Dalit Politics Needs a New Radical Agenda

 

Dalit Politics Needs a New Radical Agenda

-         S.R. Darapuri, National President, All India Peoples Front

Dr. Ambedkar is considered the father of Dalit politics. He was the first to form the Independent Labour Party in 1936, the Scheduled Castes Federation in 1942, and the Republican Party of India (RPI) in 1956.  A notable aspect of these parties was that, except for the Scheduled Castes Federation, none of them were caste-based. The agenda of all these parties was broad, with the Dalit agenda at its core. It is also true that Dr. Ambedkar never sought votes in the name of caste, except for the Scheduled Castes Federation. After Dr. Ambedkar's death, from 1957 to 1962, the RPI continued to practice agenda-based politics, and its achievements were quite significant. However, later, the Congress lured Dalit leaders away, and the RPI fragmented into several pieces and disintegrated.

After the disintegration of the RPI, Kanshi Ram formed the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in North India and, by allying with the staunchly anti-Dalit party BJP, formed the government three times and once independently. The biggest weakness of this party was its lack of any agenda or principles. Kanshi Ram proudly used caste to counter caste and was opportunistic. The result of this opportunistic and unprincipled alliance with the BJP was that the BJP continuously grew stronger in North India, while the BSP continuously weakened. Currently, the BSP is fighting for its very existence.

The BSP experiment has made it clear that a party that practices caste politics cannot last long. It is only the agenda and principles that prevent a party from disintegrating. It is also an established truth that caste politics only strengthens Hindutva politics, as has happened currently.

Kanshi Ram called political power the master key, the solution to all problems. In contrast, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar believed "political power cannot be the master key to ending all the miseries of the oppressed class. Their liberation lies in achieving a higher social status." Will you still say that political power is the master key? Experience so far has proven this wrong. Uttar Pradesh is the biggest example of this. It is also true that later Babasaheb also called political power the key to the problems of Dalits, but along with that, he also said that political power should be used for the development of society. But in practice, it has mostly been used for personal development instead of social development. Mayawati is the biggest example of this. Therefore, along with political power, there should also be an agenda for social development, which has been completely missing in Bahujan politics.

Therefore, if Dalit politics is to re-establish itself, it must adopt principled politics and a radical Dalit agenda. The outline of that agenda could be as follows:

1. Poverty and Unemployment: According to the NITI Aayog's 2024 report, 42% of SC Dalit families are below the poverty line, while the national average is 20%. According to PLFS 2023-24, the unemployment rate for SCs is 7.8%, while the national rate is 5.8%. 70% of Dalits are engaged in daily wage labour or agricultural labour.

According to the 2011 census, only 4.88% of Dalits are in government jobs and 2.42% in private jobs. In terms of income, 83.6% of Dalits have a monthly income of less than 5000, 11.7% have an income between 5000 and 10,000, and only 4.7% have an income of more than 10,000.

Therefore, poverty alleviation and unemployment should be the main issues of Dalit politics.

 2. Landlessness: According to the 2011 census, only 18.41% of Dalits own unirrigated land, 17.41% own irrigated land, and 6.98% own other types of land. Of these, 60% of Dalits own less than one acre of land. Thus, most Dalits are small and marginal farmers. In drought-affected areas due to climate change, 80% of the affected farmers are Dalit farmers. Therefore, the issue of land allocation (residential and agricultural land leases) for landless Dalits is extremely important and should be a major political demand.

3. Violence and Atrocities: According to the NCRB 2023 report, 54,750 cases of crimes against Dalits were registered, which is 7% more than in 2022. These include 4,800 rapes and 1,200 murders. More than half of these cases are in Uttar Pradesh (25%), Rajasthan (15%), and Bihar (12%). The conviction rate under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act is only 32%, due to police bias and intimidation of witnesses. Amnesty International (2024) has documented over 200 such cases in Tamil Nadu alone that went unreported. Currently, a crime is committed against a Dalit every 18 minutes, including 13 murders every day. Therefore, the effective implementation of the SC/ST Act to prevent atrocities against Dalits should be on the agenda of Dalit politics.

