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May 31, 2006
Questions and Answers: Caste Discrimination
Thanks to a blog respondent, I feel prompted to answer some lingering questions several have asked:
Questions:
Why do you think there should be reservation on a caste-based system?
Why can’t we have basic encouraging programs from the government like free education and stipends from schools - higher education for the backward castes?
Why don’t you think the reservation system spoils excellence?
Why are politicians not implementing the quota system in the number of Ministers and Members of Parliament?
Why do you want to reverse the whole process? Do you mean that for 3,000 years the upper castes ruled, and so now let the backward castes rule and the upper castes be their slaves?
Aren’t we talking about making the same mistake our ancestors made for centuries?
Answers:
We have two major problems and challenges in India.
1. Caste Discrimination and Practice
A caste analysis of India cannot and must not be ignored for the good and well being of our country. If we are not proactive about including the 70% majority backward castes and Dalits in the fruits of development, our country is headed for big trouble. All our economic progress and achievements will be swallowed up by the kind of violence and rebellion we now see in the extreme Maoist and Naxalite movements that are spread from Nepal to Tamil Nadu. Who are these extremists except Tribals, Dalits and Backward Castes who have lost out on India's post-Independence progress?
This is because the English-educated upper caste of the 'India Shining' crowd are not even aware of the oppression and discrimination levied against Dalits, Tribals and the Backward Castes, leave alone taking the initiative to do something positive to include them in national development. I grant that there are those like our previous Prime Minister, V.P. Singh, and others from the upper castes who have tried to be inclusive in their thinking. However, these are of course the exceptions and not the rule.
We must note that the caste system has always been a policy of reservation. It has guaranteed 100% reservation of all the lucrative jobs, economic growth, and power (including religious power) for the minority elitist 15% upper castes for several millennia.
It is now the responsibility of the upper castes to determine how best they are going to undo the historical and present discrimination against the Dalits, Tribals and Backward Castes which has ranged from discrimination in marriage to education to economics to power to religion.
Why do you think the present government of Tamil Nadu, after coming to power immediately announced the bill to allow Dalits to become priests in government-aided temples? Why are Dalits not allowed to become priests in the first place? What about priesthood for Dalits in the major temples run and operated by the Brahmanical order?
I think the upper castes should lead the struggle for abolishing the caste system in the Parliament. Once the caste system itself is abolished and we do not face division and discrimination on the basis of caste, perhaps we can then think of economic criteria as a solution to reservation.
2. Hypocrisy in the Higher Levels
I do not deny that that there are the upper caste poor who must struggle to obtain seats in higher educational institutions. Some Christians face the same fate -- they are from Dalit backgrounds and their economic condition is pathetic. Muslims are no exception; they have a considerable number of people who are poor.
I think one of the major problems of the nation is the hypocrisy of our politicians and their policies towards education. The government should have long ago established English-medium schools with access to education of the vernacular language. Privately run English-medium schools have proliferated in the last couple of decades. This is a great business once again for the English-educated, powerful, elitist castes and those who can afford to join these schools. Those who are able to join such schools are thus given an unfair advantage in terms of training and education.
Why are all the institutes of higher learning in English when our national language is supposed to be Hindi? Who have the politicians tried to fool all these years except the majority Dalits and Backward Castes? Why do our politicians of the South who speak so passionately about education in their mother tongue send all their children to English-medium schools?
If the government had started English-medium schools for the Dalits and the Backward Castes 50 years ago, they would have made a clear statement that they had a planned program to include the deprived castes in national development and power.
While I agree with the argument about the state of the upper caste poor, I also must look clearly at the state of the Backward Castes and Dalit poor. Unfortunately, the percentage of the poor and those who are in actual back-breaking poverty who come from a Dalit, Tribal or Backward Caste background is completely disproportionate to the percentage of the poor among the upper caste.
What are our solutions for those people? We have to be inclusive in our thinking as Indians and find a solution for the majority population.
