P S Krishnan-Frontline

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A Dalit labourer on the outskirts of Ludhiana in Punjab, a 2014 picture. Punjab is one of the States with the lowest proportion of landowning Dalits.

The Shamlat lands of Punjab

Punjab is one of the States with the lowest proportion of landowning Dalits.

Farmers and landless labourers migrating with their families to cities in search of livelihoods from interior Karnataka, a 2016 picture. There is enough land with the government to provide viable extents of agricultural land to all rural S.C. families.

The importance of giving land to Dalits

Elimination of landlessness among Dalits can boost the national economy and resolve the problem of unemployment.

At Cherunelli tribal colony near Nelliyampathi in Palakkad district, Kerala. The Justice Rohini Commission for categorisation of the socially and educationally backward classes is expected to categorise them on the basis of relative degrees of backwardness and apportion the 27 per cent quota among them.

Census opportunity

The proposed inclusion and categorisation of data pertaining to the socially and educationally backward classes in Census 2021 will fulfil a long-dela

MEMBERS OF THE Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes and the Indian Railway Employees Association at a rally in New Delhi on August 22 organised to protest against the Uttar Pradesh government's acceptance of the Supreme Court order quashing a section of its law that allowed reservation in promotions.-RAVEENDRAN/AFP

Promoting justice

The low representation of the S.Cs and S.Ts in posts to which the principle of reservation in promotion applies is patent and notorious.

AFTER 11 FIVE-YEAR Plans and about three and a half decades of the Special Component Plan, most of the S.C.s continue to be agricultural labourers and have limited access to education, and are subjected to rampant 'untouchability', atrocities and bonded labour. Here, a file picture of the demolished portion of the wall at Uthapuram village near Madurai, Tamil Nadu, which separated the Dalit colony and the caste-Hindu locality.-S. JAMES

For social justice

Any new system for the socio-economic progress of Dalits and other vulnerable sections must not lose sight of Special Component Plan goals.

In the case of the NREGS, showing outlay proportionate to S.C. labourers as its SCP is not correct. It only reinforces the caste-dictated traditional role of the S.Cs as labourers. It is the value of the assets of direct and exclusive benefit to the S.Cs created through the NREGA that should be counted as the SCP. Here, a tank being desilted under the NREGS in a village in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh.-V. RAJU

Long way to go

Budget 2011-12 and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

S.R. Sankaran. He took up the issues of bonded labour and atrocities against Dalits seriously.-MOHAMMED YOUSUF

Road less travelled

The life of S.R. Sankaran (1934-2010) should serve as an inspiration to all those who are committed to the cause of economic and social justice.

Census work at Ramsingh Chapori village near Guwahati, Assam. The Union Cabinet on May 26 referred the matter of caste-based census to a Group of Ministers to examine and recommend the modalities.-ANUPAM NATH/AP

Case for B.C. count

IT is possible to make Census 2011 meet the needs of the Backward Classes without having to face the problems many critics have raised. The method exp

The wall in Uthapuram in Madurai district, Tamil Nadu, which, before a 150-metre stretch was demolished by the State government in 2008, blocked Dalits from entering areas previously under common use. The wall was built in 1989, the year the Prevention of Atrocities Act came into force.-S. JAMES

Walls in minds

THE caste system, of which untouchability is an integral part, has taken shape as a mechanism by which advantages, positions of privilege and opportun

Imperfect sympathy

IN the last two decades, major political parties and coalitions in power have expressed sympathy for the Scheduled Castes (S.Cs), the Scheduled Tribes

Daily-wage workers in a paddy field near Palakkad, Kerala. In rural India, agricultural labour is the crucial indicator of socio-economic vulnerability and strength.-K.K. MUSTAFAH

Backward still

Selective presentation of National Sample Survey figures and distortions make the backward classes look as if they are not backward.

Paddy transplantation under way in Thanjavur. A file photograph. The land reform laws enacted in various States half-heartedly and slowly have left Dalits in the same plight of landlessness and social and physical vulnerability as they were before Independence.-M. SRINATH

Story of deprivation

The promises of the freedom movement and the Constitution remain largely unfulfilled in the case of Dalits.

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