Lower Castes Research Articles

Discussion on the Political Status of Hinduism in Modern Nepal

Until 2006, Nepal was the only Hindu state in the world. During the abolition of the monarchy, the country was proclaimed secular, but this step was opposed by certain segments of the country's population. The article analyses the relationship between Hinduism and state in Nepal, examines the arguments of supporters and opponents of the proclamation of a secular state. The author comes to the conclusion that for centuries Nepalese kings had used Hinduism for the legitimization of their rule and the creation of national identity. As a result, the process of eliminating the institution of the monarchy necessitated the proclamation of a secular state. At the same time, the discussion about the status of Hinduism itself began long before 2006 and was caused by dissatisfaction with the state religious policy on the part of the representatives of lower castes and non-Hindus. Now, however, the opponents of Nepal's status as a secular state begin to set the tone in the discussion. They are trying to understand the consequences of this step. On the one hand, the functions of the king, including religious ones, were taken over by the president of the country, interpretation of a secular state in the Constitution is rather favorable for Hindus. On the other hand, the popularity of other religions, especially Christianity, increases in Nepal. There is still an ongoing debate, and lack of closure in the discussion on the subject is also evidenced by the fact that not only individual activists, but also representatives of the largest political forces of the country bring up the topic of Hinduism in Nepal in their speeches.

Can beneficiary information improve hospital accountability? Experimental evidence from a public health insurance scheme in India

We study the role of hospital compliance in the effectiveness of government health insurance in India. Using patient surveys, we document that participating hospitals charge unauthorized fees to poor patients eligible to receive free care. Average out-of-pocket payments (OOPP) for chronic kidney care patients are $43 per month, or 25% annual GDP per capita, and are high at both public and private hospitals. Awareness of program benefits is low despite patients having used insurance for several months. We conduct a randomized experiment to test whether phone-based information about program benefits can enable insurance beneficiaries to hold hospitals accountable and lower OOPP. The intervention effectively increases program awareness by 0.17 standard deviations but has no effect on OOPP overall. However, effects differ dramatically by hospital sector: patients at private hospital see no change in OOPP despite increased bargaining and search; monthly OOPP among patients visiting public hospitals, who are poorer and lower caste, drop by $12 (35%), because they are able to negotiate to get more of their benefits at the hospital instead of paying for them off-site. The findings suggest that patient-driven accountability can meaningfully improve public service delivery, even in the context of specialized tertiary care, but may not substitute for top-down monitoring of private agents.

Fantasy constitutions

Abstract In his final speech as chair of the assembly that drafted India's Constitution, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar described a contradiction between the formal equality that the Constitution guaranteed and the country's socioeconomic inequality. This article follows two interpretive traditions of India's Constitution: the first, developed by the Supreme Court in challenging land reform legislation, is the doctrine of “basic structure” which holds that the Constitution has an intrinsic, unamendable form. The second, in a low-caste forest rights movement in Uttar Pradesh, holds that, because of Ambedkar's role in its drafting, the true Constitution grants lower castes both socioeconomic equality and sovereignty. Each tradition, I argue, posits a fantasy constitution that resolves Ambedkar's contradiction, claiming to represent a founding constituent order to enact entirely different political visions.

A One Health Ecosystem Approach for Understanding and Mitigating Spill-Over of Tick-Borne Diseases in India’s Degraded Forests