Posted by klajja at 11:38 AM
May 28, 2006
The Caste Bias in the Indian Media
I have written earlier that the caste bias in most sections of the India-based English language media became very obvious during the debates on reservation or affirmative action benefits for OBC students. Many a Dalit leader has told me in recent years that a major part of the problem in Indian media is that Dalits have no voice. The lower castes have no voice as most of the media in India – both print and electronic –is owned and run by the upper caste fraternity. Most of them have grown up in the privileges accorded to them by the Brahmanical caste system that gave them all the privileges (in fact affirmative action!) through the discriminatory system.
The Western media ignorantly buys everything served up by the upper caste media in India and is thereby also guilty of misrepresenting the caste divide in India. The majority millions are conveniently forgotten.
The question must be asked: ‘’Where on earth do we find that a majority as big as 70% of the population is unable to express their own viewpoint and find their own voice?’’
Are the power brokers in society and the media barons in the world listening?
Please read the enclosed story from Shivam Vij in Lucknow, representative of the struggle of the majority voiceless to find a legitimate voice and place in the system.
Caste in the Newsroom?By Shivam Vij
Lucknowhttp://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid==Web2196523711Hoot122711%20AM1229&pn==1
Caste discrimination in the newsroom? Rubbish, say most upper caste journalists in Uttar Pradesh. It's all over, say backward caste journalists.
How many journalists in the Lucknow office of Dainik Jagran , India's largest selling newspaper, belong to the Schedule Castes or the 'Other Backward Castes'?
"I have never counted and I will never count. Caste is not an issue in this organisation," says Dilip Awasthi, a senior editor with Dainik Jagran. But a backward caste journalist says that Dainik Jagran in Lucknow in particular has been run as a "Brahminical paper".
Unlike Awasthi, backward caste journalists can count their numbers on the fingertips. Ask them and they start listing names — an exercise which some upper-caste scribes are also able to undertake. There are not even half a dozen Dalit journalists in Lucknow, most of whom do not handle the political beat, and no Dalit journalist works for an English paper. As for OBC's, you will find at the most one in every paper.
Why are the numbers so few?
"They don't go to schools!" says Awasthi.
And the ones who do? Has he never met a single SC/OBC journalist who's talented enough for a job?
"Never. They can't write a single sentence properly."
Is there deliberate discrimination against lower caste candidates who apply for employment?
"I refuse employment to 15 people every day, and 14 of them are upper caste Hindus. All that matters is talent. Go to media schools in the city and ask them how many Dalits or OBC's are enrolled with them. The caste situation in the media is no different from what it is in society."
Off the record, a Dalit journalist alleges: "I was denied employment by a paper because the editor said I wrote like the spokesperson of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is not true. That their reporters write like spokespersons of [the upper-caste dominated] Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a non-issue for the paper."
Interestingly, no one has ever heard of employment discrimination against Muslims in the Lucknow press. In fact it is said that every political bureau has at least one Muslim in it because it is felt that only a Muslim can get stories from inside Muslim society. (Since there has never been a Hindu-Muslim riot in Lucknow, communal relations here are much better than riot-affected cities.)
"Naturally," says Awasthi of Jagran, "I would like to have a Muslim to cover Muslims and a woman to cover women's issues."
And a Dalit to cover Dalits?
"But where are they?" he exclaims.
"How is it possible," questions political reporter Kamal Jayant of Aaj, "that in a country with a huge unemployment problem no Dalit comes to them for a reporter's job?"
"The root of the problem is ownership. When the media is owned by the upper caste, it has to be dominated by the upper caste," says Kashi Prasad of Eenadu TV Uttar Pradesh, who does not write his surname, Yadav, in his visiting card. Journalists belonging to castes that figure at the lower end of the caste system often hide or change their surnames lest they invite prejudice.
JP Shukla, Lucknow correspondent of The Hindu, very emphatically says there is no question of any kind of employment discrimination, because: "An educated Dalit prefers his reserved job in a government office rather than a hard life as an underpaid stringer with a Hindi daily. And English dailies take the convent educated lot." Amit Sharma, Lucknow correspondent of The Indian Express denies that there is employment discrimination, and if the backward caste journalist feels it, "it could be because of his inner feelings [read: complex] that he belongs to a lower caste."
