Introduction
The economic growth and prosperity in India has generally bypassed a large number of marginalized and disadvantaged people.
The 12th Five Year Plan, gives a high priority on paper to inclusive growth and reduction of inequality, but the past trends have not been very encouraging, as inequality seems to be going up, and the much needed policies and programmes for the disadvantaged are still to be put on ground.
The economic growth and prosperity in India has generally bypassed a large number of marginalized and disadvantaged people.
The 12th Five Year Plan, gives a high priority on paper to inclusive growth and reduction of inequality, but the past trends have not been very encouraging, as inequality seems to be going up, and the much needed policies and programmes for the disadvantaged are still to be put on ground.
WHO ARE MARGINALIZED
Dalits, adivasis, nomadic tribes, women, slum and pavement dwellers, the disabled and old people, and people living in remote areas, are the one who can be termed as marginalized.
Dalits, adivasis, nomadic tribes, women, slum and pavement dwellers, the disabled and old people, and people living in remote areas, are the one who can be termed as marginalized.
Main reasons for their hopeless situation
⇒ Due to their inability to access and retain their rightful entitlements to public goods and services
⇒ Lack of proper institutionalized structures and processes of exploitation.
CHARECTERISTICS OF THE MARGINALISED
⇒ They are disadvantaged in many ways.
⇒ They are disadvantaged in many ways.
⇒ They are victims of prejudice, ignored, and are often treated as less than human beings by the village elite and government officials.
⇒ Live in remote areas and are thus geographically separated from the centres of delivery. Their areas are scattered so that the cost of contacting them is higher.
⇒ They have extreme poverty & most of them are illiterate due to which they can’t take advantage of government welfare schemes.
DALIT PROBLEMS
Various field studies show that untouchability is still practiced in many forms throughout the country . Dalit women suffer the triple burden of caste, class and gender, and continue to routinely suffer sexual abuse and rape by upper-caste landlords in many parts of the country. Dalit women are also raped as a form of retaliation.
Various field studies show that untouchability is still practiced in many forms throughout the country . Dalit women suffer the triple burden of caste, class and gender, and continue to routinely suffer sexual abuse and rape by upper-caste landlords in many parts of the country. Dalit women are also raped as a form of retaliation.
REASONS FOR DALIT MIGRATION
⇒ City offers greater anonymity and also occupational mobility which dilutes their caste identities which are responsible for their plight.
⇒ Economic compulsions & search for better life.
⇒ It is not always the economic problem which makes them to migrate but mainly they migrate due to the social discrimination present in the their previous areas.
DALIT IN RURAL AREAS
⇒ Majority of them are poor & have no assets.
⇒ Majority of them are poor & have no assets.
⇒ Mainly engaged in agricultural activities in the form of agricultural laborers.
⇒ Meet their livelihood by doing meager jobs like scavenging, flaying, tanning etc.
BASIC NEEDS OF DALITS
⇒ Their settlements lie in outskirts. Need to bring them in mainstream.
⇒ Their dwellings lack proper basic minimum amenities like safe drinking water, health and sanitation, roads etc. Therefore, special. Need to make them available to them.
⇒ Primary education & employment be made available.
⇒ Special programs like education-cum-employment-cum-self employed be implemented in their areas.
SOLUTIONS FOR DALIT PROBLEMS
To break the caste-based occupational stereotyping, special efforts need to be made to encourage them to make the best use of the educational concessions and programmes being extended by the Government. Also, there is a need to vocationalise the education right at the middle-school level to promote occupational mobility for these groups.
To break the caste-based occupational stereotyping, special efforts need to be made to encourage them to make the best use of the educational concessions and programmes being extended by the Government. Also, there is a need to vocationalise the education right at the middle-school level to promote occupational mobility for these groups.
REASONS FOR BACKWARNESS OF SCHEDULED TRIBES (STs)
⇒ They are socially, economically & fundamentally isolated.
⇒ They are socially, economically & fundamentally isolated.
⇒ Are very poor, illiterate & have no assets.
⇒ Main livelihood comes from forest activities which now-a-days is highly regulated & offer very less avenues to them.
⇒ After independence, they were integrated with the main society with force without taking sufficient measures to back them up economically. In short they were not insulated while they were being integrated with the society with which they were not ready to compete as they were illiterate & not skilled to do any other job.
POST INDEPENDENCE DEVELOPMENT EFFECTS ON ST’s
⇒ Different development activities like building dams, mining, industry creation and building roads displaced them from their current position.
⇒ Different development activities like building dams, mining, industry creation and building roads displaced them from their current position.
⇒ Their economic activities were based on forest produce. That was their property. But post-independence, forest was declared as government property & tribal’s were declared illegal trespassers in their own home.
SOLUTIONS FOR THE PROBLEMS OF ST’s
⇒ Government should recommend state governments to launch a drive to prevent land alienation and to restore lands lost by the adivasis in the last two decades.
⇒ Government should recommend state governments to launch a drive to prevent land alienation and to restore lands lost by the adivasis in the last two decades.
⇒ Constitutional guarantees to them regarding protection of religious cultural rights must be fully honoured.
⇒ All the above points are reflected good in the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996 (PESA) for Schedule Areas, but unfortunately not fully observed practically.
⇒ The new Land Acquisition Bill will ensure that their lands are not taken away without their informed consent and full rehabilitation.
⇒ Lastly, community rights enshrined in the Forest Rights Act are still to be given to them on ground.
⇒ The Ministry of Tribal Development and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment should play a more activist role in addressing these issues.
Women problems
⇒ The decline in the juvenile sex ratio over the last decade, indicated by Census 2011, is an indication that the Constitutional assurance of freedom and equality for women is still far from being fulfilled.
