ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Social exclusionSubscribe to Social exclusion

Child Labour and Social Exclusion

A four-good, four-factor general equilibrium trade-theoretic model is utilised that incorporates social exclusion, consumption disaggregation and child labour. In this framework, trickle-down economics fails and under very plausible conditions, socially excluded families and their children are impoverished by capital accumulation. Policies such as a ban on child labour have differential effects on the economy. Specifically, a ban on child labour in the traded goods sector necessarily improves the welfare of the socially excluded families and their children. However, a ban on child labour in the non-traded goods sector has ambiguous implications for the welfare of the excluded group. Thus, this paper highlights the importance of disaggregation and social exclusion for policymaking.

Caste and Electoral Outcomes

Understanding the relation of caste and electoral outcomes merely in terms of arithmetic runs is fundamentally fallacious. It fails to factor in the element of mutual repulsion among castes and the multiplicity of hierarchies. Shift from caste as a system to caste as an identity makes caste-arithmetic explanations of election results all the more questionable.

Caste and Power in Villages of Colonial Bengal

An exposition of four court cases demonstrates that by the late 1920s, the educated middle classes wielded the colonial state apparatus. Moreover, the colonial state had partially delinked the premodern affiliation of local muscle to the local hubs of power. Therefore, at the village level, local malcontents were isolated and booked for lawbreaking. Villagers/village communities were located within a caste-based social structure, though caste hierarchies in Tamluk seemed more fluid. They also had the option to activate the (ideally) caste-neutral state apparatus, which sharpened their perceptions of legal subjectivity, and increased their stake in the government.

Status of Denotified Tribes

A study on the socio-economic and educational status of denotified tribes reveals that members of these tribes are plagued by chronic poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, health complications, and substandard living conditions, apart from the label of ex-criminals. They face an identity crisis in the absence of statutory documents and therefore, need special policies for their welfare and upliftment.

Caste, Contemporaneity and Assertion

This article is in response to the opinions and views expressed in the “Caste and Class” special (EPW, 19 November 2016). An evolutionary and historical method has not helped us to understand the caste system and its exploitative nature in its entirety. Therefore, we need to analyse it from a new perspective which can explain the caste system by critically looking at assertion of both, the so-called upper castes and Dalits together.

The 'Silence' of the Marathas

The signals of the silent Maratha morchas are loud; the Maharashtra government must act.

Addressing Caste Prejudice

“Oh...you will get a job, because you are an SC,” I used to hear this from my neighbours from the Other Backward Classes (OBC), Thiyya castes. Some used to treat us “lower” than them. “Oh you people get stipend, so you can study” is another sentence Dalits used to hear from anywhere in Kerala.

On the Ambedkar–Gandhi Debate

In response to the discussions around Arundhati Roy’s introduction to B R Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, this article draws on Ambedkar’s views on caste in government policy to reiterate his continuing relevance today.

Exclusion within the Excluded

An investigation into the trends in economic disparities within the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes for the past three decades (1983-2012) shows that the economic disparity ratio has increased substantially for both SCs and STs. The increase is much more in the case of the SCs. The economic inequality (Gini coefficient) has increased for both SCs and STs in urban India. In rural areas, it has increased for the SCs but has remained almost the same for the STs. In the post-economic reforms period (1993-2012), there is an unambiguous increase in inequality among both SCs and STs, and in the interstate inequality within the SCs and STs, for both rural and urban areas.

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