INTRODUCTION DALITS IN INDIA: THE SCENARIO SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND ISSUES IN EMPOWERMENT OF DALITS SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF DALITS MAJOR ANALYSIS—DALIT UPLIFTMENT – SUGGESTIONS STEPS AND MEASURES FOR DALIT UPLIFMENT Index

A serious lacuna of post-independence Indian government has been its failure to comprehensively undertake constitution-mandated radical measures essential to bring economic freedom, educational equality at all levels, social dignity and true equality of opportunities to the dalits, which term is used in this book to refer to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and backward classes including those of religious minorities.

On contemporary political, social, economic and cultural issues of Dalits in India.

1. An Overview 2. Ex-Scheduled Castes of South India 3. Contemporary Issues 4. Dalit Theology 5. Caste Influences in Rural India 6. Economic Conditions 7. Privileges Other than Reservations 8. Social and Educational Problems9. Privileges in the Field of Education 10. The Drop-out Dilemma 11. Scheduled Castes: Industrial WorkersIndex

Part I - Dalit Dimension, Part II - Women Dimension, Part III - Old Age Dimension, Part IV - Social Development Dimension, Part V - Peasants and Agricultural Labour. Study of sociology in India invariably relates to the composition of segments, communities, institutions, social organizations, regions, issues, problems faced by these segments, challenges uncounted in the process, social welfare programmes for the people vulnerable to problems, impact of development intervention among these segments, planned directed social change, people’s participation in development transactions, social caste and benefits including social audit, capital formation, induced development, micro level planning, and public private partnership based development initiatives in the direction of social development. However the Indian social structure perpetuating inequality arising out of caste, gender, region, people’s vulnerability to injustices, human rights implications, etc., act as stumbling block in creation of a society. Consequently India is faced with sustained inequality in view of the system of social stratification within the larger framework of the social structure. Social relationships in Indian context is marked by social standing and identification in the system of hierarchy which seem to have perpetuated strongly the phenomenon of caste based inequalities which ultimately resulted in various forms of discriminations and distance between community and determined their social status. As a result, social segment categories were based upon their ascribed status, ownership means of production particularly land and other movable and immovable properties. Consequently this has led to emergence of social evil practices between social segments categorized as upper and lower, gender inequality between male and female, regional imbalance between rural and urban in terms of development intervention and creation of infrastructure.