Showing papers on "Caste published in 2014"

Employment, exclusion and ‘merit’ in the Indian IT industry

Abstract: The Indian information technology (IT) industry has been frequently hailed by the media, the state, and industry leaders as a significant new source of high quality and well-paid employment for the educated youth of India. With the recent rapid growth of the industry and expansion in the size of the workforce, the sector already employs more than one million people and is projected to generate many more jobs over the next few years. More important, the IT industry is often represented as providing employment opportunities to wider sections of the population than has been the case for most managerial, professional, and white collar jobs. Industry leaders frequently argue that because of the shortage of technically qualified people, they have had to look far and wide for workers, in the process drawing in many people from non-middle class/ upper caste backgrounds. Linked to this, a common narrative holds that employment does not depend on social connections (influence) or “ascriptive” status (reservations) – unlike in the public sector and “old economy” companies – but is based entirely on “merit”. However, the social reality appears to be somewhat different. In this paper, I present data from a study of the IT workforce in Bangalore and draw on other sources to show that the social profile of IT workers is largely urban, middle class, and high or middle caste. The processes of exclusion that operate in the education system and in the recruitment process to create this relative social homogeneity are delineated. Finally, I discuss the ideology of merit that dominates the industry in the context of the recent debate on reservations. 1

The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion, and the Social in Modern India

Abstract: AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction1. Land Tenure or Labor Control? The Agrarian Mise-en-Sc ne2. Conceptualizing Pariah Conversion: Caste3. The Pariah-Missionary Alliance: Agrarian Contestation and the Local State4. The State and the Ceri5. Settling Land6. The Marriage of Sacred and Secular Authority: New Liberalism7. Giving the Panchama a Home: Creating a Friction Where None Exists8. Everyday Warfare: Caste9. The Depressed ClassesConclusion: The Pariah Problem's Enduring LegaciesGlossaryNotesBibliographyIndex

Women's and Men's Relative Status and Intimate Partner Violence in India

Abstract: This article reports on a study finding that women in India who have more education than their husbands who earn more or who are the sole earners in their families have a higher likelihood of experiencing frequent and severe intimate partner violence (IPV) than women who are not employed or who are less educated than their spouse.

Caste in Contemporary India: Flexibility and Persistence

Abstract: The caste system, its salient characteristics, and its subtle and more obvious transformations, coupled with its persistence and pervasiveness, have been central to studies of Indian society. This review provides a specific view of caste and its transformations with an emphasis on the socioeconomic or labor market dimension. Such a perspective is particularly crucial as one of the distinctive features of caste is the inheritance of occupations. A major argument of modernization has been the increasing movement away from occupational inheritance. This review traces the limited support for the “Orientalist” view of caste as essentially unchanging and focuses on the fluid nature of caste and its transformation in the economic domain.

Social interactions affecting caste development through physiological actions in termites.

Abstract: A colony of social insects is not only an aggregation of individuals but also a functional unit. To achieve adaptive social behavior in fluctuating environmental conditions, in addition to coordination of physiological status in each individual, the whole colony is coordinated by interactions among colony members. The study on the regulation of social-insect colonies is termed “social physiology”. Termites, a major group of social insects, exhibit many interesting phenomena related to social physiology, such as mechanisms of caste regulation in a colony. In their colonies, there are different types of individuals, i.e., castes, which show distinctive phenotypes specialized in specific colony tasks. Termite castes comprise reproductives, soldiers and workers, and the caste composition can be altered depending on circumstances. For the regulation of caste compositions, interactions among individuals, i.e. social interactions, are thought to be important. In this article, we review previous studies on the adaptive meanings and those on the proximate mechanisms of the caste regulation in termites, and try to understand those comprehensively in terms of social physiology. Firstly, we summarize classical studies on the social interactions. Secondly, previous studies on the pheromone substances that mediate the caste regulatory mechanisms are overviewed. Then, we discuss the roles of a physiological factor, juvenile hormone (JH) in the regulation of caste differentiation. Finally, we introduce the achievements of molecular studies on the animal sociality (i.e. sociogenomics) in terms of social physiology. By comparing the proximate mechanisms of social physiology in termites with those in hymenopterans, we try to get insights into the general principles of social physiology in social animals.