⇒ The decline in the juvenile sex ratio over the last decade, indicated by Census 2011, is an indication that the Constitutional assurance of freedom and equality for women is still far from being fulfilled.
⇒ While the literacy rate has gone up, 273 million people in India were still illiterate in 2011, of which two-thirds were women.
⇒ Despite women’s vital contribution to agriculture and allied sectors in India, they lack control over productive assets (land, livestock, fisheries, technologies, credit, finance, markets etc.)
⇒ They face bias due to socio- cultural practices, experience gender differentials in agricultural wages and decisions concerning crop management and marketing.
⇒ Government schemes unfortunately ignore intra-household inequalities. Currently food security schemes fail to address the needs of single women within the existing framework.
⇒ Ration cards are usually in the name of the man, and in the case of separation the wife does not have access to a card.
Government’s Attitude towards Women’s Policy
⇒ The legal framework on succession has been amended in favour of women in 2005 with the deletion of the gender discriminatory clause on inheritance of agricultural land. Neither the Ministry of Women & Child Development nor the Department of Land Resources have taken any interest in pursuing the implementation of this law.
⇒ The legal framework on succession has been amended in favour of women in 2005 with the deletion of the gender discriminatory clause on inheritance of agricultural land. Neither the Ministry of Women & Child Development nor the Department of Land Resources have taken any interest in pursuing the implementation of this law.
⇒ These two Ministries should launch a campaign to correct revenue records and ensure that women’s land ownership rights are properly recognized and recorded by the States.
Solutions for women’s problems
⇒ The new Food Security Bill should mandate the provision of ration card only in the name of women, who should be declared as head of the household
⇒ The new Food Security Bill should mandate the provision of ration card only in the name of women, who should be declared as head of the household
⇒ Asset redistribution is superior to income redistribution. It provides a basis for overcoming distortions in the functioning of markets and for restructuring gender relations in the fields of property rights, access to technology, healthcare and governance.
⇒ Asset ownership and control rights are preferable to numerous policy alternatives for women’s empowerment.
⇒ Legal recognition to the ‘female’ sex be highly recognized while making & passing any law by the government.
⇒ Various grievances & redressal institutions should be set up women problems.
Governments role towards Inclusiveness
⇒ Persons deemed to be ‘below poverty line’ in rural areas have been surveyed and listed, no such survey has been undertaken for urban areas since Independence, although around a third of the country’s poor live in cities.
⇒ Persons deemed to be ‘below poverty line’ in rural areas have been surveyed and listed, no such survey has been undertaken for urban areas since Independence, although around a third of the country’s poor live in cities.
⇒ Government should therefore identify and list the most poor and vulnerable segments of urban populations by identifying them along objective and verifiable criteria of vulnerability and denial of rights.
VARIOUS CRITERIA THAT CAN BE USED TO IDENTIFY PEOPLE AS BELOW PROPERTY LINE
These are:-
a) place of residence and access to public services: (shelter less, unauthorized slum dwellers, authorized slum dwellers and residents of resettlement colonies);
These are:-
a) place of residence and access to public services: (shelter less, unauthorized slum dwellers, authorized slum dwellers and residents of resettlement colonies);
b) social vulnerability: children without protection and child headed households, single women and single women headed households, disabled people, old people without care givers, people in destitution;
c) vulnerable occupational categories: such as rag pickers, casual daily wage workers, rickshaw pullers, porters, construction workers, street vendors, domestic helpers etc; and
d) affirmative action categories: Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes, OBCs. The government should ensure within one year pensions for all aged people above the age of 65 years who live in rural or urban areas be given regardless of them being SC/open/ST/OBC.
Conclusion
Many government programmes are plagued by corruption, leakages, errors in selection, delays, poor allocations and little accountability. They also tend to discriminate against and exclude those who most need them, by social barriers of gender, age, caste, ethnicity, faith and disability; and State hostility to urban poor migrants, street and slum residents, and unorganised workers. Overcoming corruption, theft, leakages, inefficiencies, and constraints of costs, are imperative, but still not sufficient, in a highly unequal society like ours, to overcome the barriers that powerless and expelled dispossessed people face to access food and livelihoods with dignity.
The strategy for inclusive growth should not be just a conventional strategy for growth to which some elements aimed at inclusion have been added. On the contrary, it should be a strategy which aims at achieving a particular type of growth process which will meet the objectives of inclusiveness and sustainability. This strategy must be based on sound macroeconomic policies which establish the macroeconomic preconditions for rapid growth and support key drivers of this growth. It must also include sector-specific policies which will ensure that the structure of growth that is generated, and the institutional environment in which it occurs, achieves the objective of inclusiveness in all its many dimensions.
Many government programmes are plagued by corruption, leakages, errors in selection, delays, poor allocations and little accountability. They also tend to discriminate against and exclude those who most need them, by social barriers of gender, age, caste, ethnicity, faith and disability; and State hostility to urban poor migrants, street and slum residents, and unorganised workers. Overcoming corruption, theft, leakages, inefficiencies, and constraints of costs, are imperative, but still not sufficient, in a highly unequal society like ours, to overcome the barriers that powerless and expelled dispossessed people face to access food and livelihoods with dignity.
The strategy for inclusive growth should not be just a conventional strategy for growth to which some elements aimed at inclusion have been added. On the contrary, it should be a strategy which aims at achieving a particular type of growth process which will meet the objectives of inclusiveness and sustainability. This strategy must be based on sound macroeconomic policies which establish the macroeconomic preconditions for rapid growth and support key drivers of this growth. It must also include sector-specific policies which will ensure that the structure of growth that is generated, and the institutional environment in which it occurs, achieves the objective of inclusiveness in all its many dimensions.
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