Caste in Different Mould: Understanding the Discrimination

Abstract

Too many discussions in India take place in a data vacuum. Though matters have improved in several areas—the publishing of corporate results and GDP data on a quarterly basis and inflation on a weekly basis being examples—several critical pieces of legislation have been passed in the recent past with absolutely no data. The Right to Education Act, for instance, seeks to rid the country of ‘unrecognised’ private schools but there is no authentic official data on the number of students being educated at such schools or how their performance compares with government schools. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, similarly, is aimed at tackling the country’s unemployment problem but without a clear understanding of the scale of unemployment (unemployment surveys are conducted once every four years). Thousands of crore rupees are spent each year on various anti-poverty measures, but the government has no data on household incomes, which is why poverty estimates are mired in controversy. The lack of data on income is also a huge problem when it comes to policies like caste-based reservation, and now even religion-based affirmative action, since there is very little data on just how serious the discrimination is, assuming it does exist.

This book plugs this gap. We know that scheduled castes as a group are disadvantaged vis-à-vis the other backward classes and upper caste Hindus, but how serious is this discrimination and, more importantly, what is the reason for it? This book tells you that much of the reason lies in disparate levels of education, urbanisation and even the state of residence of these groups. A particular innovation is to track the rise in income levels of different caste groups as they move from one occupation group to another; from one educational level to another; from rural to urban settings and, within this, from small cities to large metros. A similar exercise has been done, though with a little less detail, for different religious groups.

The data used is from the National Council of Applied Economic Research’s (NCAER) annual National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure (NSHIE) which, under a different name in the past, has been conducted almost annually since 1985 and is recognised as the regular data-set for income and consumption at the household level. In the past, NCAER and Business Standard have collaborated to write up this data, but this book is an independent effort by the three of us. The data-set belongs to NCAER, but the analyses are ours and NCAER is not responsible for it in any way.

The principal aim of the book is to anchor all debate on caste/religionbased affirmative action in data. And, as such, it is the first definitive income-based analysis of caste/religious groups in the country. We would like to take this opportunity to thank, in no particular order, all those who have played a big role in this work. Suman Bery, Director-General of NCAER, for allowing us to use the NCAER data and, more importantly, for his unstinted support of the NSHIE survey and for providing an overall framework that we, as researchers and journal ists, may not necessarily have had. T N Ninan, Editorial Director of Business Standard, not only for the role he played in cementing the NCAER–Business Standard partnership, but also for providing conceptual clarity in the reports we wrote together. Surjit S Bhalla, economist–fund manager–psephologist–and–more, for putting us on track with a series of articles he was principal author of on the subject in the Business Standard. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of the Centre for Policy Research, for writing an insightful introduction to this book but, more importantly, for his out-of-the-box thinking and ability to situate all such data within a much larger framework.

For their guidance and support, we thank the members of the advisory committee of NCAER—S L Rao, Chairman, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru; D V S Sastry, Director-General, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority, Hyderabad; and Shubhashis Gangopadhyay. We gratefully acknowledge the committee’s generous contribution of time, effort and expertise under the most stringent schedules. We also extend our gratitude to NCAER advisors and consultants, N S Sastry, Former Director-General, National Sample Survey Organisation and Central Statistical Organisation, and Senior Advisor, NCAER; Anil Rai, Senior Scientist, Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute. We would also like to thank Sunil Pew and Jayant Das who conceptualised and designed the cover of this book. To all of you, and the others who have remained unnamed, a big thank you from all of us, and the promise/threat that this is the first of many more books on the subject from us over the years.

To you, dear reader, we promise a rich repast of data and perspectives on how to go beyond the surface on such matters of vital importance. To researchers and policymakers who will use/misuse this data, even if you don’t find our conclusions acceptable, we hope this will challenge you to come out with other data-sets/analyses.

Keywords: Caste, Caste Inequality, Not Caste in Stone, Income, Expenditure, Savings, State Profiles