❈ ❈ ❈

Job Losses Among SCs Were Three Times Higher than for Upper Castes: Economist Ashwini Deshpande

Shreehari Paliath

[About 10 crore to 12 crore Indians lost their jobs in the immediate aftermath of the countrywide lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19, IndiaSpend reported in April.

But the lockdown has impacted the disadvantaged caste groups with a far greater magnitude than the upper castes, found a new paper investigating if the pandemic is a “leveller” of social distinctions. It noted that “while all caste groups lost jobs in the first month of the lockdown, the job losses for the lowest-ranked castes are greater by a factor of three”.

In a paper in March, economist Ashwini Deshpande and co-author Rajesh Ramchandran showed that children from socially disadvantaged groups are more likely to become stunted. That incidence of stunting among upper-caste children in India is similar to the national average for the low middle-income countries while stunting among Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes children are around 10 percentage to 15 percentage points higher.

In this interview, she talks about the impact of Covid-19 on vulnerable caste groups, the issue of reservation and caste, and the Centre’s reservation quota for upper castes on economic grounds.]

Excerpts from the interview:

SP: A July 2020 paper by you and Ramachandran – to understand the critical role of social identity in lockdown – induced job losses – found that while Covid-19 has led to job losses across caste groups, SC, ST and OBC are the worst affected. How has the pandemic exposed structural issues in our economy and social hierarchy?

AD: In our earlier research, we had found significant caste gaps in a variety of outcomes [like] education, occupation [and] early childhood health indicators. In our July paper on the impact of Covid-19 on employment, we report that the share of individuals with more than 12 years of schooling is 37% for upper castes and 17% for SCs, and note that upper castes hold 3% of daily-wage jobs, which are precarious with no security, compared to [the] 16% among SCs.

In this paper, we show that although all caste groups saw job losses immediately after the lockdown, the rate of job losses among SCs was three times higher than the upper castes. Since the upper castes have more access to education and thereby have more secure jobs, they are less vulnerable to economic shocks such as the one produced by the lockdown.

Therefore, we see that pre-existing faultlines, structural inequalities based on caste identity, reveal themselves yet again in the immediate post-lockdown job losses.

SP: Talking about structural inequalities, how do you view reservation for the EWS in education and government jobs and its impact on affirmative action, particularly when marginalised groups such as SCs, STs and OBCs already earn less household income than the national average. The Supreme Court, in August, decided to form a five-judge Constitution bench to look into the pleas opposing the EWS quota.

AD: The government calls it a quota for economically weaker sections, but I prefer to call this the 10% quota, which is an accurate description of what it is. The income ceiling [Rs 8 lakh per annum] below which EWS is defined is so high that 98% of Indians fall under it. Thus, it is completely inaccurate to call it the EWS quota.

This quota fundamentally alters the raison d’etre of India’s reservation policy, which was designed as a policy of compensatory discrimination. The reservation was meant to provide a limited antidote to groups that faced discrimination and stigmatisation and were therefore under-represented in critical decision-making positions. That is why Dalits and Adivasis were identified as beneficiaries of the reservation policy. By allowing for reservations on economic grounds, this new quota marks a major departure from the role of reservations as a policy of compensatory discrimination.

SP: The Supreme Court has also agreed to examine a petition for extending SC status to Dalit Christians or Christians of Scheduled Castes origin. The plea seeks that the SC category be made religion-neutral. What is your view of the status of Dalits in minority religions?

AD: Scheduled Castes, OBC and ST are legal categories created for the purpose of affirmative action. The schedule (say for Scheduled Castes) is a list of specific jati (caste) names that qualify for inclusion. So, groups that do not get included in the category then get classified under “Other” groups (general category).

If a group is not listed in any of the legal categories, data are not provided separately for them as a category, because they do not belong to a separate legal category. Dalit is a term used by members of the SC community as a term of pride. It is a political category and not a legal category.

