Scheduled castes in India are the most backward community economically. The available information suggests that around 80 percent of the scheduled caste population live in rural areas. In rural areas, around 41 percent of Scheduled Caste population is engages as agricultural labourers and 15.3 percent as other forms of labourers compared to only 14 percent and 8 percent among the upper caste sections. In urban areas too, the population proportion of SC community engaged as casual labourers is highest among all social groups. Around 34 percent of Scheduled Caste households in rural India is landless and another 40 percent hold very tiny pieces of land. It is worthwhile to mention here that, the SC population is mostly concentrated in these two (landless and marginal) categories of land holding, irrespective of the so many self proclaimed land reform packages for the SCs.

 

Figure-1

 Marginal increase in the Monthly Per Capita Expenditure by members of SC community in India

Table-1

Growth in Monthly per Capita Expenditure level between 1999-2000 and 2004-05

 

 

One of the most disturbing trends in the economic situation of  members of SC community is their inability (emphasis ours) to find a space in the much claimed growth trajectory in the era of liberalization often quoted as ‘growth with a human face’. As per the available information, the Gross Domestic Product (or GDP which is often cited as THE indicator of our economist turned Prime Minister) has increased by more than 61 percent from Rs. 1952035 crores in 1999-2000 to Rs. 3149412 crores in 2004-05. Similarly, the net tax revenue of the government (i.e., total tax collected minus subsidies) have gone up by more than 64 percent. This was a period when the prices increased by around 29 percent. However, the monthly per capita consumption Expenditure of the Scheduled caste population increased by around 13 percent in rural areas and merely 10 percent in urban areas. This clearly shows that the benefits of  the growth process ‘with a human face’ has been appropriated by a miniscule section of the society and the larger population (more so in case of the members of the SC community) have been excluded from this growth process. An average person belonging to SC community spends less than Rs 16 per day in rural and around Rs. 25 per day in urban areas (MPCE Rs. 475 and Rs 758) compared to Rs. 23 and Rs. 44 in case of their upper caste counterparts.