A Question of survival

When we speak of Muslims, quite often it is the aspect of faith that consumes and overshadows the livelihood dimension. The social and economic conditions of Muslims across the globe, and especially in the sub-continent, does not often generate a passionate debate as the one that we are currently witnessing with regard to the 13-storey 'Islamic Centre' or 'mosque' planned two blocks away from the 9/11 ground zero. (An interesting aside: There is a nomenclature politics here. If you are in favour you call it an 'Islamic Centre,' something that has a benign modern twang, or else you condemn it as a 'mosque').

But what recently struck me as an exception and a huge corrective to this overwhelming prejudice, if not a conspiracy, is the Kolkata project of the renowned British author and journalist Jeremy Seabrook. [In the interests of full disclosure I should state here that I have known Jeremy ever since my student days in London. He was officially my mentor when I was a Chevening scholar. Most recently, he wrote a foreword for my book - Keeping Faith with the Mother Tongue - The Anxieties of a Local Culture' (Navakarnataka, 2008)]

Jeremy spent many months in Kolkata in the last couple of years and has produced an intense narrative, in his uniquely polemical style, on how the urban Muslims 'live, work, love and die' in the slums of Topsia, Tangra, Tiljala and Beniapukur among others. The narrative eloquently resonates the condition of ordinary Muslims across underdeveloped economies. I, who had the privilege of reading it as it was getting ready for publication in London, found it so dark and disturbing that I couldn't gather words for a reaction. As the reading experience slowly sunk in, it occurred that this narrative doubly illustrates the dry statistics of the 2006 Sachar panel report and in fact, goes beyond to portray the starkness of the situation, which unfortunately never finds a place in mainstream discourse. It made me wonder if only an outside view could be so illuminating of something that we tend to treat so casually

Full report here Outlook 

Caste & the labour market

Review
BLOCKED BY CASTE, ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION IN MODERN INDIA
Edited by Sukhadeo Thorat, Katherine S. Newman;
Oxford University Press,
Rs. 750

This is an excellent volume — carefully-researched and eye-opening — on caste-based injustice in our society and economy. Now, while there is a literature that documents discrimination and the denial of civil liberties, there is very little understanding and research on the practice of caste discrimination in markets, notably in modern, urban and metropolitan settings, and in public institutions. This book takes up the challenge of understanding the latter by means of systematic research on the question.

A useful four-fold classification of the types of discrimination is proposed by Thorat and Newman: complete exclusion, selective inclusion, unfavourable inclusion, and selective exclusion. Complete exclusion would occur, for example, if Dalits were totally excluded from purchase of land in certain residential areas. Selective inclusion refers to differential treatment or inclusion in markets, such as disparity in payment of wages to Dalit workers and other workers. Unfavourable inclusion or forced inclusion refers to tasks in which Dalits are incorporated based on traditional caste practices, such as bonded labour. Lastly, selective exclusion refers to exclusion of those involved in “polluting occupations” (such as leather tanning or sanitary work) from certain jobs and services.

Study in rural areas
There is a body of research on discrimination in rural areas and on the continuation of caste barriers to economic and social mobility in village India. There is a myth, however, that caste does not matter in the urban milieu and that, with the anonymity of the big city and with education and associated job and occupational mobility (assisted by affirmative action), traditional caste-based discriminatory practices disappear. This book explodes that myth in a set of chapters that focus on the formal labour market. These chapters use methodologies developed in the United States to study racial discrimination, and are written in collaboration with scholars from the U.S.

Thorat and Attewell ran an experiment to test caste discrimination in the urban labour market. For one year, researchers collected advertisements from leading English language newspapers for jobs in the private sector that required a university degree but no specialised skills. The researchers then submitted three false applications for each job. The applicants, all male, had the same or similar education qualification and experience. One of them had a recognisable upper caste Hindu name, another a Muslim name and the third a distinctly Dalit name. The expected outcome was a call for interview or further screening.

An analysis of the outcomes, using regression methods, showed that, although there were an equal number of false applicants from three social groups, for every 10 upper caste Hindu applicants selected for interview, only six Dalits and three Muslims were chosen. Thus, in modern private enterprises (including IT), applicants with a typical Muslim or Dalit name had a lower chance of success than those with the same qualification and an upper caste Hindu name.

Full report here The Hindu