Exposure to zoonotic diseases can trade-off against livelihood-critical activities, particularly for tropical forest-dependent communities. Inter-disciplinary ecosystem approaches are critical to understanding this zoonotic spillover since the ecological and socio-political processes that make people vulnerable are jointly studied across degraded ecosystems. Moreover, One Health co-production of research and tools with cross-sectoral stakeholders can bridge gaps in knowledge and disease management between sectors. The MonkeyFeverRisk project applied these approaches to a case study of human viral tick-borne disease, Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), affecting forest-dependent communities in the Western Ghats, south India, to inform management. Multiple tick species and vertebrate hosts are involved in Kyasanur Forest Disease Virus transmission, including wild rodents and shrews, monkeys and birds, while humans are “dead-end” hosts contracting the disease when bitten by infected ticks. By sampling across habitats within fragmented forests, we found that the risk of human exposure to infected ticks extends outside forests to forest edges, plantations, houses and gardens. The highest risk of human spillover was found in diverse agro-forestry landscapes, created when the moist evergreen forest is replaced with plantations and rice cultivation. Risks and impacts of KFD were highest for socially vulnerable, marginalised groups (e.g. lower caste, landless, elderly-headed households), exposed to ticks through occupations in forests, plantations and cropland. Aside from mortality, disease impacts include long-term, debilitating health issues, loss of income and reduced forest access. Key barriers to effective KFD prevention within these communities included limited information about KFD and its transmission, low efficacy of and mistrust in currently available vaccines and tick repellents, and livelihood concerns. Co-production delivered web-based tools to guide management, identifying high-risk areas, and education materials for local communities, health workers and managers detailing risks from ticks and tick-bite prevention measures.© The Authors 2023. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Who benefits from the decentralised energy system (DES)? Evidence from Nepal’s micro-hydropower (MHP)

In low-income countries, uneven access to clean energy poses a challenge to reducing socioeconomic inequalities across gender and disadvantaged groups. Development planners view the decentralised energy system (DES) as having the potential to help address this issue, because it provides electricity access in areas where the national electricity grid is not available. This study assesses whether the DES helps to reduce inequality and improve gender empowerment by focusing on the micro-hydropower (MHP) scheme, a form of DES adopted widely in Nepal, and studying its impact on educational attainments and employment outcomes by caste and gender. The results show that MHP improves educational outcomes and facilitates a labour shift from traditional agriculture to waged and salaried jobs. However, a disaggregated analysis shows that, while the educational outcome of access to MHP electricity is higher for women and lower caste individuals, the positive employment-related effects are inclined towards socially dominant groups such as males and upper caste individuals. This shows that, while the DES improves educational outcomes in general, complementary conditions may be necessary to achieve significant improvements in the employment of women and lower caste individuals.

Gender Performativity in Inter-Caste Relationship in the Indian Hindu Culture: A Postcolonial Gender Study in Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Arundhati Roy’s the God of Small Things

This paper evaluates the inter-caste gender performativity in Indian Hindu Culture by analyzing the texts, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things through Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity. In Indian Hindu culture, inter-caste relationship is dogmatically and traditionally antagonistic whereas some autobiographical documents kept evidences of consensual and ‘non-theatrical inter-caste relationship’ crossing the margin of untouchability. Women, the gender subalterns in inter-caste consensual relationship, never inherently belong to any caste of them; rather, they are tagged off the caste of the men whoever touch them. The non-consensual inter-caste physical relationship does not determine women’s rank whereas consensual inter-caste relationship determines or modifies women’s rank. It is a double standard and both contexts are dominated by upper caste elites. The most theatrically maintained doctrine of ‘untouchability’ is the after-life punishment through reincarnation of upper caste people due to the impure touch of the lower caste. Both discourses of ‘untouchability’ and ‘impurity’ are nothing but elitist constructions and practices led by upper caste elites, that is proved in this paper. Such inter-caste relationship reveals that the theatrical notion is nothing but a bourgeois-political weapon of the upper caste to oppress the lowers. It is a qualitative research done by closed textual reading method. This paper brings out the conditions of fluidity and stability of the position of men and women among castes, and the influence of traditional gender performativity on both the writers.

Egalitarian Attitudes and Activity Spaces in Chitwan, Nepal.

