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

This book explores the problems of how caste and gender issues are related to the education and empowerment of rural Dalit women in India. The key focus is on the presentation of Dalit female voices regarding their educational experiences. Specifically, this study explores the nature and role of education and its relationship to empowerment among thirty-three poor, rural Dalit women and girls who volunteered to become involved with an explicit women's empowerment project, the Mahila Samakhya program in Karnataka (MSK) during the years 1994 to 1995. This book will be of interest to practitioners in the fields of development: sociology, cultural studies and education; caste, gender, post-modern and subaltern academics and students, the general public and policy makers in India; Dalits and Dalit women in particular.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Notes on contributors -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: We ask you to rethink: Different Dalit women and their subaltern politics -- Part I Imagining a new Dalit women's politics -- 1 Foreword: Dalits, Dalit women and the Indian State -- 2 For another difference: Agency, representation and Dalit women in contemporary India -- Part II Dalit women's conceptualizations of caste difference and their means of collectivization -- 3 Gendered negotiations of caste identity: Dalit women's activism in rural Tamil Nadu -- 4 Liberation panthers and pantheresses? Gender and Dalit party politics in South India -- 5 Microcredit self-help groups and Dalit women: Overcoming or essentializing caste difference? -- Part III A broken empowerment? Are women still trapped by caste and patriarchy? -- 6 Dalit women, rape and the revitalisation of patriarchy? -- 7 Different Dalit women speak differently: Unravelling, through an intersectional lens, narratives of agency and activism from everyday life in rural Uttar Pradesh -- 8 Subsidising capitalism and male labour: The scandal of unfree Dalit female labour relations -- Part IV Religion as Dalit political practice -- 9 Transformation and the suffering subject: Caste-class and gender in slum Pentecostal discourse -- 10 Improper politics: The praxis of subalterns in Chennai -- Afterword: The burden of caste: Scholarship, democratic movements and activism

Defying the Odds is about the new Dalit identity. It profiles the phenomenal rise of twenty Dalit entrepreneurs, the few who through a combination of grit, ambition, drive and hustle—and some luck—have managed to break through social, economic and practical barriers. It illustrates instances where adversity compensated for disadvantage, where working their way up from the bottom instilled in Dalit entrepreneurs a much greater resilience as well as a willingness to seize opportunities in sectors and locations eschewed by more privileged business groups. Traditional Dalit narratives are marked by struggle for identity, rights, equality and for inclusion. These inspiring stories capture both the difficulty of their circumstances as well as their extraordinary steadfastness, while bringing light to the possibilities of entrepreneurship as a tool of social empowerment.

This book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the status of Dalits in contemporary India. It delineates their economic and social status and charts the changes since 1947 with respect to important indicators of human development.