Caste here may get inter-twined with class. An upper caste journalist privately admits that he may unconsciously discriminate on class basis, but for backward caste aspirants this discrimination is received as casteist. It is his caste because of which he lacks 'class'. Amidst all this generalisation, backward caste journalists are not short of examples. AP Dewan, a Doordarshan reporter who is Dalit by caste, knows two cases off hand. He remembers one Yogendra Singh who committed suicide because no paper would give him a job, and how Doordarshan would not even take one Dharmendra Singh as a free apprentice. The latter, an alumus of IIMC (Indian Institute of Mass Communications, Delhi), had to forgo the electronic media and work with Rashtriya Sahara in Noida. At the same time, Dewan claims as President of the now defunct Doordarshan India Journalists Association, that jobs reserved for backward castes in Doordarshan have not been filled for years.
Some backward caste journalists, very wary of being quoted, recall how they personally faced hardships in initially getting employment, as compared to upper-caste colleagues.
"A Muslim friend called me the other day to arrange a newspaper internship for her daughter. But I don't recall any backward caste person approaching me for help in employment," says Ratan Mani Lal, Director of the Jaipuria Institute of Mass Communications.
"Employment in the private sector is often given on the basis of connections, and upper caste individuals tend to have connections amongst upper castes." says Vivek Kumar, who left his job with The Pioneer in Lucknow in 2000 to become an academic. He now teaches at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) in Delhi.
The Dalit and the OBC suffer from stereotypes of talent. "It is presumed that a candidate won't be talented because he is Dalit," says Dewan.
About this tricky issue of talent, Kumar of JNU says: "This is exactly the same as in reserved jobs for backward castes. First it was 'candidate not available' and now it is 'candidate not suitable'. And who decides a candidate's suitability? The upper-caste editor." So would he support reservation in the private media? "Why not? Reservation is nothing but equality of opportunity."
The new Congress-led government at the centre has promised to look into the area of caste-based reservation in the private sector. If and when that happens, it will affect the media as well, and you may begin to see the bylines of a greater variety of castes.
That was about employment, but those who do manage to get a job, do they face discrimination at the work place? Once again upper caste journalists say an emphatic no and backward caste journalists say an emphatic yes.
"Between 1996 an '99 I was with Hindustan," remembers Kashi Prasad of E-TV, "I was posted in Sultanpur when the paper established its office there. As a Yadav I was the only journalist there belonging to a backward caste. I would sit in the same room as my junior upper caste colleagues, and local leaders would come and touch their feet and ignore me. So I asked them to shift to another room." These seemingly petty problems become very humiliating when an individual goes through them.
Discrimination manifests itself in the form of marginalisation. Backward caste journalists say they are marginalised not only in places like the Press Club but also inside the newsroom, where upper caste journalists may form a closely knit community.
Dewan of Doordarshan claims that in office he is not given basic facilities like a stenographer or a computer or air-conditioning, which have been given to journalists junior to him. Is he sure this is because of his caste? "Absolutely because of that!" he says, "But this is nothing. In the media in UP Dalits and OBC's face much worse. They are forced to be submissive and have to quietly endure everything."
Amit Sharma, Lucknow correspondent of The Indian Express, confirmed that backward caste journalists in UP face prejudice amongst their fraternity. "Whatever they say is taken lightly and often ridiculed," he says, "and this sometimes makes them irritable and affects their self-esteem." Sharma, however, denies discrimination in employment.
Kashi Prasad of E-TV says, "Not only is there greater discrimination in districts and small towns, a lot many journalists in Lucknow come from small town or rural backgrounds. They carry a greater burden of caste than one would ordinarily perceive in Lucknow."