Connections between individuals' sociodemographic characteristics and their social attitudes have been widely studied, but there has been less research on how individuals' spatial patterns are related to attitudes. Studies that do incorporate space have focused on residential locations, neglecting spatial experience outside residential neighborhoods. To fill this gap, we test hypotheses relating multiple measures of activity space (AS) to social attitudes, using innovative spatial data from Nepal. First, we hypothesize that the gender and caste attitudes of a focal individual will be positively associated with the gender and caste attitudes of others in the focal individual's AS, including spaces beyond the residential neighborhood. Second, we hypothesize that privileged individuals (i.e., males and those of the Chhetri/Brahmin caste) with greater potential exposure to females and those of lower castes in their AS will have more egalitarian attitudes about gender and caste than those with less exposure in their AS. Linear regression models provide support for both hypotheses.

Clientelistic politics and pro-poor targeting: Rules versus discretionary budgets

Past research has provided evidence of clientelistic politics by local governments in delivery of private good benefits and manipulation of local budgets by elected officials at upper tiers. Using household panel survey data spanning 1998–2008 in West Bengal, India, we examine the consequences of replacing the observed allocation of local government, or gram panchayat (GP), program budgets based on discretion of higher level officials, with a grant allocation determined by a formula recommended by the 3rd West Bengal State Finance Commission (SFC) based on measures of village need. We assume that the allocation of benefits within GPs continues to be delegated to elected GP officials. We use the household data to classify them as ultra-poor, moderately poor, marginally poor, and non-poor respectively, depending on the number of deprivation dimensions applicable (landlessness, illiteracy and low caste status). In the next step, we estimate within-GP targeting patterns for different programs across these four groups, and how they are affected by the program grant received by the GP from upper tiers. This allows us to predict how targeting patterns would have changed, had the observed across-GP grant allocations been replaced by the formula-based allocation. We find that targeting of anti-poverty programs was progressive both within and across GPs while the targeting of public goods was not. This pattern is consistent with clientelistic opportunism of upper level officials. The SFC-rule based formula resulted in allocations that were less progressive than the observed allocation. Moreover, alternative formulae for across-GP budgets obtained by varying weights on GP characteristics used in the formula would have marginally improved pro-poor targeting. Hence, it is unlikely that switching to SFC formula-based grants would have improved pro-poor targeting.

A QUANTITATIVE STUDY ON ANALYSING THE DETERMINANTS OF OUT-OF-SCHOOL IN URBAN INDIA

This study attempts in investigating the reasons for out-of-school in urban India and analyse the factors that are responsible for children aged 5-18 years to discontinue education. For this, the study employs secondary data by pooling the 71st and 75th NSSO rounds (Education survey). The study finds that majority of girl students drop out to take care of household duties while boys dropout to take jobs to supplement household earnings. Other reasons include school being far off, lack of infrastructural amenities and disinterest in education. By using Logit regression this study presents evidence on likelihood of being out-of-school affected by social background and household characteristics. Muslim children and those belonging to lower caste face higher chance of being out of school. Children belonging to poor families drop out sooner and girls face a larger exclusion from continuing education in comparison to boys. Households that have more members also witness more dropouts while educated head of the household creates positive spill over in reducing dropout by motivating younger generation to continue education. Against this backdrop, the study suggests target specific programmes have to be laid so that awareness about the significance of continuing education can reach the disadvantaged and financially deprived sections of society. To address rising dropout rate, a proper strategy has to be undertaken by the government to promote human capital accumulation through encouraging female education.

The Representation of Social Discrimination in Kiera Cass’ The Selection

Social discrimination is a never-ending issue that happens not only in reality but also in fiction novels. It is described as perpetual inequality of people based on their disability, illness, sexual orientation, religion, or any other. Hence, literature as a cultural product has a potential to deliver social discrimination discourse. This research aims to discuss how the social discrimination depicted in Kiera Cass’ The Selection. The Selection is a story about an event to find a prince’s bride in Illéa. The caste system and absolute monarchy exist in Illéa’s kingdom. Depending on their jobs, people are divided into eight castes. In this research, the representation theory by Stuart Hall is applied. The study’s analysis is qualitative with the novel as primary data and other supporting sources as secondary data. The collected data are used to indicate how social discrimination between castes constructed in the novel, how it is related to the condition in the United States of America in 1900s, and where the author took a side with. The result of the research shows that social discrimination occurs as the absolute position of the caste and it is difficult to change this situation. The novel’s social discrimination is also related to the real condition of the United States of America in the early 1900s, which includes job, partner, and lifestyle aspects. The author appeared to position herself more on the side of the lower caste at first, but no solution is offered as a result of the lower caste’s work.

