Caste-Based Crimes and Economic Status: Evidence from India

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated whether changes in relative material standards of living between the SCs/STs and upper castes were associated with changes in the incidence of crimes against SCs and STs.

Abstract: Crimes against the historically marginalized Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC and ST) by the upper castes in India represent an extreme form of prejudice and discrimination. In this paper, we investigate whether changes in relative material standards of living between the SCs/STs and upper castes – as measured by the ratio of consumption expenditures of SCs/STs to that of upper castes – are associated with changes in the incidence of crimes against SCs/STs. Based on the hierarchical social structure implied by the caste system, we posit that an increase in the expenditure ratio is positively correlated with the incidence of crimes committed by the upper castes against the lower castes. Using official district level crime data for the period 2001–2010, we find a positive association between crimes and expenditure of SC/ST vis-a-vis the upper castes. Further, distinguishing between violent and non-violent crimes, we find it is the violent crimes that are responsive to changes in economic gaps. Moreover, this relationship is on account of changes in the upper castes’ economic well-being rather than changes in the economic position of the SCs and STs.

Summary

1 Introduction

• In India, ex-untouchable castes and several tribal groups continue to be subjected to discrimination, economic and social exclusion and a stigmatized identity (e.g. Thorat 1979; Deshpande 2011; Navsarjan Trust 2010).
• Therefore, which of these effects dominate constitutes an interesting empirical question.
• Please see Section 5 for some such references.
• This is among the first studies to quantitatively analyze the phenomenon of crimes targeted at the SC/ST groups.

2.1 The Indian Caste System

• The ‘caste system’ is an arrangement of the Hindu population into several thousand groups called ‘jatis’ .
• Borooah et al. (2005) find that job reservations succeeded in increasing representation of SCs/STs in regular salaried employment by 5 percentage points compared to what it would have been otherwise.
• The authors will use both terms depending on the context.
• ‘Others’ is a reasonable approximation of the upper caste category.

2.2 Hate Crimes

• The term hate crime refers to “unlawful, violent, destructive, or threatening conduct in which the perpetrator is motivated by prejudice toward the victim’s putative social group” (Green et al., 2001, p.480).
• Disciplines in the social sciences offer distinctive theories explaining hate crimes and this section summarizes the theoretical and empirical evidence.
• Their main result states that economic improvements for a group will lead to greater violence perpetrated against that group if it is relatively poor and the greater the proportion of potential victims as compared to aggressors in the group.
• Jacobs and Wood (1999) investigate the relationship between economic and political competition and inter-racial murders for 165 US cities.

3.1 Crime Data

• The crime data used in this paper are from the annual publication ‘Crime in India’ by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Government of India.
• A ‘non-cognizable’ offence is an offence in which police cannot register an FIR, investigate or arrest without prior permission from the court.
• 8 belongs to the SC/ST group and the offender to a non-SC/ST group.
• There are two main types of crimes: those reported under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and those that are registered under the Special and Local Laws (SLL).
• In the absence of such data, this paper makes use of the best available nationally representative data and the authors believe that is a good starting point, especially since quantitative evidence on crimes against SCs and STs is limited.

3.2 Explanatory Variables

• Since their unit of analysis is the district, district-level information on the explanatory variables is calculated from the large-scale household surveys conducted once in five years by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO).
• In developing countries, expenditure serves as a good proxy for income for several reasons.
• Secondly, wage or earnings data, even when reliable, may not account for days of employment and seasonality of work.
• Falk et al. (2011) find unemployment rates to positively affect violent and non-violent right wing extremist crimes in Germany.
• Based on this reasoning, the authors would expect states with greater electoral competition (larger effective number of parties) to be more sympathetic to the cause of the SC/ST groups thereby leading to lesser violence against them.

3.3 Summary Statistics

• Table 1 contains the summary statistics of the district-level data for each of the two periods separately as well as for the full data.
• Among the IPC crimes, the authors make a distinction between ‘crimes against body’ and ‘non-body crimes’.
• The general crime rate which measures crimes where the victims are non-SC/ST- defined as total IPC crimes in the district less IPC crimes against SC/ST per 100000 non-SC/ST population- is 1544.
• In terms of broad state-level statistics.
• 46 percent of the population is illiterate, 20 percent have completed primary education, 24 percent have completed secondary education and only 10 percent has completed higher secondary and higher levels of education.

