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 How Dalits are placed in  rural areas in India is a well known fact.Not only social, but  based on  economic, political and education parameters, one can say that they are not able to meet their basic needs such as food, water and clothing.   They only have physical strength and even if they have any skill set , the caste system has made them appear in a stereotype image. Thus they may be earning their livelihood but their self-esteem gets discounted in the process. There seems to be no hpe in offing for them. For farmers, agriculture is the source of livelihood but size of average landholding is getting reduced and cost of farm inputs is increasing making this option unviable.

They don't have the desired skill set to exploit new job opportunities. They have to resort to manual labour in the unorganized sector where there is great deal of uncertainty. Thus the future  for coming generations of dalit appear bleak.

The situation is more or less same in both cities as well as villages. Urbanisation has been forced on dalits as they have to migrate to cities for work with no opportunities available in villages. Due to average size of land holding in rural areas being on decline, dalit familiessupplement their megare farm income with manual labour in cities or on other farms.In cities  dalit men migrated from rural areas mainly  work as construction workers while women and children get to to household work for others.

 

 In between the families get back to village for farming. Thus there is no place for education and no time to give a thought to  betterment of life for them . This indicates the challenges facing their future generations.

 

Here we would try to analyse the situation on the basis of data  from Census 2001.

 

Status of Scheduled Castes(state wise) on the basis of Census 2001
State	Total population	Total workerú	Number of farmers	Percentage of farmer's number	Number of farm workers	Percentage of farm workers	Other domestic servants and industrial labour	Their percentage
Andhra Pradesh	12]339]496	6]233]518	606]761	10	4]258]259	68	1]368]498	22
Bihar	13]048]608	5]185]835	411]995	8	4]024]880	78	748]960	14
Chattisgarh	2]418]722	1]036]889	337]772	33	430]885	42	267]894	26
Delhi	2]343]255	709]792	2]079	0	4]582	1	703]131	99
Jharkhand	3]189]320	1]200]072	231]692	19	565]212	47	403]168	34
Madhya Pradesh	9]155]177	3]947]504	1]065]360	27	1]678]572	43	1]010]072	26
Maharashtra	9]881]656	4]141]193	533]454	13	1]908]382	46	1]699]357	41
Orissa	6]082]063	2]392]067	434]659	18	1]092]224	46	865]184	36
Rajasthan	9]694]462	4]036]120	1]769]656	44	437]499	11	1]431]165	35
Uttarakhand	1]517]186	569]304	268]906	47	87]053	15	213]345	37

 

 

From the above table it is clear that agriculture has been the main source of employment in rural areas. It must be noted that only 10 per cent of the farmers own land. The others have been kept in cateogory of farm labour.In a city like Delhi, considered to be land of opportunities, employment opportunities are few for dalits, as 99 per cent them work as domestic or industrial  labour and only one per cent have the power to decide their own fate.

 

Population and Farm labour                              

 

                                                                                                                (in million)                                                                       

year	Total population	Rural population	Number of farmers	No. of farm workers	Total
1951	361-1	298-6 ¼82-7½	69-9 ¼71-9½	27-3 ¼28-1½	97-2 ¼100-0½
1961	439-2	360-3 ¼82-0½	99-6 ¼76-0½	31.5 ¼24-0½	131-1 ¼100-0½
1971	548-2	439-0 ¼80-1½	78-2 ¼62-2½	47-5 ¼37-8½	125-7 ¼100-0½
1981	683-3	523-9 ¼76-7½	92-5 ¼62-5½	55-5 ¼37-5½	148-0 ¼100-0½
1991	846-4	628-9 ¼74-3½	110-7 ¼59-7½	74-6 ¼40-3½	185-3 ¼100-0½
2001	1028-7	742-6 ¼72-2½	127-3 ¼54-4½	106-8 ¼45-6½	234-1 ¼100-0½

Source: NSO situation assessment survey of farmers

 

We can see in the above table that in the last six decades the proportion of farmers is coming down and per centage of farrm labour is going up. In 1951, 71.9 farmers had their own land while 27.1 per cent were farm workers, in 2001, the per centage for the same was  54.4 and 45.6 respectively.Though there is no separate category of  scheduled castes and scheduled tribes mentioned in the above data but one can easily guess what would be their share in this data.

In this situation we would have to think about the real challenges facing the dalit movement. Is it going to focus only on the issue of identity or it would raise issues related to harsher ground realties.The unorganized sector is fast emerging as the easiest source of cheap labour all around the world. Now is the time when dalit movement should develop a synergy with the potent political forces in this sector.

SAFDAR  

c/o Aloka

H.B.Road Tharpakhan Ranchi 01

Jharkhand