Guest Editor’s Introduction: Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race

Guest Editor’s Introduction: Critical Philosophy of Caste and Race

“Subaltern Studiesand the Transition in Indian History Writing”

AbstractUmesh Bagade’s historic critique of the caste blindness of the Subaltern Studies project retraces its emergence as a criticism of the Nationalist and Marxist schools of Indian history. He shows how the subaltern historians borrowed Antonio Gramsci’s concept of “subaltern” in order to retain a broadly Marxist framework without “class” but discarded the crucial Gramscian emphasis on oppression and economic exploitation. They grievously misread, confused, or omitted caste as a “system” when they constructed their model of the subaltern as subordinate but autonomous. The caste system functioned as a graded inequality with close links to patriarchy in which the lower castes were oppressed, exploited, and subordinated rather than autonomous. A homogenized “subaltern” status thus lumped the oppressed lower-caste peasants and the tribal peasantry with upper-caste peasantry. It was not acknowledged that the “solidarity” that expanded the base of subaltern revolt was achieved through coercion of the lower castes and women. The subaltern cultural “consciousness” of caste Panchayats, which was central to the project’s epistemology, was governed by Brahmanical religion and culture. The kinship relations that comprised peasant solidarities were built on endogamous caste practices. Predictably, the Subaltern Studies project found a close affinity with postmodernism and eschewed the question of emancipatory politics. The project therefore excluded anticaste mobilizations from the purview of “subaltern revolts” and simultaneously rejected the need for a comprehensive historical interpretation in which the caste system and patriarchy could be analyzed and opposed. In exposing the biases and lacunae of subaltern historiography, Bagade provides a clinical observation of history with an eye on history’s ability to influence reality. He shows the path that was not taken, which anticaste scholarship is now forging.

Nietzsche Contra Manu: Ambedkar’s Nietzsche Moment and the Politics of Dalit Rage

AbstractEchoing bell hooks’s discussions on “black rage,” this article explores the politics of “Dalit rage” by juxtaposing some instances of projections of Dalits as an “angry,” “illiberal,” and “intolerant” constituency with examples of anger from Dalit literature. While these projections in “mainstream” media and caste Hindu–dominated civil society narratives often represent them as engulfed in the emotive states marked by anger, intolerance, and impatience, the instances from Dalit literature archive a “Dalit rage” that demands to be dissociated from the Nietzschean category of ressentiment. Through B. R. Ambedkar’s readings of Nietzsche in Philosophy of Hinduism and Nietzsche’s readings of Manu’s Manavadharmashastra in Twilight of the Idols, this article draws a fine line of differentiation between Nietzsche’s contempt for ressentiment and Manu’s disdain for anger. “Dalit rage” occupies a distinctly different thymotic space and articulates a Dalit predicament that exploits rage as a marker of protest, resistance, and caste-ridden social conflicts. This article shows why we cannot bracket Nietzsche’s contempt for ressentiment with Manu’s demands of the sudras (and, in extension, other “lower castes”/Dalits) to be “meek” by exploring Manu’s perpetuation and legitimization of the varna order through a “morality of breeding” and Nietzsche’s more wholesale rejection of morality as he deems it a pia fraus (moral fraud). Thus this “Dalit rage” offers us a repository of the limits of a liberal democracy and enables an Ambedkarite reading of Nietzsche whose project of constructing ubermensch is markedly different from Manu’s “morality of taming” through a “morality of breeding.”