However, JP Shukla of The Hindu, who says he is himself from a rural background, denies that there is any such thing as caste bias amongst journalists. Shukla, a Brahmin by caste, says that the primary caste equation in UP is that of a clash between Dalits and OBC's, and the upper-castes have no role in it. (During an earlier interview for a story on The Hoot, Shukla had read excerpts from a book of memoirs that he was writing, in Hindi, which exalted the caste system.) Secondly, says Shukla, that Maywati and the BSP are such a powerful political tool in UP that nobdu dares discriminitae against a Dalit.
After the Mandal Commission report of 1991, says Kashi Prasad, "Society was polarised into those who were for caste-based reservation in government jobs and those who were against it. Upper caste journalists, seething in anger about reservations, have been prone to prejudice against backward caste individuals in the office." There is thus a great need for backward caste journalists to 'prove' their merit. The problem with this, for one, is that a backward caste journalist is seen first as belonging to a 'low' caste and then as an individual.
Pawan Kumar, a Dalit who works as a sub-editor with Aaj , says that a backward caste scribe has to work much harder to be accepted, whereas his upper caste colleagues would be regularly promoted even when they are not meritorious.
The claim is buttressed by Vivek Kumar of JNU with the example of a friend who would file his stories only in his first name. But the day he started adding his surname Shukla, he was surprised to find his byline on page one off and on. "Now his name bore the burden of his caste," he says. On the other hand, Kashi Prasad claims he was not given an independent beat in a newspaper for years, unlike his upper-caste colleagues.
How caste biases operate in the coverage of caste politics has been documented earlier by a couple of stories in The Hoot. But apart from elections, what about the coverage of caste on issues like caste discrimination in society, cases of caste-based violence, etc.? Are they given due space? If it's newsworthy, it finds a place in the paper, says, Jayant of Aaj. "Thanks to competition," he says "if one paper doesn't carry it, another does. But what angle such stories are given may be problematic in some cases." At the height of the Mandal Commission imbroglio in 1991, he says, stories of upper caste protests were exaggerated by the media with an activist intent. It is very obvious, therefore, that you never find a feature in a UP paper about caste discrimination in society, the sort that appear in Delhi editions of papers like The Indian Express and The Hindu. Vivek Kumar of JNU says that while at the Pioneer, he once interviewed the then UP Governor Suraj Bhan, a Dalit, and asked him questions on the position of Dalits in society 48 years after independence. What should have been a page-one eight-column interview, he says, was reduced to two columns on page four. Some days later the paper sent another correspondent to interview the Governor, this time without any 'Dalit angle', and it was right there: eight columns on page one.
Vijay Dubey of Eenadu TV points out a rift between Thakur and Brahmin journalists in Gorakhpur over some local issue recently, and other backward caste journalists readily provide specifics of how a journalist belonging to a certain caste would often be assigned the task of covering the leader of that caste. The logic is that caste affinity helps you get a scoop.
But this argument is turned on its head when backward caste journalists are said to use their caste to get close to politicians and benefit in getting scoops and other necessities of life. "This is unfortunate branding," says Dewan of Doordarshan, "Before I helped save Mayawati's life in the 1995 "guest-house" attack on her, no one knew what community I belonged to. But after that the world around me changed completely. Upper-caste journalists labelled me a Mayawati stooge and in 1998, got chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav to get me transferred out of UP. Later when Mayawati again became CM, some upper-caste journalists instigated her against me and as a result, she hasn't spoken to me for 18 months."
Journalists in the English papers may be a little more progressive, but Kumar of JNU complains that the upper-caste individual can choose to be anything in the garb of progressiveness. A source in The Times of India says, "Caste is always implicit. You are always aware of what is the caste of which person and what that means in caste hierarchy."
While local English papers remain urban-centric, Hindi papers do cover grassroots level activities, socio-religious affairs and some amount of rural reporting also finds space. But in all this, it is an upper-caste ("Brahminical") culture that is reflected; the lives and customs of a segregated, backward caste society are unimportant.
There is no dialogue over this issue; nobody seems to see the need to give so much as a patient hearing to the grievances of journalists belonging to depressed castes. The arrogance with which senior journalists like Awasthi of Jagran dismiss the issue, suggests that a Dalit journalist is persona non grata for them.
