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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The many shades of caste inequality in India -Roshan Kishore

The many shades of caste inequality in India -Roshan Kishore

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published Published on Oct 18, 2016   modified Modified on Oct 18, 2016
-Livemint.com

We don’t know enough about the socio-economic status of different caste groups, and our political class doesn’t want us to know

Over the past couple of years, one Indian state after another has been on the boil because of caste-based agitations. The latest state to be engulfed in caste conflict is Maharashtra, where a stir by the dominant caste of Marathas seems to have led other backward classes (OBCs) and Dalits (Scheduled Castes or SCs) to oppose Maratha demands in unison.

A quarter century after the recommendations of the Mandal Commission (which led to reservations for OBCs) and more than half a century after the Indian Constitution mandated reservations for SCs and Scheduled Tribes (STs or Adivasis), caste inequality and caste-based reservations continue to remain contentious issues in the Indian polity.

A Mint analysis of a number of socio-economic indicators suggest that while caste continues to remain an important fault line in India’s economy and polity, there are huge variations in the socio-economic status and clout of different ‘backward’ classes and caste groups.

While the STs and SCs still lag behind other castes on most socio-economic criteria, the OBCs are almost at par with other social groups (read upper castes) on several parameters.

For instance, the OBCs are almost at par with upper castes in terms of composition of rural incomes and are investing much more than the latter in agriculture. SCs on the other hand are mired in deep distress and lag behind in ownership of productive resources in farming, as an earlier Plain Facts column .

On another key metric: the ownership of firms and enterprises, the OBCs score far higher than the SCs and STs, the latest economic census shows.

The economic census, which was conducted in 2013 and covered 58.5 million economic enterprises, provides data on social-group wise ownership of proprietary establishments. The relative ownership figures for each social group can be calculated by dividing these figures with the share of each social group in the workforce (as per 2011-12 NSSO data). A relative share of one indicates proportionate ownership while a relative share less than 1 indicates less than proportionate ownership. The NSSO data on caste break-up is based on self-reported data but is among the most credible and updated data on caste-wise break-up of the population.

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Livemint.com, 18 October, 2016, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/ino3tfMYVsd6VVGUdWXB8H/The-many-shades-of-caste-inequality-in-India.html


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