Does the state know its limits?

What does an SC person get out of a government sponsored inter-caste marriage? A bond forged through money will be cruel to the Dalit partner

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has announced a scheme to encourage marriages between Scheduled and non-Scheduled Castes. There is rarely any evaluation of several such government 8216;do-good8217; intentions. In reports of central and state ministries one gets a listing of the schemes and the amount of money spent. Beyond that, one is unable to get any idea of whether the scheme was availed of, who availed of it and whether it was at all successful. Big schemes, like those for poverty alleviation, are evaluated now and then and we hear about their continued lack of success; small schemes have a life of their own, unnoticed. The small do-gooder programmes go on for ever, perhaps because it is easier for bureaucrats to continue these schemes without any evaluation. They also provide easy patronage funds for politicians.

These schemes are never examined for their potential to do harm rather than good. Social engineering of any sort is fraught with the greatest dangers. To attempt it in the most private spheres of human life 8212; marriage 8212; is worse.

The recently announced expansion of the scheme to the entire country has a reasonably hefty monetary incentive built into it. Already, Gujarat has been giving the same amount to such inter-caste marriages with SCs. Tamil Nadu provides Rs 20,000, Orissa Rs 10,000 up recently from Rs 3000 and West Bengal a paltry Rs 5000. The central government now proposes to give Rs 50,000 to any non-SC person marrying an SC. The central government will foot half of this bill while the state governments will foot the other half.

Minister of social justice and empowerment, Meira Kumar, used the euphemism 8216;inter-caste8217; marriage to refer to her new scheme. But surely the government has no intention of rewarding every inter-caste marriage with Rs 50,000!

Given the general lack of evaluation, we only have the logical route to take to examine the viability of any new policy or scheme 8212; defined in the dictionary as 8216;intention to defraud8217;. The noble goal behind such do-gooder policies may be to further ensure the integration of the SCs into the 8216;mainstream8217;. What better way to do it than by encouraging the forging of the most intimate relationship between members of the two 8216;set apart8217; categories? A marriage would create unbreakable bonds and the offspring would have a mixed identity, which would eventually help break down the rigid walls between the SCs and the general category.

But did money ever buy love or even human tolerance and affection? Marriage is a relationship that requires a lot to sustain it. Most individuals in India still expect marriage to last a lifetime. So people who come together in marriage share much in common. Earlier the basis for marriage used to be shared caste or sub-caste, locality, economic and social status and other cultural factors. Today, the old grounds of marriage may be supplanted by new ones, like belonging to a common profession. Yet, even here, what the economists call 8216;assortative mating8217; occurs. It is rare that the fortunes of the two partners are wildly ill-matched.

What happens in a marriage brought about by the greed for Rs 50,000 and nothing else? The so-called 8216;green card8217; marriages provide clues. People would enter into these marriages to pocket the money, split it two ways, and then part amicably, having duped the government in its noble intentions. In other cases, if the SC partner decides that a Rs 50,000 marriage was for real and that he or she did not wish to leave it, such a partner, especially a woman, may bear a lifetime of ill-treatment it would be interesting to know how many non-SC women would marry an SC man; it is likely to be men who would take 8216;advantage8217; of the scheme and also get a woman in the bargain. The Indian system of marriage is hypergamous, that is, women necessarily have to marry up, while men can marry down. Hardly any women or their families would consent to such downward unions.

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What does an SC person get out of a government sponsored inter-caste marriage? The scheme presumes that the contemporary Dalit wishes to buy upper caste status through marriage for which the government 8216;pays8217; money. A bond forged through money will be exploitative and cruel to the Dalit partner.

Where the government can focus its attention is on ensuring that couples in inter-caste marriages should have security of life and limb. Leave the rest to policies of empowerment through education and health care, which will do more to break down caste prejudices than such unviable schemes.

The writer is associate professor, IIT Delhi