The soldiers in societies: defense, regulation, and evolution.

Abstract: The presence of reproductively altruistic castes is one of the primary traits of the eusocial societies. Adaptation and regulation of the sterile caste, to a certain extent, drives the evolution of eusociality. Depending on adaptive functions of the first evolved sterile caste, eusocial societies can be categorized into the worker-first and soldier-first lineages, respectively. The former is marked by a worker caste as the first evolved altruistic caste, whose primary function is housekeeping, and the latter is highlighted by a sterile soldier caste as the first evolved altruistic caste, whose task is predominantly colony defense. The apparent functional differences between these two fundamentally important castes suggest worker-first and soldier-first eusociality are potentially driven by a suite of distinctively different factors. Current studies of eusocial evolution have been focused largely on the worker-first Hymenoptera, whereas understanding of soldier-first lineages including termites, eusocial aphids, gall-dwelling thrips, and snapping shrimp, is greatly lacking. In this review, we summarize the current state of knowledge on biology, morphology, adaptive functions, and caste regulation of the soldier caste. In addition, we discuss the biological, ecological and genetic factors that might contribute to the evolution of distinct caste systems within eusocial lineages.

Dalit Women's Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination

Abstract: Inspired by egalitarian doctrines, the Dalit communities in India have been fighting for basic human and civic rights since the middle of the nineteenth century. In this book, Shailaja Paik focuses on the struggle of Dalit women in one arena - the realm of formal education – and examines a range of interconnected social, cultural and political questions. What did education mean to women? How did changes in women’s education affect their views of themselves and their domestic work, public employment, marriage, sexuality, and childbearing and rearing? What does the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of secular education tell us about the deeper historical entanglement with modernity as experienced by Dalit communities? Dalit Women's Education in Modern India is a social and cultural history that challenges the triumphant narrative of modern secular education to analyse the constellation of social, economic, political and historical circumstances that both opened and closed opportunities to many Dalits. By focusing on marginalised Dalit women in modern Maharashtra, who have rarely been at the centre of systematic historical enquiry, Paik breathes life into their ideas, expectations, potentials, fears and frustrations. Addressing two major blind spots in the historiography of India and of the women’s movement, she historicises Dalit women’s experiences and constructs them as historical agents. The book combines archival research with historical fieldwork, and centres on themes including slum life, urban middle classes, social and sexual labour, and family, marriage and children to provide a penetrating portrait of the actions and lives of Dalit women. Elegantly conceived and convincingly argued, Dalit Women's Education in Modern India will be invaluable to students of History, Caste Politics, Women and Gender Studies, Education Studies, Urban Studies and Asian studies.

T-shirts and tumblers Caste, dependency and work under neoliberalisation in south India

Abstract: This article explores the variegated nature of processes of neoliberalisation and their diverse impacts on relations of caste and dependency in rural India. Focusing on the rural hinterland of Tiruppur, a major industrial cluster in Tamil Nadu, south India, the article examines the ways in which neoliberal regimes insert themselves in the region and combine, coexist or clash with existing institutional regimes of power. It documents the highly differentiated and unpredictable effects neoliberalisation has on the lives of villagers who have become directly or indirectly engulfed by its processes, paying particular attention to the uneven impacts on local landscapes of capitalist production and on rural relations of caste and dependency. The article examines rural transformations through the contrasting experiences of Dalits in two villages that became connected to the Tiruppur industry. While in one village, Dalits gained access to the urban industry, in the other, they remained disconnected from urban garment jobs due to persistent relations of debt bondage and unfree labour. It is argued that processes of industrial neoliberalisation do not lead to linear transformations in caste relations and social inequalities. Rather, the relevance and meaning of caste are transformed in uneven, and often even contrasting ways, depending on how particular localities are integrated into wider institutional regimes of power and rule. Processes of neoliberalisation unleash powerful encounters between old structures of power and new regimes of rule, and generate new configurations that defy prediction and expectation.

