This is an archive article published on April 2, 2024

Opinion Express View on Alwar caste violence: What politics and policy forget

It shows the endemic nature of a problem that politics and policy need to do more to address

Lok Sabha elections, caste census, Congress, SHRESHTA, social justice, dalit atrocities, caste violence, NCRB, NCRB caste data, indian express news

Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar recorded the highest number of crimes against SCs.

April 2, 2024 04:54 PM IST First published on: Apr 2, 2024 at 07:05 AM IST

In the run-up to elections, as the prime minister speaks of the four castes that matter — the poor, women, youth and farmers — and the main Opposition party, Congress advocates for a nation-wide caste census, on Saturday, an eight-year-old Dalit boy got an early, unwarranted lesson in deeply ingrained inequality. On the premises of a government school in a village in Rajasthan’s Alwar, the Class IV student was assaulted for touching a bucket of water.

When confronted afterwards, the accused issued casteist slurs and a brazen declaration that he could not be brought to book for the incident. The impunity of the act points to a grim and sobering reality: That between the big ideas of social justice and big-ticket ameliorative schemes such as SHRESHTA (Scheme for Residential Education for Students in High Schools in Targeted Areas) and SHREYAS (Scholarships for Higher Education for Young Achievers Scheme), aimed to make classrooms more equal spaces, caste violence remains an everyday reality in the country.

The data released in December last year by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for the year 2022 underlines the increasing vulnerability of Dalits in India to caste-based violence. In 2022, a total of 57,582 cases were registered for crimes against Scheduled Castes (SCs), an increase of 13.1 per cent over the previous year. Crimes against Scheduled Tribes (STs) saw an increase of 14.3 per cent over those registered in 2021.

Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar recorded the highest number of crimes against SCs. Behind the cold, hard numbers, some of the human faces of this discrimination included a 15-year-old SC boy in UP’s Auraiya who died after being beaten by an upper-caste teacher for an alleged spelling mistake in September 2022, a nine-year-old in Rajasthan’s Jalore who succumbed to injuries inflicted by an upper-class teacher for drinking water from a pot meant for upper-caste teachers.

Even taking into account the fact that there is now an increase in the number of complaints being registered, this points to a glaring dissonance between the vision of a viksit and atmanirbhar Bharat and the ground reality. While both the Centre and the Opposition speak of justice and empowerment, a lot more needs to be done, in terms of institutionalising and increasing sensitisation and safeguards, to address this entrenched injustice.