.National Academy for Dalit: Ambedkar b'day sets UP parties poll agenda

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Ambedkar b'day sets UP parties poll agenda

Manjari Mishra, TNN | Apr 14, 2011, 04.44am IST

LUCKNOW: All the fawning and festivities planned on his birthday would have made Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar distinctly uncomfortable. Toast of the election season in UP, Baba Saheb has virtually set off a fierce succession war among major political parties in the run-up to the 2012 assembly elections in UP.

Among all of them, Bahujan Samaj Party obviously has an edge. Though its president Mayawati has somewhat scaled down celebrations and would rather let the memorials and parks showcase her legitimate claims to inheritance, Congress and the BJP are determined not to give in without putting upa tough fight.

Congress, which has raised its pitch on atrocities against dalits in Mayaraj for the past one year to a new high, has come up with the idea of holding a mahapanchayat of Purvanchal "dalit and ati-pichda segment". To be held in Varanasi, the mahapanchayat would be chaired by UP unit's in-charge Digvijay Singh.

The BJP has earmarked the day for a intensive dalit connect. The party will observe "Samajik Samrasata Diwas" -- a phrase inspired obviously by Maya's lexicon. And even though both camps dismiss the sudden spurt of activities as an annual jayanti routine, the overdrive is said to be the result of "Mayawati's Madurai missile" .

During her recent election campaign in Madurai last week, Mayawati had accused both the BJP and Congress with conspiring to do away with reservation. The CM projected her party as the only political outfit genuinely concerned with dalit empowerment, while the other two were unreliable and ambivalent.

Congress reacted faster, juggled a few dates and fixed the mahapanchayat on April 14. BJP followed suit by issuing directives to all its party units to take the Samarasata Diwas seriously. The mahapanchayat is expected to have delegates from dalit and `ati-pichada' (most backwards) from a dozen east UP districts of Ghazipur, Ballia, Chandauli, Varanasi, Mirzapur, Basti, Azamgarh, Mau, Jaunpur, Deoria, Sonbhadra and Gorakhpur. The idea is to highlight the plight of SCs in UP. The speakers will be mostly victims voicing their tales of harassment in presence of Digvijay Singh, said president of UPCC Anti-Communal cell, Amresh Mishra.

Digvijay, he added, would also be felicitated by the mushar community on the occasion .

Though party leaders are a little cagey that the mahapanchayat could be their bid to woo the non-chamars (a formidable 15 percent out of 30 percent of UP dalit vote bank pie with an unwavering loyalty to Mayawati) and bring them together on a single platform. With Digvijay known for his acerbic one- liners slated to be the chief guest, the event, the party leadership has assured, will surely not go unnoticed by Behanji.

BJP in the meantime will stick to symbolic celebrations visits to the malin bastees and interact with the residents, seminars lectures and goshthees to highlights the issues plaguing the segment. The UP election in charge for the party and BJP national vice-president Kalraj Mishra will be spending the day in Gwaltoli - a dalit colony in Kanpur and all senior leaders have been assigned their respective beat. This is the first time that the party is going beyond the garlanding ritual, and staking a serious claim. This agenda will be taken further in coming days, sources said.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Ambedkar-bday-sets-UP-parties-poll-agenda/articleshow/7977044.cms

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Population of Dalit as Per GOI

SCHEDULED CASTES

According to the 2001 Census, the Scheduled Castes population in India is 166,635,700 persons, constituting 16.2 per cent of the country’s total population. Being rural people, four fifth (79.8 per cent) of them live in rural areas and rest one-fifth (20.2 per cent) live in urban areas. The sex ratio of 936 females per thousand males is slightly higher than national average of 933 sex ratios.