Caste, Kinship, and Life Course: Rethinking Women's Work and Agency in Rural South India

Abstract: This paper reexamines the linkages between women's work, agency, and well-being based on a household survey and in-depth interviews conducted in rural Tamil Nadu in 2009 and questions the prioritization of workforce participation as a path to gender equality. It emphasizes the need to unpack the nature of work performed by and available to women and its social valuation, as well as women's agency, particularly its implications for decision making around financial and nonfinancial household resources in contexts of socioeconomic change. The effects of work participation on agency are mediated by factors like age and stage in the life cycle, reproductive success, and social location – especially of caste – from which women enter the workforce.

Race and a Transnational Reproductive Caste System: Indian Transnational Surrogacy

Abstract: When it comes to discourses around women's labor in global contexts, we need feminist philosophical frameworks that take the intersections of gender, race, and global capitalism seriously in order to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of women's lives within global processes. Women of color feminist philosophy can bring much to the table in such discussions. In this essay, I theorize about a concrete instance of global women's labor: transnational commercial gestational surrogacy. By introducing a “racialized gender” analysis into the philosophical debate on this issue, I argue that women's reproductive labor is becoming increasingly stratified within the global economy along racial and other lines. This paves the way for a “transnational reproductive caste system,” which ends up reifying various social hierarchies and sustaining existing global inequities. I aim to expose the kind of violence that surrogates experience due to such stratification as women of color in a transnational space. I discuss how discourses of race and existing racial hierarchies play out in international surrogacy and ways in which these, and indeed, the very category of “woman of color” get complicated in international contexts when they intermingle with other localized social forms and global inequities. For the purposes of my argument, I engage several insights from feminist of color Dorothy Roberts's work on race and reproductive technologies in the US.

Caste, Inequality, and Poverty in India: A Re-Assessment

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to examine the inequality and poverty issues of rural households in India from the perspective of a household’s monthly per capita consumption expenditure using data on nearly 20,000 households. In examining these issues, the paper first sets out a model of a poverty–inequality trade-off whereby governments could choose the poverty–inequality combination they most preferred. Then the paper proceeds to examine whether there is a ‘caste basis’ to inequality and poverty in India or whether distributional and deprivation outcomes are ‘caste blind’ and entirely determined by the attributes of the individual households. Our overarching conclusion is that households’ outcomes with respect to their position on the distributional ladder, or with respect to their chances of being poor, are dependent in large measure on their caste. So households from the Scheduled Castes were more likely to be in the lowest quintile of consumption, and were more likely to be poor, than high-caste Hindu hous...

Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle-Class Caste

Abstract: A cruise along the streets of Chennai - or Silicon Valley - filled with professional young Indian men and women, reveals the new face of India. In the twenty-first century, Indians have acquired a new kind of global visibility, one of rapid economic advancement and, in the information technology industry, spectacular prowess. In this book, C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan examine one particularly striking group who have taken part in this development: Tamil Brahmans - a formerly traditional, rural, high-caste elite who have transformed themselves into a new middle-class caste in India, the United States, and elsewhere. Fuller and Narasimhan offer one of the most comprehensive looks at Tamil Brahmans around the world to date. They examine Brahman migration from rural to urban areas, more recent transnational migration, and how the Brahman way of life has translated to both Indian cities and American suburbs. They look at modern education and the new employment opportunities afforded by engineering and IT. They examine how Sanskritic Hinduism and traditional music and dance have shaped Tamil Brahmans' particular middle-class sensibilities and how middle-class status is related to the changing position of women. Above all, they explore the complex relationship between class and caste systems and the ways in which hierarchy has persisted in modernized India.

