Access to Education
High drop-out and lower literacy rates among lower-caste populations have rather simplistically been characterized as the natural consequences of poverty and underdevelopment. Though these rates are partly attributable to the need for low-caste children to supplement their family wages through labor, more insidious and less well-documented is the discriminatory and abusive treatment faced by low-caste children who attempt to attend school, at the hands of their teachers and fellow students.
Over fifty years since India‘s constitutional promise of free, compulsory, primary education for all children up to the age of fourteen-with special care and consideration to be given to promote the educational progress of scheduled castes-illiteracy still plagues almost two-thirds of the Dalit population as compared to about one-half of the general population. The literacy gap between Dalits and the rest of the population fell a scant 0.39 percent between 1961 and 1991. Most of the government schools in which Dalit students are enrolled are deficient in basic infrastructure, classrooms, teachers, and teaching aids. A majority of Dalit students are also enrolled in vernacular schools whose students suffer serious disadvantages in the job market as compared to those who learn in English-speaking schools.
Despite state assistance in primary education, Dalits also suffer from an alarming drop-out rate. According to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes’ 1996-1997 and 1997-1998 Report, the national drop-out rate for Dalit children-who often sit in the back of classrooms-was a staggering 49.35 percent at the primary level, 67.77 percent for middle school, and 77.65 percent for secondary school.
Rodiya children in Sri Lanka rarely study past elementary levels, if at all. Instead, their parents require them to realize their income-earning potential even as young children, and often prematurely take them out of school. Lower-caste Tamil plantation workers of Indian origin in SriLanka also have low literacy levels. According to a Sri Lankan activist only 65 percent of plantation workers can read or write, compared to a high 90 percent national average. Higher drop out rates among children of plantation workers stems partly from the employment of these children as domestic workers, hotel workers, or sanitation cleaners.
The Buraku of Japan also suffer from lower levels of higher education than the national average, and higher dropout rates than the broader society. In particular, Buraku women report lower levels of literacy, high school and university enrollment, and employment. Special scholarship programs that bolstered national averages of Buraku education are expected to be phased out by March 2002, despite the considerable success they had in bridging the education gap between Buraku and non-Buraku.
In Nepal the literacy rate for Dalits is appallingly low at 10 percent for men and 3.2 percent for women, compared to a national literacy rate that exceeds 50 percent. According to the government’s own fourteenth periodic report under ICERD, “The lowest literacy is among the occupational castes. Women constitute more than two thirds of the illiterates.”
Access to Land
Most Dalit victims of abuse in India are landless agricultural laborers who form the backbone of the nation’s agrarian economy. Despite decades of land reform legislation, over 86 percent of Dalit households today are landless or near landless. Those who own land often own very little. Land is the prime asset in rural areas that determines an individual’s standard of living and social status. As with many other low-caste populations, lack of access to land makes Dalits economically vulnerable; their dependency is exploited by upper- and middle-caste landlords and allows for many abuses to go unpunished. Landless agricultural laborers throughout the country work for a few kilograms of rice or Rs. 15 to Rs. 35 (US$0.32 to $0.75) a day, well below the minimum wage prescribed in their state. Many laborers owe debts to their employers or other moneylenders.
Indian laws and regulations that prohibit alienation of Dalit lands, set ceilings on a single landowner’s holdings, or allocate surplus government lands to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes have been largely ignored, or worse, manipulated by upper castes with the help of district administrations.
Although many of Nepal’s agricultural laborers are Dalits, Dalits also have a startlingly low rate of land ownership-only 3.1 percent of Dalits own more than twenty-one ropanies of land and collectively Dalits own only about 1 percent of Nepal’s total cultivable land. Moreover, 90 percent of Nepal Dalits live below the poverty line, compared to 45 percent of the overall population. Their per capita income amounts to a paltry U.S.$39.60 while the rest of Nepalese average U.S.$210 per year. Nepali Dalits are among the world’s poorest of the poor.
Eduindex News 