Understanding partition literature as testimonial writings through urvashi butalia’s text “the other side of violence”

The literature of Partition became a witness to the atrocities committed during the partition riots. They have portrayed the trauma that people had to undergo during the chaos and how the violence has left a scar on their psyche which they carry for the rest of their lives. The writings testify to the worst of the butchery unleashed during this time madness.The paper attempts to understand The Other Side of Silence, byUrvashiButaliaas oral narratives presenting itself astestimonios that have been interspersed with historical facts. It has attempted to counter mainstream narratives and testify the life during partition riots by gathering individual experiences, narrating their pain and trauma as witnesses to the horror and violence inflicted on the common people. Butalia focuses on the marginalised sections like the women, children and lower castes within the society and thereby becomes the voice of the subaltern.

Measuring economic mobility in India using noisy data: a partial identification approach

AbstractWe examine economic mobility in India while accounting for misclassification to better understand the welfare effects of the rise in inequality. To proceed, we extend recently developed methods on the partial identification of transition matrices. Allowing for modest misclassification, we find overall mobility has been remarkably low: at least 65% of poor households remained poor or at-risk of being poor between 2005 and 2012. We also find Muslims, lower caste groups, and rural households are in a more disadvantageous position compared to Hindus, upper caste groups, and urban households. These findings cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that marginalized households in India are catching up.

Applying the COM-B Model to Understand the Drivers of Mistreatment During Childbirth: A Qualitative Enquiry Among Maternity Care Staff.

Respectful maternity care (RMC) during childbirth is an integral component of quality of care. However, women's experiences of mistreatment are prevalent in many low- and middle-income countries. This is a complex phenomenon that has not been well explored from a behavioral science perspective. We aimed to understand the behavioral drivers of mistreatment during childbirth among maternity care staff at public health facilities in the Sindh province of Pakistan. Applying the COM-B (capability-opportunity-motivation that leads to behavior change) model, we conducted semistructured in-depth interviews among clinical and nonclinical staff in public health facilities in Thatta and Sujawal, Sindh, Pakistan. Data were analyzed using thematic deductive analysis, and findings were synthesized using the COM-B model. We identified several behavioral drivers of mistreatment during childbirth: (1) institutional guidelines on RMC and training opportunities were absent, resulting in a lack of providers' knowledge and skills; (2) facilities lacked the infrastructure to maintain patient privacy and confidentiality and did not permit males as birth companions; (3) lack of provider performance monitoring system and patient feedback mechanism contributed to providers not feeling appreciated or recognized. Staff bias against patients from lower castes contributed to patient abuse and mistreatment. The perspectives of clinical and nonclinical staff overlapped regarding potential drivers of mistreatment during childbirth. Addressing mistreatment during childbirth requires improving the knowledge and capacity of maternity staff on RMC and psychosocial support to enhance their understanding of RMC. At the health facility level, governance and accountability mechanisms in routine supervision and monitoring of staff need to be improved. Patients' feedback should be incorporated for continuous improvement in providing maternity care services that meet patients' preferences and needs.

