This paper examines how India’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes categories are applied in poverty analysis and social policy, including in India’s targeted poverty programmes and BPL (Below Poverty Line) Census. It finds that, while Indian poverty debates highlight the severe inequalities between social groups, they pay insufficient attention to the nature of exclusion. In some respects, support to deprived groups has led to the opposite of what progressive legislators intended and has made social identities more deeply entrenched in political frameworks.
Despite a relatively stable Gini coefficient of income or consumption, India’s regional disparities and enduring group disparities have been growing. They have persisted despite social policy measures that have increasingly sought to target deprived groups.
There is concern in the international literature that targeted benefits may stigmatise recipients, singling out a group of people, potentially lowering of their self-esteem, and creating resentment among non-recipients. Insufficient independent analysis has been done to assess the effects of India’s social policies. There is evidence both of resentment against affirmative action and of its benefits. Affirmative policies, initially scheduled to last for ten years, have been continued without sufficient consideration of their objectives and achievements. In addition, India’s political dynamics – notably those of ‘vote banks’ – have driven the expansion of preferential policies to different spheres and to more groups.
The concept of exclusion needs to be rescued from the poverty debate because:
- In India, neither the estimation/measurement nor the identification of the poor analyse the causes of poverty, or the nature of exclusion. For example, insufficient attention is given to the causes of landlessness among Dalits, of lack of access to forest produce for Adivasis, and of different returns to labour.
- The categories of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes have been predominantly administrative, and over time have arguably been applied with less sensitivity to context. There is a risk of ‘caste’ being used to explain all disparities. However, not only is the nature of discrimination against Dalits different from that against Adivasis, but each group is highly heterogeneous.
- The continuous expansion of entitlements – and the focus on the targeting of benefits – has reduced attention on the most marginalised groups, and also arguably on the causes of their marginalisation.
Further, targeted programmes could enhance the stigma of groups, becoming part of discriminatory attitudes. In some contexts, such as in Orissa, power relations do not facilitate an implementation of these policies that will lead to a transformation of social relations.
Therefore, social policies need to be sensitive to the nature of exclusion, and include safeguards against informal mechanisms of discrimination in implementation. It is also important to understand the conditions under which progressive assertion of group identity – as has happened with the Dalits – does occur. What institutions and attitudes hinder this? What additional measures need to be put in place to ensure that targeting social groups will have the intended transformational impacts?