Says Vivek Kumar of JNU, "When you live life in your own group you never think you are excluding anyone. The only time you think there is discrimination is when Mayawati dismisses you as Manuwaadi."
Posted by klajja at 07:56 AM
May 26, 2006
The ‘Merit’ and ‘Quality’ Argument: Not Simply Valid in the Present Controversy Over Affirmative Action for OBCs
Even as I write this, the UPA government along with its allies has announced that it will bring a bill in the monsoon session of the Indian Parliament to give 27% reservations (guaranteed seats through “affirmative action’ rights) to Other Backward Caste (OBC) students in institutes of higher learning. That the government is doing this is a statement to the undeniable reality of caste inequalities in the nation, one of the main factors behind the creation of two Indias – the “India Shining” of the English-educated upper caste elite and the “India in Darkness” of the lower castes and Dalits. The last election was a wake up call to the political parties that the “India Shining” slogan was a non-starter. The majority millions (Dalits, low caste) were not participants in the economic boom of the minority population.
Reservation (or affirmative action) is only the first step in undoing a wrong of 3,000 years. It is important that upper caste students do not think only of themselves. If their parents, elders and the Indian education system have not educated them on the caste problem in Indian society, it is time they read the works of Ambekdar, Phule, Periyar and a host of others. Isn’t it amazing how ignorant the powerful upper caste elite are about the system they imposed on the rest for millennia? Isn’t it surprising how caste consciousness is meticulously followed in our matrimonial advertisement columns and yet is mysteriously denied when it comes to the issue of reservations for OBC students?
Read the following excerpt from Ravishankar Arunachalam to understand how the reservation system has worked in the state of Tamil Nadu and how OBCs and Dalits have great merit and quality if they are given the opportunity.
Mathematics of Reservationsby Ravishankar Arunachalam
http://ncbc.nic.in/html/guideline.htm
http://ncbc.nic.in/html/creamylayer.htmImagine that the government came up with a proposal to build a new world-class technology institution to provide quality education to all students. Imagine, too, that a debate rages on the viability of building such an institution - in terms of the costs involved, student quality, desired outcomes etc. Now, imagine that such a debate takes place with little reference to IITs or the role they have played in technical education. Outrageous, you would think? Yet, something similar is happening in the reservation debate, both within and outside AID. The record of states which have implemented OBC reservations already is seldom brought up.
The Case of Tamil Nadu
States like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have already implemented reservation for OBCs in educational institutions. I will restrict my references to Tamil Nadu alone, since I do not know about the situation in other states. In Tamil Nadu, the total reservation is 69%, the split up for which is given [at] www.tn.gov.in/policynotes/bc_mbc_welfare.htm).
BCs and MBCs of Tamil Nadu are together equivalent to the “Other Backward Castes”, as they are referred to in the rest of the country. The most obvious observation from the table above is that the percentage of reservations is only equal to or lower than the percentage of the group in the overall population. So the reservation system is only trying to bring about proportional representation in educational institutions. It does not result in a reverse-discrimination (which would mean BCs get more than their proportional share in order to right historical wrongs), as many people claim. FCs, who form the “others”, still get the bulk of the 31% open-quota seats even though their population percentage is only 13%.
Overall, the experience with reservation has been very positive, and that is why there is wide-spread support for it in the state. The government health-care system in Tamil Nadu is better than most other states, and one reason has been the quality doctors that the system produces, a factor attributed to reservations. Many of them also opt to serve in rural areas. Not surprisingly, the TN chapter of the Indian Medical Association supports quotas for the OBCs.
Now it is not difficult to see why the anti-reservation polemic does not refer to states like Tamil Nadu with an OBC reservation record. It is because there are no instances of bridges cracking due to faulty design and patients dying due to incompetent doctors. These are often cited as the potential dangers due to reservations, either directly or more subtly as “quality will deteriorate”. I am not saying that there are no problems with govt doctors or hospitals in TN, but these problems are present in other states too, and the overall quality is still better in Tamil Nadu.
