs are homeless, no effort has been made by the government to provide them dwelling units in the past few years. The incidence of poverty and unemployment is much more pronounced in case of dalits than any other deprived sections in Uttar Pradesh, according to a survey conducted by the experts of the G V Pant Institute in Allahabad.
In the past ten years, the literacy rate of dalits went up five times but it still remained below the level of population. It may be known that due to low level of literacy, the SC population could not avail reservation even on many reserved seats in Uttar Pradesh. Several government departments have told the administration that they do not have the sufficient number of educated dalits to fill the reserved quotas.
Again, their share in the government services in the state is far behind in comparison to their population, according to official information. In this background, it is significant that their population living below the poverty line in the state was 59.2 per cent. This percentage, according to official sources was 48.9 per cent at the national level.
Altogether 32.40 per cent of the SC population in the state is engaged in cultivation and as agricultural labourers.
The allocation of huge funds under the special component plan constitutes roughly one tenth of the state plan but this did not help dalits in going up economically. In order to make the special component plans more effective, the government decided to allocate funds for it in actual portion of the population since 1997-98.
Accordingly, in 1997-98, out of a total plan outlay of Rs 7,080.00 crore, Rs 1484.00 was allotted to the special component plan. But all these steps did not help them much in acquiring a respectable status in the state, according to official information.
Some of you people are kidding, if you say that dalits in India have it better then blacks in America. Is this some kind of joke.
If you want to compare dalits to anybody it would be blacks in South Africa.
Well Sherlock, perhaps you should investigate some more. The great majority of indians do not live in cities. Indian cities too are home to masses of deeply impoverished people. Pointing fingers at America and claiming its poor are worse off than india’s only makes you look utterly stoopid.