Caste-Based Crimes and Economic Status: Evidence from India
Summary (3 min read)
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).
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Citations
165 citations
Cites background from "Caste-Based Crimes and Economic Sta..."
...…elections) so threatens the relational standing of adjacent caste groups.11 Indeed, using a decade’s district-level crime data (2001–2010) Sharma (2015) shows that increases in violent hate crimes correlate with the narrowing gap between the standard of living of Dalits and dominant…...
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68 citations
64 citations
Cites background from "Caste-Based Crimes and Economic Sta..."
...This also perpetuates the notion of ‘secondary victimization’, where the broader community from the oppressed caste experiences defenselessness and angst due to recurrent crimes against them (Sharma, 2015)....
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...Crimes against Dalits normally go unreported due to lack of confidence in authorities, the shame associated with reporting the crime, and threat to their socioeconomic activities (Sharma, 2015)....
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References
148 citations
139 citations
"Caste-Based Crimes and Economic Sta..." refers background in this paper
...For example, Falk et al. (2011) find unemployment positively affect violent and non-violent right wing extremist crimes in Germany....
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...For example, Falk et al. (2011) find unemployment positively affect violent and non-violent right wing extremist crimes in Germany....
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...For example, Falk et al. (2011) find unemployment positively affect violent and non-violent right wing extremist crimes in Germany. However, Krueger and Pischke (1997) find no relationship between ce of anti-foreigner crimes and unemployment rate in post-unification Germany during 1991–1993....
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136 citations
"Caste-Based Crimes and Economic Sta..." refers background in this paper
...…control for this possibility in our regression analysis since the NSS data do not allow us to identify migration, we cite findings from other 25 Tolnay and Beck (1992) find that southern counties in USA that witnessed high levels of mob violence against blacks during 1910–1930 experienced…...
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132 citations
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Frequently Asked Questions (19)
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.