Democracy against development: lower-caste politics and political modernity in postcolonial India

Abstract: Jeffrey Witsoe, in his textured analysis of caste and postcolonial democracy in India, recalls being seated in front of Lalu Prasad Yadav, the on-again, off-again Chief Minister of Bihar, in April ...

Religion insulates ingroup evaluations: the development of intergroup attitudes in India.

Abstract: Research on the development of implicit intergroup attitudes has placed heavy emphasis on race, leaving open how social categories that are prominent in other cultures might operate. We investigate two of India's primary means of social distinction, caste and religion, and explore the development of implicit and explicit attitudes towards these groups in minority-status Muslim children and majority-status Hindu children, the latter drawn from various positions in the Hindu caste system. Results from two tests of implicit attitudes find that caste attitudes parallel previous findings for race: higher-caste children as well as lower-caste children have robust high-caste preferences. However, results for religion were strikingly different: both lower-status Muslim children and higher-status Hindu children show strong implicit ingroup preferences. We suggest that religion may play a protective role in insulating children from the internalization of stigma.

Building Bridges: Articulating Dalit and African American Women's Solidarity

Abstract: The new millennium began with a dialogue between caste and race among activists at the United Nations Durban Conference on Racism and Racial Discrimination, 2001. It was at this conference that the universal human rights discourse engaged with the specifics of caste stratification and discrimination in India. In the wake of this historical moment, I conceived my idea of "building bridges" to outline a comparative model that might allow us to expand the contours of feminist theory and praxis and provide a blueprint for agitations that call for structural changes. More specifically, in this article I concentrate on the specific hurdles of two marginalized groups-Dalit (Untouchable) women in India and African American women in the United States-in order to investigate questions of power, identity, and oppression among them.Delving into personal experiences of Dalit and African American womens day-to-day living, I construct a "margin-to-margin" framework to investigate the possibilities of solidarity between the two groups of women, given the shared history of patriarchy as well as the ways they have been silenced by women from the dominant caste/race. By a margin-to-margin framework, I mean the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate margins (for my purposes, caste and race and Dalit and African American women), in order to construct new knowledge and enable political solidarity to build conscious and sustained commitment to challenge social injustice. Moreover, I argue that centering on the particular historical experiences, specific contexts, contradictions, and connections between the marginalized "Dalit of the Dalits"-Dalit and African American women-allows for the most inclusive and productive politics, developing of new feminist frameworks, and critical decoding of systemic power structures.The timing of Dalit and African American womens solidarity is most significant because the U.S. Congress (like its British and European counterparts) has seriously begun to recognize the issue of caste in India. Significantly, working margin to margin privileges avantage point from which to analyze the deep and common continuities of structures of law, education, feminism, capital, and labor affecting Dalit and African American women in different contexts. An intergroup exchange and feminist engagement facilitates the envisioning of broader and joint struggles between subordinated populations across the globe. It also promotes political possibilities for women to express their alternative views of the conceptual categories as well as actual processes of caste, race, gender and sexuality, and feminism (s).My essay makes important contributions to colonial history and feminist theory and practice. Most significantly, it highlights the politics of "location" within South Asia as a critical ground for producing new theoretical frameworks in feminism. In this essay, I use the particular dynamics of the South Asian position and, more specifically, the Dalit condition to engage with African American feminists in the United States and scrutinize history, revise certain feminist insights, and provide tools to tackle contemporary challenges of feminism. I draw upon works of Dalit and African American "womanist-humanists," such as Baby Kamble, Shantabai Kamble, Kumud Pawde, Urmila Pawar, Shantabai Dani, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Audre Lorde, and analyze some shared historical experiences and feminist and political theories.1Thinking "Margin to Margin": Practicing Political SolidarityMethodologically, I use the margin-to-margin framework for two intimately tied purposes: to open up lived experiences as epistemic spaces and to use the newly produced knowledge to practice political solidarity. I depart from earlier studies (that focused mainly on men) and privilege Dalit and African American womens voices to rethink old and study new contexts of marginalization. I am committed to the reciprocity between scholarship and activism and hence to the dialectical relationship between the scholarly production of knowledge about Dalit and African American women, political activism, and feminist practice and political questions of representation, equality, and solidarity. …