Some members of the Christian or Islamic faith have been arguing that they have Dalit status or lower caste within their religion and they are entitled to SC status. But considering that they have not been [legally] assigned SC status, from data [on Dalits] you cannot identify who the SC would have been had they received the status. [Editor’s note: Paragraph 3 of the Presidential Order of 1950 limited the classification of Scheduled Castes initially only to Hindus. The order was amended to include Sikhs in 1956 and Buddhists in 1990, but Dalits who converted to Islam or Christianity remain out of its ambit.]

This brings to the fore a critical feature about Indian data on caste. The last caste-based census was [conducted] in 1931, where we had data on each jati separately. The Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011 was supposed to provide such data, but it has not been released yet.

The Constitution notes that all citizens are equal regardless of caste, religion, ethnicity, etcetera. It guarantees equal treatment. So, in principle, the caste-based reservation should not be there. But BR Ambedkar argued that there is a difference between substantive equality and formal equality. The Constitution guarantees formal equality.

How does one get from formal to substantive equality? By creating conditions to level the playing field; individuals from groups that have suffered due to inequality (not economic inequality) need to be identified in a schedule for affirmative action.

This is the reason we have caste-based affirmative action along with an idea to build a casteless society. So we have data for groups included in the government-mandated lists (schedules) but everyone else, who is not entitled to affirmative action, is in the residual “Others”.

SP: There have been agitations for reservation by even dominant castes such as Jats and Marathas in the last few years. Is there a need to reimagine reservation and caste identities through data? If so, how must it be done?

AD: If the issue is poverty and economic deprivation, which characterises millions of Indians across the caste spectrum, including upper castes, then the government should absolutely and urgently invoke and properly implement a slew of anti-poverty and employment-generation policies. There is no doubt that all Indians, especially the poor, need to be protected from hunger, ill-health and lack of shelter. They need education and access to health.

But reservations in public sector jobs and colleges is not going to ensure this. Reservations are not the answer to every social and economic problem.

As we have seen during the Covid-19 lockdown-induced economic distress, those with precarious daily wage and casual jobs have been the most vulnerable to falling into deep poverty. The pandemic has emphasised, with utmost urgency, the need to have social and economic safety nets, stable employment, a combination of cash and in-kind transfers to ensure that basic needs are satisfied.

We have also seen how lack of access to good, or even basic, healthcare can have catastrophic consequences. All these issues should be on top of the policy agenda of every government.

SP: Hindu nationalist politics has assumed centre stage in India, even as caste continues to remain an important electoral factor. How much of a bearing would caste and the emphasis upon expanding the scope of reservations have on electoral politics?

AD: Caste is an important marker of socio-economic status and inequality. Reservation is only one of the anti-discriminatory policies that the government can use. Reservations make the composition of elite positions more representative of the underlying social composition. [For example, there is representation of SC (15%), ST (7.5%) and OBC (27%) in central government jobs and public universities; this increases representation of marginalised groups in such domains which are generally over-represented by upper castes.] But to loosen the stranglehold of caste inequality much more needs to be done.

If Hindu nationalist parties believe that all castes are equal, then their policies should reflect that belief. They should put in place policies that genuinely work towards eliminating both social and economic inequality between caste groups.

This would mean very strict action against any expression of untouchability, a complete elimination of the degrading and humiliating system of manual scavenging, zero tolerance towards atrocities and violence towards Dalits, a strong anti-discriminatory framework, strict action against hate crimes, no social persecution of Dalits for pursuing traditional occupations related to cattle, leather and meat, among other measures. These would be over and above the anti-poverty and employment-generation economic measures, along with the provision of basic health, education, food and shelter.

SP: How have the existing gender disparities in India impacted women? Your paper found that women who were employed in the pre-lockdown phase were roughly 20 percentage points less likely to be employed in the post-lockdown phase.

AD: Unlike the international experience where more women have lost jobs during lockdown than men, in India, more men lost jobs in the first month of lockdown compared to women. Elsewhere in the world this is because the sectors that have reported the first job losses employ women in large numbers.

