The recent Dalit march in Ahmedabad, to protest the humiliation meted out to four Dalit youths at Una, supposedly by cow vigilantes, was significant for more than one reason. Not only did the protesting Dalits issue a stern warning to the BJP government, in the state and at the centre, community leaders also exhorted Dalits “not to remove carcasses of dead cattle”.
The Ahmedabad Dalit declaration came in the wake of sustained attacks on Dalits, across the country, mostly in the name of “cow protection”.
Dalit intellectuals see this as a first step towards their liberation. The resolve — “not to remove animal carcass” — has already been seen in politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, where Dalits are increasingly being replaced by Muslims as cattle scavengers.
Many Dalit intellectuals and economists BW Businessworld spoke to, say this has a direct bearing on the “Dalit economy” as well as the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Dalits leaving traditional occupations like this — or being forced out of it — means that the leather industry, and as a corollary, the GDP, takes a hit.
The Indian leather industry has an annual turnover of $12.50 billion, with export of leather and leather products touching $6.5 billion during 2014-15. The raw material for the leather industry comes from cows, buffaloes, goats and sheeps. India has 21 per cent of the world’s cattle population.
There is, in fact, empirical evidence that Dalits are leaving — or are being forced to leave — their traditional occupation.
In response to a question on sectoral growth in the country in the last two years, since the Narendra Modi government came to power, union minister for statistics and programme implementation D. V. Sadananda Gowda put out revealing statistics in the Lok Sabha last week.
While IT/BPO, textiles, metal industries have seen “net additions” in employment in the last two years, the leather industry has seen a reverse process. There has been a steady reduction in jobs in the leather industry ever since the Modi government came to power. Between January 2013 and December 2013, 0.44 lakh jobs were added to the leather industry. During the same period in 2014, however, there was a reduction of 0.07 lakh jobs in the industry. The downward trend continued in 2015; there was a loss of 0.08 lakh jobs in the sector.
The loss for the leather industry — or the GDP — and the Dalits losing out, may, however, be only a temporary phenomenon, as economist and MP Narendra Jadhav and Dalit Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DICCI) head Milind Kamble tells BW Businessworld. With education as the great empowering tool, the Dalits would turn to “far more productive occupations”, thus boosting the national GDP in the long run.
The recent Una beating of Dalit youths was not a one-off incident, says Kamble, adding that with the increasing assertion of Dalit youths for respect, confrontations with sections of the upper castes/ class will only increase.
Dalit intellectual Chandrabhan Prasad says that the smartphone-wielding Dalit youth is not aware of the traditional “Chaturvarnya” divisions, and won’t bow in reverence to the upper castes.
Economist Sukhdeo Thorat, who has extensively studied Dalits and deprivation, notes that “the bulk of crimes against Dalits are economic in nature”. Indian Institute of Dalit Studies’ Sanghmitra Acharya agrees that such attacks are “directly related to Dalits’ livelihoods”.
While undeniably the problem has an economic sub-text, BJP national executive member Sanjay Paswan says that the malaise runs much deeper, and at a subconscious level, “even the BJP is casteist while the Congress, Left, socialists are overtly casteists”.
Paswan feels the country must appreciate the economic aspirations of the Dalit youth and make way for some sort of affirmative action in the private sector as also in the army and judiciary.
Union social justice minister Thawar Chand Gehlot, however, doesn’t see a pattern in the attacks on Dalits, and says to link this with self-styled cow vigilantes “is to give in to the campaigns by anti-BJP forces”.
Jadhav says that in addition to denial of economic opportunities to Dalits, the failure of the state to spend, in full, on the scheduled caste sub-plans has also contributed to Dalits’ marginalisation.
Sixty five per cent of rural Dalit households are wage earners. Thirty four per cent of Dalit families are below the poverty line. And against a national average rate of 74 per cent, there’s a 55 per cent Dalit literacy rate, with virtually no representation in white collar jobs.
It is in this context that DICCI’s Milind Kamble sees a huge potential in the market to emancipate the Dalits. He says apart from education, the drive to create more Dalit entrepreneurs, will ensure economic justice to the marginalised.
By way of example, he says in 2001, out of 1 crore small and medium enterprises (SMEs), 15 lakh were owned by Dalits. In 2016, out of 6 crore SMEs, 90 lakh are owned by Dalits — no mean achievement. He adds that initiatives like Modi government’s Stand-up India will help create at least 1.25 lakh scheduled caste and 1.25 lakh scheduled tribe entrepreneurs, and that will go a long way in ensuring economic justice.
But that may just be the beginning. As BJP national spokesperson Bizay Sonkar Shastri says, before anything else, the mindset of the common Indian must change. “Only then the economic dreams of the marginalised will be possible”.
suman@businessworld.in; @skjsumankjha
BW Reporters
Suman K Jha was the deputy editor with BW Businessworld
