Ground Down by Growth: Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in 21st Century India (Anthropology, Culture and Society) - Softcover

Shah, Alpa; Lerche, Jens; Axelby, Richard; Benbabaali, Dalel; Donegan, Brendan; Raj, Jayaseelan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745337686 ISBN 13: 9780745337685

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2017

Synopsis

Why has India’s astonishing economic growth not reached the people at the bottom of its social and economic hierarchy? Travelling the length and breadth of the subcontinent, this book shows how India’s ‘untouchables' and ‘tribals' fit into the global economy. India’s Dalit and Adivasi communities make up a staggering one in twenty-five people across the globe and yet they remain amongst the most oppressed. Conceived in dialogue with economists, Ground Down by Growth reveals the impact of global capitalism on their lives. It shows how capitalism entrenches, rather than erases, social difference and has transformed traditional forms of identity-based discrimination into new mechanisms of exploitation and oppression. Through studies of the working poor, migrant labour and the conjugated oppression of caste, tribe, region, gender and class relations, the social inequalities generated by capitalism are exposed.

About this title

About the Authors

Alpa Shah is Associate Professor (Reader) in Anthropology at LSE. She is the author of Ground Down by Growth (Pluto, 2017) and In the Shadows of the State, Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India (Duke, 2010). She has also written about affirmative action, labour migration, agrarian change and India and Nepal's Maoist inspired revolutionary struggles.

Jens Lerche is Reader in Labour and Agrarian Studies at SOAS, University of London. He has published on low castes, rural and migrant labour and agrarian relations in India for more than two decades. He is editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change and the author of Ground Down by Growth (Pluto, 2017).

Richard Axelby is a Lecturer in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. His writing focuses on environmental history, natural resource management, science in colonial India, British identity and development work. He is the author of Ground Down by Growth (Pluto, 2017).

Dalel Benbabaali is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Area Studies at the University of Oxford. She has previously taught at LSE and the Sorbonne University. She is the author of Ground Down by Growth (Pluto, 2017).

Brendan Donegan is a Visiting Fellow in Anthropology at LSE. He previously held positions at SOAS and Goldsmiths, where he taught courses in Social Anthropology and Development Studies. He is the author of Ground Down by Growth (Pluto, 2017).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Ground Down by Growth

Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in Twenty-First Century India

By Alpa Shah, Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby, Dalel Benbabaali, Brendan Donegan, Jayaseelan Raj, Vikramaditya Thakur

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2018 Alpa Shah, Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby, Dalel Benbabaali, Brendan Donegan, Jayaseelan Raj and Vikramaditya Thakur
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-3768-5

Contents

List of Illustrations, vi, 
Series Preface, ix, 
Preface Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche, x, 
1 Tribe, Caste and Class – New Mechanisms of Exploitation and Oppression Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche, 1, 
2 Macro-Economic Aspects of Inequality and Poverty in India K.P. Kannan, 32, 
3 Tea Belts of the Western Ghats, Kerala Jayaseelan Raj, 49, 
4 Cuddalore, Chemical Industrial Estate, Tamil Nadu Brendan Donegan, 82, 
5 Bhadrachalam Scheduled Area, Telangana Dalel Benbabaali, 115, 
6 Chamba Valley, Himalaya, Himachal Pradesh Richard Axelby, 143, 
7 Narmada Valley and Adjoining Plains, Maharashtra Vikramaditya Thakur, 176, 
8 The Struggles Ahead Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche, 203, 
Appendix: Tables and Figures, 216, 
Notes, 235, 
Bibliography, 253, 
Acknowledgements, 272, 
Index, 273, 

CHAPTER 1

Tribe, Caste and Class – New Mechanisms of Exploitation and Oppression

Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche

Capitalist modernity across the world was expected to diminish the salience of older forms of identity-based relations. In India, differences based on caste and tribe were to disappear. But, despite economic growth, the conditions of India's Adivasis and Dalits have flouted these rosy expectations. Ground Down by Growth travels the length and breadth of the country to explore how and why Adivasis and Dalits (also known as Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes), remain at the bottom of Indian society.

One of the first collective efforts by a team of anthropologists working on the same questions across different sites, Ground Down by Growth brings to light the real-life stories of the struggles of India's low castes and tribes across the country. The fate of India's Adivasis and Dalits is globally important for many reasons, not least that together they make up 1 in 25 people in the world. Most importantly, as we argue here, their stories show us the ways in which economic globalisation has re-entrenched identity-based social oppression (by which we mean here, tribe, caste, gender and region, but which could include race, ethnicity, sexuality), making it inseparable from class relations, a process we conceptualise as 'conjugated oppression'. This book's potential significance, then, derives not simply from the number of people its analyses address directly, but also from the more general theoretical argument it makes about how the spread of capitalism today is enlisting and intensifying previously existing relations of domination based on inherited and indelible social identities. In exploring the relation between inherited social identities and the often-observed divergence between haves and have-nots, the book adds weight to the argument that the failure of 'trickle-down' models of growth and the persistence of social disparities under contemporary capitalism are two sides of the same coin.