3.4 Empirical Specification

• The authors main empirical specification uses a linear fixed effects regression model.
• The general form of the estimating equation is: ydt = α1 + α2edt +.
• The authors primary variable of interest edt is logarithm of the ratio of expenditure of SCs/STs to upper castes.
• District fixed effects δd control for the time-invariant districtspecific under-reporting of crime, long-standing caste relations in the district etc.
• Since the authors have group-wise expenditures, they do not control for overall expenditure.

4.1 Regression Results

• In column 1, the dependent variable is the SC/ST total crime rate.
• In column 2, the dependent variable is the SC/ST IPC crime rate.
• Results from Table 2 and Table 3 jointly show that firstly, while relative expenditure is an important determinant of caste-based crimes, it is the perpetrator characteristics and not the victim characteristics driving the results.
• These results suggest that it is the non-body crimes component of the IPC crimes against SC/ST that is responsive to changes in relative expenditure and upper castes’ expenditure.
• In column 1, the main explanatory variable of interest is the relative expenditure between SC/ST and upper castes, the coefficient of which is positive and significant.

4.2 Some Further Questions

• This section discusses some questions and concerns that might follow from the results section and addresses how the authors mitigate these concerns.
• The idea is that if the relative economic status of caste groups is also correlated with general crimes in the district, then the authors cannot conclude that it is only crimes against SC/ST that are uniquely linked to relative group economic positions.
• If this reverse causality exists, then their effects are overestimated and provide an upper bound of the true estimates.
• Bhagat (2009) using 2001 Indian Census data documents that 62 percent of the internal migration in India is in the form of intra-district migration.
• Firstly, reporting is expected to a function of victim characteristics but what is explaining the crime rate in their results are not victim but perpetrator characteristics (Table 3).

5 Discussion and Conclusion

• This paper provides one of the first analyses of crimes against Scheduled Castes and Tribes in India with a view to understanding the effect of a change in the gap between and mob violence against blacks during 1910-30 experienced greater levels of black out-migration as compared to other counties.
• 19 upper and lower castes’ standard of living on the victimization of the SC/ST community.
• Dalits are attacked so that they can be taught a “lesson” for aspiring to higher standards by being more educated, acquiring more wealth and indulging in more conspicuous consumption.
• Levin and McDevitt (1993) also argue that hate crimes have a more deleterious effect since victims of such crimes are ‘inter- 20 crimes may exacerbate existing tensions between groups and could escalate to situations of group-level conflict (Levin and Rabrenovic, 2001).
• A report discussing the performance of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, 1989 finds that at the end of 2007, 79 percent of cases remained pending for trial at criminal courts showing no significant improvement over a pendency rate of 82.5 percent in 2001 (National Coalition for Strengthening SCs and STs PoA Act, 2010).

Figures

Table 3: Effect of Group-wise Expenditures on Total, IPC and SLL Crime Rates

Table 2: Effect of Relative Economic Status on Crimes against SCs/STs

Table 7: Regressions using General Crimes as Dependent Variable

Table 6: Negative Binomial Regressions

Table 1: Summary Statistics

Table 9: Excluding States One At a Time: Relative Expenditure Specification

Table 10: Excluding States One At a Time: Group-wise Expenditure Specification

Full text

CDE
May 2012
HATE CRIMES IN INDIA: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF VIOLENCE
AND ATROCITIES AGAINST SCHEDULED
CASTES AND SCHEDULED TRIBES
SMRITI SHARMA
Email: smriti@econdse.org
Department of Economics
Delhi School of Economics
Working Paper No. 213
Centre for Development Economics
Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics

Hate Crimes in India: An Economic
Analysis of Violence and Atrocities against
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
Smriti Sharma
∗
Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics
December, 2013
Abstract
Crimes against the historically marginalized Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes (SC/ST) by the upper castes in India represent an extreme form of prejudice
and discrimination. In this paper, we investigate the effect of changes in relative
material standards of living between the SC/STs and upper castes - as measured
by the ratio of consumption expenditures of SC/STs to that of upper castes -
on changes in the incidence of crimes against SC/STs. Based on the hierarchical
social structure implied by the caste system, we posit that an improvement in the
economic position of lower castes relative to the upper castes is positively correlated
with the incidence of crimes committed by the upper castes against the lower castes.
Using official district level crime data for the period 2001-10, we find a positive
association between crimes and expenditure of SC/ST vis-`a-vis the upper castes
such that a widening of the economic gap between groups is associated with a
decrease in caste-based crimes. Moreover, this effect is driven by changes in the
upper castes’ economic well-being rather than changes in the economic position of
the lower castes and tribes.
JEL classification: J15, K42
Keywords: Hate Crimes, Castes, India
∗
Email: smriti@econdse.org. Address for correspondence: Department of Economics, Delhi School
of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007. I am grateful to my advisors Ashwini Deshpande and
Parikshit Ghosh for their excellent guidance. Thanks are also due to Deepti Goel, Jeffrey Nugent, J.V.
Meenakshi, Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay, Jared Rubin, Saurabh Singhal, Willa Friedman and participants
at the PacDev 2013, IRES 2012 Workshop, ISNIE 2012, WEAI 2012, Delhi School of Economics, Indian
Statistical Institute and Jawaharlal Nehru University for their comments, and to officials at the National
Crimes Records Bureau for providing the data and clarifying my queries. All remaining errors are mine.

1 Introduction
In India, ex-untouchable castes and several tribal groups continue to be subjected to
discrimination, economic and social exclusion and a stigmatized identity (e.g. Thorat
1979; Deshpande 2011; Navsarjan Trust 2010). Additionally, similar to hate crimes in
other parts of the world, these groups have been victims of bias-motivated crimes and
atrocities at the hands of the upper castes. Atrocities against lower castes routinely take
the form of rape of women, abuse by police personnel, harassment of lower caste vil-
lage council heads, illegal land encroachments, forced evictions and so on (Human Rights
Watch, 1999). These instances are in blatant violation of the Indian constitution that
abolished untouchability and upholds the ideal of equality among all citizens. Subse-
quently, there have been other provisions such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled
Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which specifically target such hate crimes.
In 2006, acknowledging the gravity of the problem, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh equated the practice of untouchability to that of apartheid.
1
In this paper, we analyze crimes against the historically disadvantaged Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes (ex-untouchables and marginalized tribes, SCs and STs
respectively) by the upper castes to understand the mechanisms that cause crimes based
on group identity to occur repeatedly. The objective of this study is to analyze whether
regional variations in the incidence of violence by the upper castes against the lower castes
are systematically linked to variations in relative group economic outcomes of lower castes
and tribes and upper castes. Based on the hierarchical social structure implied by the
caste system such that the upper castes have traditionally been economically better-off
than the lower castes with resulting social dominance, we posit that an improvement in
the economic position of lower castes relative to the upper castes is positively correlated
with the incidence of crimes committed by the upper castes against the lower castes.
Theoretically, an improvement in the relative economic status of SCs and STs as
compared to upper castes could lead to either a decrease or an increase in the incidence
of caste-based crimes. It could lead to a decrease in caste-based crimes on account of
various factors. One, an improvement in the relative economic position of lower castes
could result in an increased ability to defend themselves against physical harm by the
upper castes by investing in better security measures. Two, it could lend them greater
confidence to report crimes to the police which could lead to a reduction in future crimes.
2
1
Rahman, M. “Indian Leader Likens Caste System to Apartheid Regime”. The Guardian, Dec. 28,
2006.
2
Iyer et al. (2012) find that the political empowerment of women by way of higher mandated repre-
sentation at local government levels induces strong positive and significant effects on reporting of crimes
by women.
2