Marginalised Dalits in International Labour Migration: Reconfiguring Economic and Social Relations in Nepal

Abstract: International labour migration continues to rise in Nepal affecting the livelihoods of many people. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research with Dalits, a marginalised group, to examine the role of international labour migration in altering migrants' economic and social space in their places of origin, once affected by Maoists' ‘people's war’. In particular, I explore how Dalits have used their agency to contest caste institutions by mobilising financial, human and symbolic capitals accumulated through migration. Much of the existing studies highlight the economic side of migration paying little attention to the social and cultural dimension. This article seeks to complement these analyses by illustrating how Dalits repudiate caste relations that have shaped their experiences of exploitation and domination.

Intimate Desires: Dalit Women and Religious Conversions in Colonial India

Abstract: Religious conversions by Dalits in colonial India have largely been examined as mass movements to Christianity, with an implicit focus on men. However, why did Dalit women convert? Were they just guided by their men, family, and community? This paper explores the interrelationship between caste and gender in Dalit conversions afresh through the use of popular print culture, vernacular missionary literature, writings of Hindu publicists and caste ideologues, cartoons, and police reports from colonial north India. It particularly looks at the two sites of clothing and romance to mark representations of mass and individual conversions to Christianity and Islam. Through them, it reads conversions by Dalit women as acts that embodied a language of intimate rights, and were accounts of resistant materialities. These simultaneously produced deep anxieties and everyday violence among ideologues of the Arya Samaj and other such groups, where there was both an erasure and a representational heightening of Dalit female desire. However, they also provide one with avenues to recover in part Dalit women's aspirations in this period.

A test of neuroecological predictions using paperwasp caste differences in brain structure (Hymenoptera: Vespidae)

Abstract: Adaptive brain architecture hypotheses predict brain region investment matches the cognitive and sensory demands an individual confronts Social hymenopteran queen and worker castes differ categorically in behavior and physiology leading to divergent sensory experiences Queens in mature colonies are largely nest-bound while workers depart nests to forage We predicted social paperwasp castes would differ in tissue allocation among brain regions We expected workers to invest relatively more than queens in neural tissues that process visual input As predicted, we found workers invested more in visual relative to antennal processing than queens both in peripheral sensory lobes and in central processing brain regions (mushroom bodies) Although we did not measure individual brain development changes, our comparative data provide a preliminary test of mechanisms of caste differences Paperwasp species differ in the degree of caste differentiation (monomorphic versus polymorphic castes) and in colony structure (independent- versus swarm-founding); these differences could correspond to the magnitude of caste brain divergence If caste differences resulted from divergent developmental programs (experience-expectant brain growth), we predicted species with morphologically distinct queens, and/or swarm-founders, would show greater caste divergence of brain architecture Alternatively, if adult experience affected brain plasticity (experience-dependent brain growth), we predicted independent-founding species would show greater caste divergence of brain architecture Caste polymorphism was not related to the magnitude of queen-worker brain differences, and independent-founder caste brain differences were greater than swarm-founder caste differences Greater caste separation in independent-founder brain structure suggests a role for adult experience in the development of caste-specific brain anatomy

How Backward are the Other Backward Classes? Changing Contours of Caste Disadvantage in India

Abstract: We trace changes in standard-of-living indicators across the three broad caste groups in India in order to comment on the evolution of the relative ranking of \Other Backward Classes" (OBCs). Employing a dierence-in-dier ences strategy and analyzing individuals born between 1926-1985, we nd convergence in primary and secondary education, but continued divergence in higher education. Younger cohorts of OBCs converge with upper castes in wages and white-collar jobs. The extension of armative action

