Caste

Caste and Careers: Limited Mobility Over Three Generations

Does caste still dictate occupation and occupational mobility? A socio-economic survey in Uttar Pradesh reveals that aside from modest Dalit upward mobility, the occupational gap between upper-caste…
▶09-Apr-2025
Rukmi Pradeep, Srinivas Goli

Redesigning Reservations: How Heterogeneous are the Scheduled Castes?

The Supreme Court’s concern about unequal access to reservations within beneficiary groups is valid. However, the court and executive should prioritise an evidence-based approach, using data to…
▶07-Oct-2024
Ashwini Deshpande, Rajesh Ramachandran
Book
Book Review

The Revival of Buddhism

Reports of the death of Buddhism in precolonial India were greatly exaggerated. The many Buddhisms promoted by ideologies across the spectrum in modern times came to distinctively shape South Asia.
▶18-Jul-2024
Chandrabhan P. Yadav

Hopelessness and Despair in Bihar: Misgovernance does not Matter, Caste does

There is no connection between politics, elections and governance in Bihar. It is instead caste that defines both society and politics: caste parties and caste-based alliances seek to get the better…
▶16-Jul-2024
Apoorvanand, Neel Madhav

Chandrashekhar Azad and Dalit Politics in Uttar Pradesh

The Azad Samaj Party represents both a crisis following the fracturing of the Dalit movement and a possible future regeneration under a new Ambedkarite organisation.
▶27-Jun-2024
Sudha Pai

Renaming Caste, Retaining Privilege

Attempts to 'invisibilise' caste through definitional alterations – whether in terms of an organic community or of a cultural community – are enmeshed in long-range socioeconomic…
▶15-Jun-2024
Ankur Barua, Vishal Vasanthakumar
Book
Book Review

Marked by Insight and Foresight

The writings between the 1980 and 2003 of K. Balagopal, the scholar and democratic rights activist who died too early, emphasised caste’s role in fuelling fascism in India.
▶22-Apr-2024
Nivedita Menon

The Death of a Dalit in a Democracy

Dalits aspire to practice the ethics of democracy as their way of life. Yet, when they live a democratic life and celebrate the Constitution as their social public ethics, the consequence is the end…
▶23-Jan-2024
Jadumani Mahanand

Interacting with the ‘Outside’

Urbanisation has offered the Adivasi youth of Jharkhand new opportunities, but also opened them up to new forms of discrimination. Adivasi women are doubly disadvantaged, with their needs more likely…
▶30-Nov-2023
Kumari Vibhuti Nayak, Abha Rao

Counting Tigers, Discounting Victims of Tiger Attacks

When people die in tiger attacks in the Sundarbans, the humane response would be to compensate their families. Instead, we see an opaque bureaucracy splitting hairs to deny justice to some of the…
▶30-Oct-2023
Megnaa Mehtta