Three, an improvement in their bargaining power could lead to the upper castes having
greater respect for the low castes. On the other hand, the economic empowerment of
historically marginalized SCs and STs could increase the incidence of caste-based crimes
in the following ways: one, they could be perceived as more attractive targets for violence
especially where the motivation is to extract some form of economic surplus; two, they
may be perceived as a threat to the established social, economic and political position of
the upper castes. This could lead to greater incidence of crimes against lower castes by
the upper castes as a means of asserting their superiority and expressing their frustration
at the shift in status quo. Therefore, which of these effects dominate constitutes an
interesting empirical question.
While there is literature from India exploring the relationship between murders and
female-male ratios (Dreze and Khera, 2000), crime and inequality (Sharma, 2011), effect
of economic reforms on murders (Prasad, 2012), natural disasters and crime (Roy, 2010),
effect of female political representation on crimes against women (Iyer et al., 2012) and
the effect of rainfall shocks on domestic violence and dowry deaths (Sekhri and Storey-
gard, 2013), crimes against SCs and STs remain under-researched. This paper is among
the first to analyze data on crimes committed against SCs and STs. This is largely fa-
cilitated by the fact that starting 2001, official data on such crimes became available at
the level of the district. To the best of my knowledge, the only other existing piece of
research studying crimes against SC/ST groups is Bros and Couttenier (2012). Using
cross-sectional district-level crime data for 2001, they find crimes against SC/ST groups
to be higher in districts that have greater commonality of water sources. Common water
sources imply water sharing between castes which is considered ritually polluting for the
upper castes- more so in rural areas- and is often countered with acts of violence against
the lower castes.
3
Our study investigates a different hypothesis and exploits the panel
structure of the data through which fixed unobservable factors can be controlled.
Our paper can be considered closest in terms of motivation to Mitra and Ray (2013)
inasmuch as they too consider the relationship between group-wise economic progress and
inter-group conflict. Using Hindu-Muslim riots data for India, they find that an improve-
ment in Muslims’ well-being leads to an increase in Hindu-Muslim riots while Hindus’
well-being has no significant effect. However, there are two crucial differences between
the two studies. Firstly, they analyze communal riots, which represent violence involv-
ing a large group of people, while we study individually targeted caste-based violence.
3
The Economic and Political Weekly regularly features incident reports about caste-based violence.
A common theme in all such reports is that the source of aggression lies in the fact that lower castes
frequently access sites such as tea stalls, cinema halls, places of worship and other common spaces that
were earlier the domain of only the dominant castes. Please see Section 5 for some such references.
3

Secondly, and more importantly, their data do not allow separation of perpetrators and
victims by religion, except by inference, whereas in our data, the identification between
victims (SC/ST) and offenders (non-SC/ST) is clear from the start. Thus, our study
is a new contribution to the discussion of group-based violence in the Indian context.
However, there is an extensive social science literature from the United States that has
studied racial violence and this paper builds on that literature.
Using district level official data on crimes against SCs/STs and per capita expenditures
as a proxy for material standard of living, we find that the incidence of caste violence
is positively correlated with the ratio of expenditures of lower castes and tribes to that
of upper castes. Dividing the crimes into predominantly violent crimes and non-violent
crimes, we find that changes in relative material standards of living between groups lead to
changes in violent crimes aimed at extracting some form of economic surplus or property
from the victims. Moreover, this effect is driven by changes in the upper castes’ economic
well-being rather than changes in the economic position of the lower castes and tribes.
Although discrimination has largely been discussed in the context of labour markets
and access to public goods, this is among the first studies to quantitatively analyze
the phenomenon of crimes targeted at the SC/ST groups. Since crimes committed by
individuals belonging to non-scheduled groups against SC/ST individuals fall under the
broad category of hate crimes, this paper will be nested in that literature while also
drawing from the general crime literature.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a background
of the existing inequalities on account of the caste system and a review of the hate
crimes literature. Section 3 describes the dataset, summary statistics and the empirical
framework. Section 4 presents the results and Section 5 discusses and concludes.
2 Related Literature
2.1 The Indian Caste System
The ‘caste system’ is an arrangement of the Hindu population into several thousand
groups called ‘jatis’ (castes). These groups have emerged from the ancient varna system
(also translated as caste) according to which society was divided into initially four, later
five, hereditary, endogamous, mutually exclusive and occupation-specific groups. At the
top of the varna system were the ‘Brahmins’ (priests and teachers) and the ‘Kshatriyas’
(warriors and royalty), followed by ‘Vaishyas’ (traders, merchants and moneylenders) and
finally the ‘Shudras’ (engaged in menial labour and low-end jobs). Over time, the Shudras
4

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Hate crimes in india: an economic analysis of violence and atrocities against scheduled castes and scheduled tribes" ?

In this paper, the authors investigate the effect of changes in relative material standards of living between the SC/STs and upper castes as measured by the ratio of consumption expenditures of SC/STs to that of upper castes on changes in the incidence of crimes against SC/STs. Based on the hierarchical social structure implied by the caste system, the authors posit that an improvement in the economic position of lower castes relative to the upper castes is positively correlated with the incidence of crimes committed by the upper castes against the lower castes. 