The Burden of Caste on Social Identity in India

Abstract: This paper uses the World Values Survey to investigate the determinants of perceived social status in India. Caste is still the largest determinant, yet not the only one, as income, education and occupation are all relevant factors. However, only unlikely improvements in those economic attributes could offset the burden of being from a low caste or tribe on perceived social rank. This study is part of the literature that shows how the internalisation of prejudice and long-lasting discrimination may have impaired individuals’ self-esteem. The results stress the need to account for self-depreciation when assessing the efficiency of affirmative action policies.

“I serve therefore I am”: Youth and Generative Politics in India

Abstract: This paper uses qualitative research in Uttarakhand, India to highlight the vitality of civil society and the involvement of young people in everyday “civic” politics. Much recent academic literature emphasizes the ubiquity of narrowly self-interested patronage politics in South Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as captured in the saying sometimes attributed to politicians in Cameroon: “I graze therefore I am.” But in specific moments or conjunctures, more “civic” forms of politics come to light, perhaps especially among youth. Building on intensive, qualitative field research, we show that a new generation of educated, underemployed youth in the village of Bemni serve their community in key ways. They also make strong arguments about the nature of “politics” and how it might be re-imagined as “generative”—concerned with building resources—rather than “allocative”—a zero-sum game of competition for power. We draw attention to the potentials of this practice and discourse of politics as well as its limits, particularly that it is dominated by young men and tends to reproduce caste and gender inequalities. We also call for more concerted study of youth community activism in contexts of predatory clientelism.

Examining the Structure of Opportunity and Social Mobility in India: Who Becomes an Engineer?

Abstract: Rising inequality alongside rapid economic growth reinforces the need to examine patterns of social mobility in India. Are children from less well-off sections also able to rise to higher-paying positions, newly created by the growing economy, or are these positions mainly accessible to established elites? Powered in particular by the software industry, no sector has grown as fast as engineering in India. Examining the social origins of students at a range of engineering colleges, including higher- and lower-ranked ones, provides a useful lens for understanding how the new opportunities have availed different social segments. These results provide some grounds for optimism: women, scheduled castes, and sons and daughters of agriculturists have improved upon historical trends. However, the rural–urban divide remains deep: the more rural one is, the lower are one's chances of getting into any engineering college. Multiple simultaneous handicaps — being poor and rural or scheduled caste and rural — reduce these chances to virtually zero. Improving education quality together with better information provision and more accessible career advice are critical for making opportunity more equitable.