A CRT Counterstory

While teaching young girls from the lower socioeconomic class and usually lower castes in a rural part of Punjab, Pakistan, I witnessed not only class-based learning gaps but also the ways in which class impacts their subjecthood and their academic lives. These experiential facts are even more complicated for those who are multiply marginalized based on class, caste, religion, and other discriminatory factors like color, accent, and hair but whose marginalization remains largely invisible. Storytelling, in these situations, serves both as a personal and political tool for marginalized people to have conversations about these challenges. By using the genre of counterstory, this paper highlights the intersectionality of caste system, gender hierarchy, colorism, and racism, particularly in the context of Pakistan. This “new rhetoric” of counterstory enables a storyteller to bring their experiences to a wider audience and talk about various issues with minimized possibility of chastisement. Many scholars offer and employ this methodology, for example, Martinez,[1] Derrick Bell,[2] and Patricia Williams[3] have written dialogues and told stories by using their experiential knowledge of marginalized and underprivileged communities. Building on this previous work, this paper provides its readers the chance to analyze and understand their experiential knowledge because “counterstory or counter perspective is presented to develop the minoritized viewpoints and to critique the viewpoints which put forth by various characters.”[4] [1] See Aja Y. Martinez, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of critical Race Theory (2020). https://www.amazon.com/Counterstory-Rhetoric-Writing-Critical-Theory/dp/0814108784 [2] Bell, Derrick. And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice. 1987. Print. Faces at the Bottom of the Well. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Print. [3] Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1991. [4] See Aja Y. Martinez, Counterstory: The Rhetoric and Writing of critical Race Theory (2020).

Rising Gender Inequities: The Case of Authoritarian Patriarchy

In 2014, India elected a populist government, the Bharatiya Janata Party, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In line with other populist leaders, such as the former U.S. President, Donald J. Trump, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, and President Erdoğan of Turkey, Narendra Modi has brought about a rise in Hindu nationalism that promulgates values steeped in fundamental religious practices promoting the interests of the majority Hindu community at the expense of religious minority groups and marginalized and disenfranchised people of lower castes. A rise in gendered conservative norms deeply embedded in patriarchy and ethnonationalism has created a clear division in gender roles in nation-building. This study will utilize a social equity framework to examine ways in which systems of oppression, inequities, discrimination, and bias are maintained across gender, caste, and religion and perpetuated under the name of authoritarian patriarchy in India.

Why Inter-caste Inequality in Educational Attainment Still Persists? Wealth and Caste Discrimination Matters

Using recent data for 2017/2018 the article provides empirical evidence on the persistence of the traditional inter-caste inequality in higher educational attainment—enrolment rate being much low for low castes than the high castes. The educational attainment of middle caste is lower than high castes but better than low caste untouchables, indicating a graded inequality in education attainment, unique feature of caste system. Between the income group the low income groups suffered the most from low education attainment than the high oncome groups. The inequalities in ownership of wealth and income and caste discrimination faced by low caste untouchables are the main reasons for low education attainment among the low caste and low income groups. The shift in the government policy towards privatisation of higher education also has taken the education beyond the reach of low income household. The caste discrimination result into high drop out among the scheduled castes. In the end based on the empirical results relevant (caste) group specific and income group specific policies are proposed to promote higher education among the low castes and low income groups. JEL Codes: 123, J24, D63, J71

Caste and Masculinity: The Complexity of Gender Dynamics among Different Communities in Tamil Karisal Literature

The conceptualisation of masculinity in the traditional sense has been viewed as a complex mix of attitudes, behaviours, and abilities (powers) possessed by diverse groups of individuals. It is supposed that neither these sets nor the individuals who compose them have remained consistent across time and among societies. In this paper, I will be exploring the varying degrees of masculinity that is exhibited by men of different communities portrayed in Tamil Karisal literature. Gender relations are also defined along the lines of Caste and status. ‘Karisal’ meaning ‘black soil’ encompasses the arid regions of Southern Tamil Nadu and Karisal literature depicts the lives of the people living in such regions. Traditional traits of masculinity such as being valiant, dominant, and knowledgeable is more expected from the upper caste men whereas such traits are not encouraged among men belonging to the marginalised sections of the rural Karisal landscape. This paper will also look at how gender relations exist between the men and women of both dominant and lower castes in the Karisal region. It can also be noted how virtues associated with femineity such as chastity, subordination and obedience are expected from upper caste women who do not cross household boundaries but Dalit women, out of economic necessities, are made to work as agricultural labourers in the fields and are prone to being harassed by men of all castes. For this study, the texts for analysis are short stories from Along with the Sun (2020) compiled by Ki. Rajanarayanan and the novel Koogai (2015) written by Cho Dharman.