In India, the experience is different because of the large and persistent pre-existing gaps between male and female labour force participation rates and employment. Because many more men were employed before the lockdown, in absolute numbers, many more men (10.4 crore) lost employment in April compared to women (1.7 crore). However, conditional on being employed immediately pre-lockdown, women were less likely to be employed in the first month of the lockdown. This means that women suffered disproportionately more.

SP: What comparisons can we draw between race and caste-based affirmative action in India and the United States from the perspective of economic and social justice?

AD: The term affirmative action is used to describe a set of policies (quotas in India and preferences in the US), but in their operationalisation, the specifics differ a great deal across the two countries.

For example, the private sector in India does not have affirmative action. In the US, the scope of affirmative action is smaller but wherever it exists it does not distinguish between the public and private sector. So universities that have affirmative action, have it regardless of it being public or private. Further, the US Supreme Court has explicitly prohibited quotas. Institutions can have preferences or aim towards diversity, but cannot institute quotas.

In terms of social justice, obviously both countries have a major problem that affirmative action is trying to address – racism in the US and casteism in India. In both the countries, affirmative action can only be one of the many instruments, in what ought to be a large, interconnected menu of policies, to combat a problem as deep-rooted and multidimensional as racism/casteism.

(Ashwini Deshpande is the founding director of the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis at Ashoka University. Shreehari Paliath is an electrical and electronics engineer, has a master’s degree in development from Azim Premji University, and is also a journalist. Article courtesy: IndiaSpend, India’s first data-driven, public-interest journalism nonprofit.)

❈ ❈ ❈

India’s Strict Lockdown Pushed its Dalits, Muslims and Adivasis Deeper into Debt

Shreya Raman & Sadhika Tiwari

As millions in the country dealt with a loss of livelihood and food insecurity during the Covid-19-induced lockdown, marginalised and minority communities fared much worse, a survey representative of nearly 1,00,000 families in 11 states has found.

As livelihoods of Dalits, Muslims, Adivasis and Nomadic and Denotified Tribes disappeared, the loss of income caused an increase in the uptake of loans, including from local moneylenders at high rates of interest.

Further, in a majority of these community hamlets, people have not received government relief. Most also reported facing discrimination in relief provision, the survey led by Praxis India, a Delhi-based non-profit, found. Children have dropped out of school to support families in remunerative labour in nearly half the 476 hamlets and mohallas (urban areas) where the survey was conducted.

Ostracisation and discrimination against these communities also worsened during the lockdown, representatives of 31 locations (7.25%) said.

The financial crisis and consequent indebtedness might push many into forced and bonded labour, the survey report has concluded.

The survey

The data was collected between April and June by civil society organisations including National Alliance Group of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes and Gethu Group workers’ think tank, led by Praxis. Data such as access to and registration under government schemes and benefits, uptake of loans, jobs and livelihood, and social issues were collected by interviewing one or two representatives from each location.

Put together, the 476 locations in 11 states – Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal –were home to 98,000 families. Each of these locations was categorised under one or more of Dalit, Muslim, Adivasi and DNT categories.

Muslims constitute 13.4% of India’s population and are its largest minority community. Dalits comprise 16.6% and are a historically marginalised community.

India has the world’s largest Adivasi population, which makes up 8.6% of the country’s population, with 705 recognised Scheduled Tribes, Denotified and Nomadic Tribes form 10% of the country’s population.

These tribes were listed as criminal tribes during British rule under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871, they were delisted or “denotified” in 1952. Despite this, they continue to face stigma, poverty and marginalisation.

Loss of livelihood

The announcement of the lockdown brought with it job loss, reverse migration of informal workers and labourers, and restrictions on movement and mobility. Reliance on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme increased, but people of the four marginalised communities from four in 10 villages got no work under the scheme.

Among all groups, a higher proportion of DNT locations had no MGNREGS jobs. Of the 114 DNT locations included in the study, nearly half fell under peri-urban or urban areas. Moreover, in 55-61% of the rural DNT areas, no one got a job under the scheme. While the proportion of locations where no one got a job under the scheme decreased for other communities from April to June, DNT locations increased.