Who Gets In and Who Doesn’t?
Of course, forward castes aren’t happy with the situation, in spite of having a larger representation than their proportion in the population. The problem is that the total number of seats available is so low that most people are left out. But this is true of every single category, and not just FCs. Many of us, belonging to the forward castes, have a lot of friends who are “left out”, and feel outraged that its due to reservations (though many FC candidates score lower than even the reserved-category cut-off marks, and still blame reservations!). But the question to ask is: What about the lakhs of people from the MBCs and BCs who get left out? There are thousands of farmers’ daughters and weavers’ sons who either are unable to get to high school, or even if they do, do not get adequate support from home and are unable to afford coaching classes. We seldom know them and do not encounter them in our day-to-day lives. Yet they are real students, who are not only unable to get into these seats, but do not even get the opportunity to compete on an even footing. Are we pre-supposing that these students are all devoid of merit? According to the math above, for every FC friend of ours, there are at least 5 BC/MBC students who were denied the opportunity to get a seat. Who speaks for them ?
Economic Criterion
Such examples immediately bring up the point that reservations haven’t resulted in what they intended to do. Again, experience in Tamil Nadu points otherwise. There are any number of good students from backward castes who get into Anna university every year due to reservations, and excel in their careers.
In addition, there is already a provision for excluding the creamy layer of each caste from reservation (the list of conditions that exclude a person from enjoying OBC reservation benefits, is at http://ncbc.nic.in/html/creamylayer.html) so that only the needy get the benefits.
What about purely economic criteria, leaving out caste? While that might work in an ideal caste-less society, we have to acknowledge that caste is still a huge factor governing societal relationships today. Those who think that “caste is not a factor in urban India anymore”, need only look at the matrimonial columns of any popular newspaper.
The Supreme Court has also ruled that reservations based on purely economic conditions is unconstitutional. Besides, economic conditions can easily change over time, whereas caste does not offer any mobility. That is why, in spite of reservations, it takes a lot of time for real empowerment of the lower castes. And just because a caste is “considered” low, it won’t become an OBC. It has to satisfy several conditions to be included as socio-economically backward, for example that the proportion of graduates is 20% lower than the state or local average (complete list of guidelines at http://ncbcnic.in/html/guideline.html). The outrageous fact is that there still are clearly identifiable castes and sub-castes which fall in such categories, exposing the deep-rooted nature of our caste system.
Posted by klajja at 09:05 PM
May 16, 2006
The Dalit Nightmare Continues
The Dalit nightmare is endless. The connivance of village leaders (called ‘sarpanches’) and the police, coupled with social discrimination, makes Dalits suffer endless atrocities. Nearly 50,000 major atrocities against Dalits were reported in 2004 alone. Little or no action was taken against the culprits.
The enclosed story from Mahmadpur, just an hour’s drive from New Delhi, tells a sorry tale about what needs to take place for Dalits to find any justice. Dalits represent modern slavery’s biggest challenge. This is something for us to keep in mind even as the world begins to prepare for 2007 which commemorates a major anniversary of the law that abolished slavery in UK under the great work of William Wilberforce 200 years ago.
The modern world cannot rest until caste slavery is abolished.
Justice for Dalits Still a Dream: The Hindu http://www.hinduonnet.com/2006/05/11/stories/2006051105731100.htm by Siddarth NarrainIN FEBRUARY this year, Dalits in Mahmadpur — a small village near Kunjpura in Karnal district, Haryana — were attacked by members of the land-owning Rode community. Over 30 Dalits were seriously injured. The immediate provocation for the incident was a procession the Dalits were planning on the occasion of Ravidas Jayanthi. The police, on the advice of the village sarpanch (who belongs to the Rode community), refused to allow the procession to be taken past the "upper caste" area in the village. When the Dalits attempted to take out their procession, the police stopped them. The next day, in blatant violation of the law, the sarpanch allegedly instigated upper caste youth to attack the Dalits with hatchets and sickles by making announcements on a loudspeaker from the local temple. The attackers did not spare even women and children.
