Description:
The report is organized around three
chapters, in addition to this overview, each one dealing
with an excluded group: Scheduled Tribe (ST), Scheduled
Caste (SC), and women. The objective is to provide a
diagnostic of how the three excluded groups under analysis
have fared along various development indicators during a
period of rapid economic growth in the national economy. In
seeking this objective, the report also addresses correlates
and the processes that explain how and why these groups have
fared the way they have over a period of time. Chapter two
in this report focuses on the Adivasis or STs. In most
analyses, this topic is addressed after the Dalits, but the
author has placed it first for analytical and organizational
purposes. There are two reasons for this: tribal groups are
not strictly within the caste system, and the bonds of
rituals do not affect their relations with the world in
general. Also the report shows that outcomes among Adivasis
are among the worst, despite considerable variation across
places of residence and tribal groupings. Finally, Chapter
three focuses on Dalits, a term that has united the SCs in a
process that is more empowering than the process of
identification by individual names, which have been and
continue to be associated with ritually impure occupations.