Q2. What are the future works mentioned in the paper "Hate crimes in india: an economic analysis of violence and atrocities against scheduled castes and scheduled tribes" ?

While, the authors can not control for this possibility in their regression analysis since the NSS data does not allow us to identify migration, they cite findings from other data sources to investigate this issue. Finally, and more in the nature of a caveat, is the fact that since the analysis is conducted at the level of the district, nothing can be definitively said about the nature of individual motivations that leads to the incidence of such crimes. 

Q3. What does the paper by Gale et al. (2002) and Mitra and Ray?

While the papers by Gale et al. (2002) and Mitra and Ray (2013) use incomes and expenditures to measure some form of economic competition, papers from other social sciences measure competition- economic and political- in more general terms. 

Q4. What is the effect of cheaper labour on inter-group violence?

Employers use cheaper labour as a way to challenge the more organized, higher paid labour thereby leading to inter-group violence. 

Q5. What are the four social group categories used in the National Sample Survey?

6Starting late 1990s, large-scale datasets such as National Sample Survey and National Family and Health Survey use four social group categories: SC, ST, OBC and ‘Others’. 

Q6. What are the reasons for under-reporting of crimes against SCs/STs?

For a hate crime, under-reporting is expected for a host of reasons that include intimidation, fear of reprisals and a lack of confidence in the12Data on crimes against SCs/STs, women and children are collected since these groups are considered vulnerable. 

Q7. What is the main reason for the close correspondence between income and consumption expenditure?

at low levels of income, savings are negligible resulting in a close correspondence between income and consumption expenditure. 

Q8. What are the main causes of atrocities against lower castes?

Atrocities against lower castes routinely take the form of rape of women, abuse by police personnel, harassment of lower caste village council heads, illegal land encroachments, forced evictions and so on (Human Rights Watch, 1999). 

Q9. What is the purpose of this study?

The objective of this study is to analyze whether regional variations in the incidence of violence by the upper castes against the lower castes are systematically linked to variations in relative group economic outcomes of lower castes and tribes and upper castes. 

Q10. How do the authors control for political competition at the state level?

The authors also control for political competition at the state-level by using effective number of parties (Laakso and Taagepara, 1979) that is calculated using data from the state assembly election reports from the Election Commission of India. 

Q11. What is the role of political reservations in the development of Indian society?

Political reservations at the state and national level legislatures have been a crucial instrument in elevating individuals belonging to SC and ST groups to positions where they exercise influence over policy decisions (Pande, 2003). 

Q12. What is the definition of a ‘cognizable’ offence?

As defined by the Code of Criminal Procedure of India, a ‘cognizable’ offence is one in which the police is empowered to register an FIR, investigate, and arrest an accused without a court-issued warrant. 

Q13. How many seats were reserved for the jatis?

This amounts to 22.5 percent of seats in national and state legislatures, village panchayats, institutions of higher education and 22.5 percent of government jobs being reserved for them. 

Q14. What is the effect of hate crimes on the community?

Research by Lyons (2007) on Chicago neighborhoods and by Green et al. (1998) on New York communities indicates that racially motivated hate crimes are higher in traditionally white neighbourhoods experiencing an influx of minority population. 

Q15. What is the main result of Dollard et al. (1939) and Sear?

The frustration-aggression thesis of Dollard et al. (1939) and Hovland and Sears (1940) suggests that during periods of economic stress, there is an innate tendency to lash out against a vulnerable scapegoat, which is often an out-group that may be linked to the source of the stress. 

Q16. What is the source of the crime data used in this paper?

The crime data used in this paper are from the annual publication ‘Crime in India’ by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Government of India. 

Q17. What is the effect of caste-based violence on the lower castes?

this effect is driven by changes in the upper castes’ economic well-being rather than changes in the economic position of the lower castes and tribes. 

Q18. How does Bonacich explain the difference between the two groups?

Bonacich (1972) explains ethnic antagonism by way of “split labour markets” where markets are split along ethnic lines such that there is a large differential between two groups in the price of labour for the same occupation. 

Q19. Where are the data on crimes against SC/ST available?

While earlier years reported crimes at the state level, since 2001, data on crimes against SC/ST under various categories have also become available at the district level.