A survey-based study by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR)'s Dalit Adhikari Andolan found that 56% of the surveyed students from the marginalised communities in the annual income group of Rs 20,000-40,000 were unable to access online classes. Further, 73% respondents from particularly vulnerable tribal groups were unable to access online classes in the COVID pandemic.
In connection with their participation in the 48 th Human Rights Council session, states are encouraged to consider the ongoing and systemic practice of discrimination based on work and descent, also known as caste-based discrimination, affecting more than 260 million people globally.
Dalits and members of India’s other marginalised communities are lagging behind more privileged groups in terms of health and access to healthcare, Oxfam India reports. The gap has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A number of recent cases of rape and murder against Dalit women and girls in India have attracted attention from the media as well as politicians. But all too often, violence against Dalit women remains unreported – in India as well as in other caste-affected countries.
In 2018, Indian police claimed to have uncovered a shocking plan to bring down the government. But there is mounting evidence that the initial conspiracy was a fiction – and the accused are victims of an elaborate plot
Our estimates show that around 150-199 million additional people will fall into poverty this year. It means an overall increase in poverty by 15-20 per cent, making around half of the country’s population poor
Treating occupational safety for sanitation workers as a technical issue about personal protective equipment is not enough to understand the various elements involved, from changing behaviour to the larger context of sanitation workers’ lives.
In India, women and girls from the Dalit community experience incredibly high rates of sexual violence. India’s caste system, which functions like a social hierarchy, imposes positionality at birth and has been in place for thousands of years. Dalits are at the bottom, outside the caste hierarchy, leading to discrimination at the intersections of caste, class, and gender.
A Joint Civil Society* Contribution to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) for the adoption of the List of Issues Prior to Reporting on India has regretted that despite the abolition of untouchability enshrined in the Indian Constitution, and a constitutional formal prohibition of discrimination on the ground base of race or caste, under the Constitution, Dalits and other communities affected by discrimination based on descent, including Adivasis, still face de facto discrimination.
In Pakistan, sanitation workers face dangerous and dreadful conditions everyday. Unfortunately, not much has changed for sanitation workers in the country over the last many decades. An increasing numbers of sanitation workers continue to lose their lives to poor sanitation planning and management.
According to the latest census, conducted in 2017, approximately one million people were counted from the Dalit community in Pakistan, most of them living in Sindh, especially Tharparkar. A chunk of these – approximately more than 15,000 of them are dwelling in Karachi’s dilapidated, ramshackle houses in the Hindu Para locality of Chaneser Goth.
“COVID-19 has impacted lives of Dalit women and girls much more than anyone in India. Especially those Dalit women engaging in the sanitation work are risking their lives in the pandemic as frontline workers without any social security.”
In 2000, pregnant 19-year-old Harpreet Kaur was found dead in mysterious circumstances. Her mother, the then chief of the committee that manages Sikh places of worship across India, cited severe food poisoning as the cause. The truth was much more sinister. Kaur was murdered following her secret marriage to 21-year-old Kamaljeet Singh – a lower-caste man – against the wishes of her mother.
A 17-year-old Dalit boy was allegedly forced to lick spit and drink urine for eloping with a girl from Kadhauna village of Gaya district, around 125km south of Bihar’s capital Patna.
Over 30 Buddhist families in Rohi Pimpalgaon village in Modkhed taluka of Nanded district faced social boycott for close to a week for raising slogans in praise of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in the village.
In yet another incident of caste atrocity, three elderly Dalit men were forced to prostrate before the members of a village panchayat and apologise following a quarrel between two groups over organising a music function in the village.
A rapid survey study released by Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL) showed that in the 24 districts surveyed in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, the number of children working, from vulnerable communities, increased from 231 to 650 compared to the pre-COVID-19 period.