Page 281 - DSOC201_SOCIAL_STRUCTURE_AND_SOCIAL_CHANGE_ENGLISH

Social Structure and Social Change

Notes Dalits in India belong to a large section of the society, which has been subjected to human indignities on
account of caste differentiations perpetuated for centuries and millennia. They still bear the burden of
acute poverty and worst types of social degradation. They, usually, fall at the bottom of almost any parameter
relating to economic well being or quality of life. B.L. Mungekar in State Market and the Dalits: Analytics
of the New Economic Policy in a lucid analysis of dalit plight says that, “the effects of the birth based
occupational distribution on different castes were entirely opposite in nature. It proved to be a divine
privilege to the upper castes enjoying the virtual monopoly of education, industry, trade, commerce and
so on; on the other hand, it spelt disaster for the lower castes. This is because the latter were assigned the
tasks involving only manual labour. They were thus prevented from earning/accumulating wealth, which
restricted their needs to bare existence. What proved to be further deplorable, menial labour was stigmatized.
Thus, the absence of freedom of occupation, low earnings (mainly in kind), implicit restrictions of needs,
and stigma on menial labour destroyed economy of the lower castes. They came to be wholly dependent
on the upper castes for their economic existence. As a result, the dalits remained socially outcaste,
economically dependent, politically powerless and culturally backward.”
The main elements of current economic reforms as a part of globalization are (i) liberalization of
external trade, (ii) liberalization and 'opening' up of domestic financial markets, (iii) direct foreign
investments, (iv) cuts in subsidies, and (v) gradual privatization. While the richer sections tend to
gain, the poor ones have to suffer during the “structural adjustment programmes’. The lower
allocations to social sectors are likely to adversely affect the poor and the dalits, being the over
whelming majority of the poor, are the worst sufferers. It is the poor who depend largely on public
services and any reduction in budget allocations contributes to the reduction and availability of social
services and their consequent higher costs.
In socio-economic terms the small gains made by the dalits through reservations are being reversed.
More than 75 percent of the dalit workers are still connected with land; only 25 percent of which are
marginal and small farmers while the rest earn their livelihood as landless labourers. In the urban
areas, they mostly work in the unorganized sector. Under the impact of the new economic policy,
land reforms, the key question for their development, are being pushed out of the agenda and are
being substituted with corporatisation of farming for the global agricultural market. The policy thrust
of the World Bank-IMF-WTO combine has always been clearly for the abolition of the land ceiling
laws and for liberalising investment into agriculture. “Thus inflation and the slow growth process
are squeezing the poor while the expenditure on poverty alleviation programmes and social services
are declining in real terms because of the fiscal crunch. Admittedly, the main burden of adjustment is
likely to fall on the poor and the Dalits” (P.G. Jogdand, 2000).
In an empirical study of two villages in Andhra Pradesh J.M. Prasad of Sakshi and David Sudhakar of
Sampark bring out adverse effects of globalization on the dalits. Globalization policies rest on three
basic premises. One, the forces of competition would achieve optimum allocation of scarce economic
resources and their efficient use. Second, opening up of the economy would give access to foreign
capital and technology, which on the one hand, would strengthen the forces of competition and
efficiency and, on the other, help promote exports. Third, the above two would help to achieve a
higher rate of economic growth. Under these premises globalization policies in agrarian sector are
formulated to ensure freer and more efficient markets and pricing for agricultural imports as well as
produce. To achieve this, policies mainly focused the following: (i) to promote crops and cropping
pattern for export, (ii) to stable policies for export of agro-based commodities, (iii) to ensure availability
of inputs-seeds, pesticides and fertilizers, (iv) to ensure access to credit by group lending and
community credit, and (iv) reduce subsidies and also to prevent farmers from stocking and waiting
for better prices. In any markets in inter-linkage operations, dominant caste landowners play critical
role and dalits do not have role in any market i.e. land, credit, labour and output markets in the
villages. The implications of these changes in operation are as follows:
• Restricted access to land either for buying if they are able to, or for lease.
• Dalits who were attached to landowners were able to get small pieces of land on lease that also
interlinked with their labour and produce. That means person who with their labour and
produce. That means person who takes land on lease has to render either free labour or far
below market wage and also has to bind and sell their crop to the landowner.

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