Restrictions on mobility meant extreme difficulties for DNT communities that still pursue a nomadic way of life along with their animals, the report noted. Artistes and performers from the community had no work due to the lack of tourism and travel and many were forced to take up manual work.

Most members of the Muslim community reported they were self-employed, but the lack of stable livelihood options was found across the minority communities, forcing them to take heavy loans.

Nearly nine in ten Dalit locations reported an increase in loans and indebtedness, this increase was 78% in DNT areas, 64% in Muslim areas and 47% in tribal areas.

Loans, mostly taken from employers, neighbours, relatives and money lenders and at a high interest rate, have been a trigger for other social and economic exploitation including trafficking, bonded labour and child labour, said the report.

The Banchada community, a DNT, was found to be surviving only on high-interest loans from private money lenders in Neemuch, Madhya Pradesh, the report said, noting a consequent fear of increased trafficking of girls of the community.

Lack of access to relief

The Rs 1.7-lakh-crore financial package announced by the central government in March was a rehash of old schemes and falls short, IndiaSpend had reported in March.

The survey report found that concerted efforts are not being taken to mitigate variances in the uptake of these schemes and minority communities have not been able to access entitlements. A lack of documentation and the fear of reaching out to access entitlements was found across the communities.

In over 70% of the surveyed locations, registration of migrants who had returned was not even initiated, alienating them from access to government relief measures.

While in 62% Dalit areas, 74% Muslim areas and 86% tribal areas everyone received ration supplies as per existing quotas, the coverage of additional ration as a measure of relief – announced by the Centre as part of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana on March 26 – was limited.

Among the groups, access to government schemes was the lowest among DNTs. The survey found that state prejudice against the DNTs prevailed in most states. This, coupled with the community’s disconnect from the village administration, lack of documentation and awareness and the stigma of criminality, kept them from accessing these entitlements and services.

No families received scheme benefits in 4% to 34% of the 53 Muslim areas. “Muslims fear approaching any state institution for accessing any schemes or for any kind of redressal for the fear of discrimination,” the report concluded. In the Muslim community, the worst access to schemes was seen in Bihar, where communities engaged in inter-generational sex work were surveyed.

These communities are the most vulnerable within the Muslims, who neither have voter identification nor Aadhaar cards and therefore had no access to schemes and entitlements.

Amongst the Dalits, the comparatively privileged were able to access benefits and those with the power to demand – leaving the most vulnerable members excluded. Those unable to access any benefits blamed the lack of information and fear of approaching service providers due to impending discrimination, corruption and bribery.

The remote location and lack of documentation kept the tribals from accessing entitlements – they were able to access state government-run schemes as compared to schemes directly implemented by the Centre, like cash transfers under Jan Dhan, Ujjwala or Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana.

Marginalisation and discrimination

The pandemic further aggravated these minority groups’ marginalisation and disadvantaged situation.

Muslims lag behind on most human development indicators, and during the lockdown, were further stigmatised as alleged carriers of the novel coronavirus, specifically after the Tablighi Jamaat incident, said the survey report.

By the end of March, the number of fake stories debunked by fact-checking organisations increased from 15 in the week beginning March 16 to 33 in the week beginning March 30, with the Tablighi Jamaat event at Nizamuddin Markaz in Delhi being highlighted as a vector of the novel coronavirus, IndiaSpend reported in May, based on a study on misinformation in India by scholars from the University of Michigan.

Nearly 6% of Dalit hamlets reported facing discrimination due to the fear of the novel coronavirus. They could also not access cremation grounds freely because of their caste.

Around 60% of the data collected from DNTs were from the communities involved in sex work or dance bars, occupations that are stigmatised not only by society but also by the administration.

“The local power structure holds strong biases” against the DNTs, said the report. Even during the pandemic, the authorities never reached out to them and in some instances, their entry was restricted in villages. The report mentioned cases of police raids in the name of sex work, where young girls were been picked up by the police.

(Shreya Raman is a data analyst and Sadhika Tiwari is a principal correspondent with IndiaSpend. Article courtesy: IndiaSpend and Scroll.in.)