The highest percentage of Scheduled Castes population to the total Scheduled Castes population of the country live in Uttar Pradesh (21.1 per cent) followed by West Bengal (11.1 per cent) and Bihar (7.8 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (7.4 percent) and Tamil Nadu (7.1.percent). In fact, more than 57 per cent of total Scheduled Castes population inhabit in these five States. Proportionately, the largest proportion of population of the Scheduled Castes to total population of the State is in Punjab (28.9 per cent), followed by Himachal Pradesh (24.7 per cent) and West Bengal (23 percent). In Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Pondicherry proportion of SCs population is exactly equal to the National average of 16.2 per cent. The smallest concentration of the Scheduled Castes population is in the North-Eastern tribal States such as Mizoram (with negligible or only 272 persons) followed by Meghalaya (0.5 per cent) and Arunachal Pradesh (0.6 per cent).

As per the 2001 Census, there are 22 districts where the Scheduled Castes population is 30 per cent or more. In majority of the districts (i.e., 273 districts) the concentration of SCs population to the total population is between 10 to 20 per cent. In Nagaland, Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, no Scheduled Caste is notified.

SCHEDULED TRIBES

According to the 2001 Census, the total population of the Scheduled Tribes in India is 84,326,240 persons, constituting 8.2 per cent of the total population of the country. 91.7 per cent of them lives in rural areas, whereas, only 8.3 per cent inhabit in urban areas. The sex ratio of Scheduled Tribes population at 978 females per thousand males is higher than that of the total population of the country as well as that of Scheduled Castes.

Madhya Pradesh accounts for the highest percentage of Scheduled Tribes population to total STs population of the country (14.5 percent) followed by Maharashtra (10.2 per cent), Orissa (9.7 per cent), Gujarat (8.9 per cent), Rajasthan (8.4 per cent), Jharkhand (8.4 per cent) and Chhattisgarh (7.8 per cent). In fact, 68 per cent of the country’s Scheduled Tribes population lives in these seven States only. The proportion of the Scheduled Tribes to the total population of the States/Union territories is highest in Mizoram (94.5 %) and Lakshadweep (94.5 %) followed by Nagaland (89.1 %), Meghalaya (85.9 %). Within the major states Chhattisgarh (31.8%) has the highest percentage of Scheduled Tribes population followed by Jharkhand (26.3%) and Orissa(22.1%). These proportions are in the lowest in Uttar Pradesh (0.1 %), Bihar (0.9 %), Tamil Nadu (1.0 %) and Kerala (1.1%).

As per the 2001 Census, there are 75 districts where Scheduled Tribes population is 50 per cent or more as per the 2001 Census. In majority of the districts (i.e., 403 districts), the concentration of Scheduled Tribes population to its total population is less than 20 percent.

Dalit and Education

Dalit children, being disproportionately poor, most heavily suffer the ills of an inequitable and ineffective education system in India. The Indian constitution pledges to provide free and compulsory education for all children up to age fourteen. However, in 1993 only 16.2% of primary school age Dalit children in were enrolled in school as compared to 83.8% of primary aged children from non-scheduled castes.29 According to the India Education Report, school attendance in rural areas in 1993-94 was 64.3% for Dalit boys and 46.2% for Dalit girls, compared to 74.9% among boys and 61% girls from other social groups30 Dalits lagged behind the general population by as many as 15 percentage points in literacy, and according to the 1991 Census, barely 24 per cent of Dalit women were literate. Statistics also show that Dalit children are more likely to drop out than their non-Dalit counterparts, particularly in the early elementary stages. Education represents one way to break out of cycles of poverty and distress, but it is also a by-product of such economic conditions. Even when Dalits are allowed access to school, Dalit students face substandard conditions. Ninety-nine percent of Dalit students come from government schools that lack basic infrastructure, classrooms, teachers and teaching aid. In contrast, it is common for non-Dalit children to seek private tutoring or to access private education of generally better quality. The motivation to do so comes from the fact that most primary government schools are considered low quality. Few Dalits are able to access such supplementation to their education; this furthers the education gap. Once enrolled, discrimination continues to obstruct the access of Dalit children to schooling as well as to affect the quality of education they receive. Source: Ellyn Artis, Chad Doobay and Karen Lyons: Workshop on Human Rights: From Grassroots Courage to International Influence, The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, January 2003

National Academy for Dalit (NAD)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Ambedkar b'day sets UP parties poll agenda

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