Tension between Dalits and the dominant castes in Mahmadpur had been simmering for a while. The Dalits had not supported the sarpanch during the panchayat elections, leading to resentment among his supporters. The sarpanch had cancelled a grant of land for a Ravidas ashram in the village made by his predecessor, and filed a case in the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging the decision. Added to this, a Brahmin girl from the village had eloped with a Dalit boy around four months before the incident. They got married recently.
The events that followed the February incident were shocking. Instead of arresting those who attacked the Dalits, the police arrested 15 Dalits on false charges ranging from "dacoity" to "attempt to murder." Instead of framing charges against the sarpanch for allegedly instigating the violence, the police tried to pressure the injured Dalits into forming a 10-member "peace committee," with equal representation from both communities, and suggested that they reach a settlement.
Only after sustained pressure from Dalit rights groups, and political parties such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Bahujan Samaj Party, did the police press charges against the sarpanch. He was finally arrested, weeks after the incident, and is now out on bail. Under sustained pressure, the police arrested eight other persons responsible for the attack. According to Sibash Kaviraj, Superintendent of Police, Karnal, the reason the sarpanch was not arrested earlier was to allow him to take part in the proceedings of the "peace committee."
The incident in Mahmadpur — a little over an hour's drive from Delhi — and its aftermath reflect a larger problem of the failure of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. It was enacted in 1989 specifically to act as a deterrent against physical, caste-based violence.
The Act widened the scope of criminal liability and included several acts of commission and omission not covered by the existing Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955. It provided for administrative measures for enforcement of the Act by making provisions for the establishment of Special Courts, and for the appointment of Special Public Prosecutors to conduct trials of offences under the Act. Special Courts have been given enormous powers, including the power to extern potential offenders from scheduled areas and tribal areas, and to attach the property of persons accused under the Act. Public officials who do not perform the duties prescribed under the Act can be punished with a jail term extending up to a year.
In a damning reflection of the non-implementation of this law, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in its Report on the Prevention of Atrocities on Scheduled Castes released in 2002, had said there was "virtually no monitoring of the implementation of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act at any level." It had pointed out that Vigilance and Monitoring Committees, as prescribed under the Act, had not been constituted and where such Committees existed they hardly functioned.
The quality of prosecution was poor because the functionaries entrusted with the work lacked both competence and motivation, it said.
The report also quoted a study of 11atrocity-prone districts of Gujarat that found that 36 per cent of atrocities cases were not registered under the Atrocities Act. In 84 per cent of the cases where the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was applied, cases were registered under the wrong provisions to conceal the violent nature of the incidents. Charge sheets were framed in only 53 per cent of the cases registered under the Act, and over 22 per cent of cases registered were closed after investigation. According to these figures, over 92 per cent of the cases ended in acquittal.
Concerned about the inability of the criminal justice system to deal with caste-based violence, Dalit rights organisations have submitted a set of suggestions to the Police Act Drafting Committee currently framing a draft Police Act to replace the existing 1861 Act. These recommendations include the constitution of an independent body, comprising members of marginalised communities including Dalits, to look into complaints against the police.
They have suggested that the track record of police officers in implementing laws such as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act be taken into account in evaluating their performance. Police officers found guilty of not implementing the Act should be punished as prescribed in it.
Besides these reforms, what is needed is better monitoring of the institutions created under the Act to correct the gross under-utilisation of the law. Recently, the Supreme Court issued notice to Central and State Governments on a petition filed by the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, Sakshi-Human Rights Watch, and the Centre for Dalit Rights, asking for directions to ensure that they appoint nodal officers and set up Protection Cells as envisaged under the Act.
These are measures that the Centre and the States must implement urgently. For those at the receiving end of caste-based violence, what is at stake is not merely a temporary remedy, but the credibility of the legal system's ability to deliver justice.
Posted by klajja at 07:34 AM