4. Untouchability and Discrimination: According to NFHS-5 rural data and the India Human Development Survey 2024, 40% of villages report that 25-30% of Dalits face restrictions on entering temples/water sources. Similarly, in cities, according to a 2023 CSDS study, 70% of landlords in Delhi refuse to rent houses to Dalit tenants. The Supreme Court (2024) upheld the sub-categorization of SC quota but stated that "hierarchical inequality" persists. Dalit women face triple discrimination (caste-gender-poverty).

According to the Safai Karamchari Andolan's 2024 report, 50-70 deaths annually due to sewer cleaning, honor killings, and mob lynchings over inter-caste relationships or cow protection are common. Therefore, the issue of eradicating untouchability and discrimination should also be at the centre of Dalit politics.

5. Educational Backwardness: According to the National Census 2011 and NFHS-5, the literacy rate among Dalits is 66.1% while the national rate is 73%. Additionally, the dropout rate for Dalit children after class 8 is twice as high (AISHE 2023). Only 7% of students in higher education are Dalit (AISHE 2023). According to the Ministry of Social Justice's 2023 audit report, 40% of Dalit students experience delays in receiving scholarships, making it very difficult for them to continue their studies. Meanwhile, fees for medical, engineering, and other professional courses have been increased manifold, making it very difficult for Dalit students to afford them. Recently, a large number of schools at the basic and middle levels are being closed in BJP-ruled states, which will deprive Dalit children of education as they cannot afford expensive private schools. The government is rapidly privatizing education, which is a conspiracy to deprive Dalit and other poor children of education. Therefore, there should be a strong opposition to the privatization of education and a demand for increasing the education budget and providing equal quality education to all.

6. Health Services and Health Inequalities: According to the national NFHS-5 report, 60% of Dalit women suffer from anaemia, compared to 53% nationally. For this reason, according to the Lancet (2023) report, the death rate from COVID among Dalits was 1.5 times higher than the general population. Meanwhile, the government is continuously reducing the budget for health services and indirectly promoting privatization. Although the government has implemented the Ayushman Yojana, it is benefiting private hospitals more than the poor. Therefore, instead of the Ayushman Yojana, the government should strengthen public health services, which would benefit all the poor, including Dalits. Therefore, there should be a demand to stop the privatization of health services, strengthen government health services, and increase the number of hospitals and their budget.

In addition to the above, issues such as fair support prices for agricultural produce, stopping the privatization of public sector undertakings, preventing the centralization of capital, raising resources by imposing appropriate taxes on the super-rich to create employment, stopping corporate exploitation, controlling inflation, rationalizing GST, promoting agriculture and agro-industries and cooperative farming, increasing the minimum wage and providing a living wage to workers, instead of giving free rations to 80 crore people, providing them with employment to increase their income, breaking the nexus between Hindutva and Corporates, ending the persecution of minorities, and strengthening education and health services are all issues that concern the general public as well as the Dalit community. Therefore, all these issues should be at the centre of politics. Dalit politics should also raise these issues.

It is well known that the BJP, instead of addressing these public issues, resorts to raising immaterial and emotional issues of religion/community to distract the attention of the common people so that no one questions or demands answers about its 11 years of failures. Therefore, it is essential that all opposition parties, including Dalit parties, raise the above-mentioned public issues and present alternative economic policies and plans. Only by doing so will it be possible to stop the BJP's politics of the Hindutva-Corporate nexus. It is also noteworthy that soft Hindutva and the politics of caste and religion only strengthen Hindutva politics, which must be defeated at all costs.

 All India Peoples Front (Radical) – (AIPF) has been working for a long time on people-centric, issue-based democratic politics and is striving to give concrete shape to a multi-class alliance. Currently, the AIPF, along with other like-minded organizations, is running an Employment and Social Rights campaign, the main objective of which is to bring the issue of employment to the centre of politics. The AIPF firmly believes that if a proper tax is levied on the country's 350 super-rich, the GST is restructured, and the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act is repealed, it would generate enough funds to provide jobs to all the unemployed in the country, in addition to providing funds for MNREGA, education, and health services.