The vast majority of India’s 1.3 billion people live in its 630,000 villages. They have seen little or no benefit from the country’s economic growth. Over 80% do not have ‘approved sanitation’ according to UNICEF, and are forced to defecate in public. Village health care, where it exists, is poor and inaccessible. Education is basic, with large class sizes and schools lacking desks and chairs, let alone books.
The caste system dominates all areas of life and, although the constitution of India prohibits discrimination based on caste, violent exploitation and prejudice are the norm. Add economic and gender divisions to this medieval Hindu social system and a multi-layered structure of separation begins to surface. At the bottom of the social ladder are girls and women from the Dalit caste (previously known as the untouchables), who are born into a life of exploitation, entrapment and potential abuse. As an International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) report for the UN makes clear, “discrimination and violence systematically deny them opportunities, choices and freedoms in all spheres of life”.
The police are negligent, discriminatory and corrupt, and village justice, as dispensed by the ‘Panchayat’, is archaic. The village council or Panchayat “consists of five members … [and] sits as a court of law”, adjudicating in cases which the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as relating to ‘caste’ offences. These ‘offences’ are trivial one and all, and range from a Dalit woman taking water from a well reserved for higher caste families, to breaching eating, drinking, or smoking restrictions to—God forbid—having a relationship with a man from a neighbouring village. The punishments meted out by the Panchayat are extreme, often brutal and always unjust. Full story...
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The caste system dominates all areas of life and, although the constitution of India prohibits discrimination based on caste, violent exploitation and prejudice are the norm. Add economic and gender divisions to this medieval Hindu social system and a multi-layered structure of separation begins to surface. At the bottom of the social ladder are girls and women from the Dalit caste (previously known as the untouchables), who are born into a life of exploitation, entrapment and potential abuse. As an International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) report for the UN makes clear, “discrimination and violence systematically deny them opportunities, choices and freedoms in all spheres of life”.
The police are negligent, discriminatory and corrupt, and village justice, as dispensed by the ‘Panchayat’, is archaic. The village council or Panchayat “consists of five members … [and] sits as a court of law”, adjudicating in cases which the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as relating to ‘caste’ offences. These ‘offences’ are trivial one and all, and range from a Dalit woman taking water from a well reserved for higher caste families, to breaching eating, drinking, or smoking restrictions to—God forbid—having a relationship with a man from a neighbouring village. The punishments meted out by the Panchayat are extreme, often brutal and always unjust. Full story...
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