Unpacking Solidarities of the Oppressed: Notes on Trans Struggles in India

Abstract: Thirty-seven years after our black feminist sisters wrote the Combahee River Collective Statement, here I am, a Savarna, middle-class, undocumented trans man in India writing about the possibilities and impossibilities of certain solidarities. I draw strength from the resilient political courage of black sisters like Harriet Tubman and Miss Major, from anticaste leaders like Jotirao and Savitribai Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar. The questions raised by the Combahee River Collective Statement still resonate with the struggles of black and Dalit sisters, and they have been able to organize themselves through perseverance and stubborn determination, overcoming several attempts at exclusion and co-optation. As a trans man, I write about the structural exclusions, the institutional violence, the individual assaults on dignity and selfhood, the struggle for selfdetermination of gender of my community and what solidarity means to us.In the struggle against class, caste, race, gender, and heterosexist patriarchy, trans people, because of lack of resources and blatant exclusions in existing struggles, seem to be the least politically organized. The individual oppressions of trans persons, of course, vary according to particular positions of class, gender, race, and the geographical area that we occupy, but collectively, trans communities face exclusions of such enormous proportions that most of us find it reason enough to celebrate that we are alive.Trans communities in India are diverse and have local terms of reference that include hijra, thirunangai, kinnar, mangalamukhi, Aravani, kothi, jogappas, shiv shaktis, thirunambis, bhaiyya, and paiyyan. In India, trans women have historically organized themselves into gharanas (houses). There are seven major gharanas spread across India that act as support systems for the hijra community. The guru-chela (mother-daughter) relationship in hijra communities is set up to provide mutual care. Young trans women who face intense familial and public violence in childhood leave their homes and live in hijra houses after choosing their gurus and being accepted by them as chelas. Our trans sisters have admirably organized themselves so they have their own internal legal system called Jamaats, where senior hijras play the role of judges and solve disputes between them. I will be unable to go into a long description of the hijra system for several reasons, among which is the complexity of the system, not easily explained, but more importantly, out of respect for the system as something that is internal to the trans community and that I see no reason to be made more legible to the outside world. It is only to contextualize trans politics and communities in India as radically different from those in the West that I felt the need for this short introduction.Trans women in India live, work, and occupy public space together. This is a strategy for survival arrived upon out of a deep understanding of public violence, discrimination, and vulnerability. Most trans people in India come from poor families (one of the reasons for this may be that trans people who are from economically well-off families might be concerned about inheritance issues and losing out on financial support if they were to assert their gender openly), or if they are not from poor families, they become economically, socially, and politically dispossessed as a result of their trans identity. Dalit trans activist and artist Living Smile Vidya talks about transphobia as a type of brahmanism, with the hijra becoming the untouchable subject. Because of transphobia, even hijras and trans men who come from well-off, Savarna families are unable to pursue theneducation or procure jobs. It is only in Dalit colonies that trans people are able to rent out houses. This might be the result not of an acceptance of our trans identity but rather of the economic necessity of the poorer house owner to rent out his or her house. The fact that there is more visibility of hijras in Dalit colonies has to a certain extent normalized thenpresence, though they are still ridiculed on an everyday basis. …

Growth, employment patterns and inequality in Asia a case study of India

Abstract: This paper argues that economic inequalities in India have been driven by employment patterns and changes in labour markets, which in turn have been affected by macroeconomic policies and processes as well as forms of social discrimination and exclusion. While many Asian economies have shown indications of rising inequality in recent decades, the Indian experience is particularly remarkable in the way inequalities have intertwined with the economic growth process. Structural change (or the relative lack of it) and the persistence of low productivity employment in India are strongly related to falling wage shares of national income and growing wage inequalities, and the close relationship between formal and informal sectors is the sharpest exemplar of this. Patterns of social discrimination along gender and caste lines have reinforced tendencies to create segmented labour markets that offer little incentive for employers to focus on productivity improvements.

The Doctor and the Saint

Abstract: India's feisty Dalit leader Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar scarcely finds place in our historical consciousness, having been airbrushed from much of the discourse about the freedom movement though he has been assigned the innocuous pedestal of the father of the Indian constitution.Ambedkar has been virtually deleted from the India Pakistan debate as well though he wrote possibly the most level-headed critique of the run-up to Partition. His bitter fights with Mahatma Gandhi to win social justice for scores of millions of India's 'untouchables' who had remained outside the pale of the Congress party's political pursuits are mostly researched and treasured by his Dalit followers.I believe part of the explanation for Ambedkar's pointed exclusion from mainstream discourse, both in India and in Pakistan, can be found in the upper caste prism through which Hindu and Muslim scholars have tended to see their colonial history. Take a prototype of a typically liberal discussion in the Hindu-Muslim binary, and how it seeks to bury the Dalit issue.In 1858, the Queen of Awadh, Begum Hazrat Mahal, appealed to her subjects to not be wooed by Queen Victoria's promise of postMutiny accommodation under British rule. Mahal claimed, as liberals still do, that Hindus and Muslims on her watch were treated equally. 'Men of high extraction, be they Syed, Sheikh, Mughal or Pathan, among the Mohammedans, or Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaish or Kayasth, among the Hindoos, all these retain the respectability according to their respective ranks. And all persons of a lower order such as a Sweeper, Chamar, Dhanook, or Pasi cannot claim equality with them.' Mahal's parting shot defined a pervasive attitude of a type that has continued to loom over contemporary social discourse. It must have tormented Ambedkar.In a new book, containing a book-sized essay titled 'The Doctor and The Saint', on the Gandhi-Ambedkar duel, writer and activist Arundhati Roy has sought to restore to the Dalit icon his premier role as a leading thinker and social reformer of 20th century India, possibly ahead of Gandhi. The extensively researched essay is an eye-opener, and serves as an introduction to Ambedkar's own brilliant piece, 'The Annihilation of Caste' Roy's intervention is two pronged. She persuades us to read Ambedkar and equally crucially prises open a treasure trove of shunned or buried evidence through which she evaluates Gandhi and his bete noire in new light.Ambedkar's main argument with Gandhi was that the Hindu caste system and its concomitant in built apartheid were abhorrent to the purposes of a modern nation-state. He also critiqued entrenched discrimination against women and other depressed sections within Hindu society. Political reform should be predicated on social reform, the Dalit mascot argued. The Congress, even before the advent of Gandhi, had derided such a view. …

Parental Education as a Criterion for Affirmative Action in Higher Education

Abstract: Affirmative action, in the form of reservation policies, to address the issues of inclusion has been in place in India for a long time. While its scope has enlarged with inclusion of new social groups, the efficacy remains a matter of debate. This paper explores if parental education is an appropriate criterion for affirmative action. Empirical results using three rounds of the National Sample Survey data suggest that parental education as a determinant of participation in higher education not only transcends the impact of caste, religious and economic status, it is also very attractive for the ease of implementation.

Social Exclusion, Social Inclusion and "Passing": The Experiences of Dalit Students at One Elite Indian University.

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is twofold; first the paper explores and describes the complex ways in which social exclusion can (sometimes) be reconstituted within policy attempts at social inclusion: the quota policy in India. Second, the paper provides a grounded account of the connectedness of inclusion/exclusion and an illustration of how those positioned as excluded can avoid and manage the ‘problem’ of exclusion by ‘passing’ as the more privileged ‘other’. The substantive focus of this paper is with the caste-based experiences of Dalit students at one elite Indian university.

Disparities in earnings and education in India

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of different levels of education, religion, caste as well as the impact of living in urban and rural communities on earnings in India. Besides these conventional stratification, yet another academic caste which influence earnings—the English language ability, is also examined. The paper uses a large cross-section sample of India Human Development Survey to estimate Mincer and augmented Mincer equations. The rates of return estimates obtained in these data and method confirm that returns to education increase with the level of education across location, caste-religion and English language ability. Returns to lower levels of education are low across different groups, indicating the low quality of basic schooling in the country. Returns to higher education vary at a great deal ranging between 4.9% among the rural workers and 38.2% among fluent English ability group. This is in contrast to Duraisamy reporting the highest returns to secondary education in India, between th...

Gender Wage Discrimination across Social and Religious Groups in India Estimates with Unit Level Data

Abstract: Labour market fl exibility with ever growing informalisation of work and feminisation of labour has been one of the most likely outcomes of the ongoing process of postreform structural adjustment in India. An increasing proportion of women workers have been denied social security to which they are legally entitled even under the existing labour laws (Anker 1998; Standing 1999). The labour force participation rate of women in wage employment has been substantially low and concentrated mainly in the lower strata, even within the informal sector, with signifi cant pay discrimination as compared to men both in rural and urban India (GOI 2010). Gender discrimination is omnipresent in the Indian labour market, and the discrimination is more serious when caste and religious discrimination are taken into account. In this paper we show that women workers are discriminated more, even in terms of wage, if they are in economically backward castes and religious minority groups.