Ground Down by Growth explores the changing historical processes through which Adivasis and Dalits across the country remain worse off than all other groups. It poses a challenge to proponents of India's economic growth as it shows that neoliberal capitalism, far from enabling the benefits of its growth rates to trickle down to all groups, has further entrenched inequalities based on pre-existing unequal social divisions. Ground Down by Growth shows the ways in which inequalities of caste and tribe (and region and gender) take shape through class relations across the country, morphing older forms of identity-based discrimination and marginalisation into new mechanisms of exploitation, oppression and subjugation. Specifically, we propose that the entrenchment of social difference in the expansion of capitalism takes place through at least three interrelated processes: inherited inequalities of power; super-exploitation based on casual migrant labour; and conjugated oppression (that is the intertwined multiple oppressions based on caste, tribe, class, gender and region). The book also explores the struggles Adivasis and Dalits wage to cope with the situation they find themselves in.

OUR FIELD SITES

The long history of marginalisation of India's Adivasis and Dalits is reflected across our sites. In the past, the Indian caste system kept the Dalits as 'Untouchables', firmly below and outside a hierarchy of endogamous kinship groups. There, they constituted a class of unfree agricultural labourers and other manual occupational groups working for the dominant classes who were higher than them in the caste hierarchy. The dominant classes controlled the land and appropriated the surplus value of the Dalits, preventing them from cultivating land on their own. Compelled to act at the behest of the landlord, they constituted what scholars have called, 'agrestic slaves' (Kumar 1965, Vishwanath 2014). An oppressive discourse of purity–pollution, permeating religious, cultural, social and economic interactions, was part of the means of their domination and subordination.

There were of course regional variations. Bondage and oppression was harshest in the intensively cultivated, irrigated river plains and delta regions, from the Gangetic Plains to parts of coastal Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In the dryer regions, where labour was at a premium but land less so, they might even have had some plots of land. There were also differences between Dalit castes; village servants, for example, were more likely to have access to a small plot of land.

The Adivasi or tribal groups of the hills and forests of India, in comparison, lived in relatively independent communities, with much more direct access to the means of their social reproduction because many were able to cultivate land and access forest resources without interference in, or domination or mediation of this access by caste groups. Often they sought to keep away from outsiders, and were stereotyped as wild and savage, but Adivasis' autonomy regarding land and forests enabled them to be somewhat independent of the Hindu caste system. As Frederick Bailey (1961) argued, there was a tribe–caste continuum, with some groups more autonomous than others. The closer the interaction of Adivasi groups with Hindu societies of the plains, the more likely it was that their domination and exploitation became more like that of the 'Untouchables', so that some scholars have even called them 'tribal castes'. Indeed, some scholars have argued that sections of Dalits came from tribal backgrounds, sometimes as subjugated hunters and gatherers of the lands conquered by warrior peasant groups.

The colonial powers officially abolished slavery in India in 1843, but this simply led to its transformation into bondage through relations of debt; what has been called debt bondage by scholars. Colonialism also reinforced the stigmas of caste and tribe. There is a well-known history of high caste collusion with the colonial administrators which reinforced the caste system and kept Dalits at the bottom of the social hierarchy. There is also a less well-known history of the appropriation of Adivasi forest and land resources that led both to their persistent dispossession but also to their fight back through rebellions, resulting in some protective legislation of their territories, and their migration into ever more remote sites, seeking to keep the state at arm's length. Dalit resistance also began to take shape, led by a whole set of both high-profile and less well-known movements and people.

The Dalit leader B.R. Ambedkar outlined the conditions and stigmatisation of Dalits by way of a stylised 20-point code that 'Touchables' in all villages would set for 'Untouchables'. These included segregated living quarters in the village with Untouchables relegated to the outskirts, marking a more general principle that Untouchables should stay clear of Touchables so that the Touchables could avoid their 'distance pollution' and their 'shadow pollution'. The code also prohibited wealth acquisition for Untouchables. There was also the requirement that 'he must wear the marks of his inferiority for the public to know and identify him such as: having a contemptible name; not wearing clean clothes', nor shoes, silver and gold ornaments. The code also listed duties of the Untouchables which included, among other ritual and practical duties, that 'on certain festivities, the Untouchables must submit their women to members of the village community to be made the subject of indecent fun' (Ambedkar 1989). Combined with the knowledge that these principles would be enforced through abuse, boycotts, beatings, and killings if necessary, Ambedkar's outline of the situation faced by Dalits provides a fitting description of untouchability in practice during the late colonial period.

With Independence, economic growth, development and modernisation were supposed to eliminate caste and tribe, as well as poverty in India. Indeed, as outlined in the Preface, an ambitious programme of affirmative action for Dalits and Adivasis was introduced, and in the decades following Independence extreme oppressive historical forms of exploitation, such as hereditary life-long debt slavery, have been pushed to the margins, as have the most virulent forms of oppressive social practices based on purity–pollution. But scholars have argued that though the boundaries between Hindu (non-Dalit) castes may now be more permeable than in the past, segregation between the Hindu castes and Dalits/Adivasis persists.

Our book shows that despite substantial changes and some improvements, Adivasis and Dalits are still worse off than all other groups across all our sites, and still suffer from severe disadvantage and entrenched discrimination. Importantly, the sites of exploitation, marginalisation and oppression, and the ways in which Adivasis and Dalits are overwhelmingly trapped at the bottom of the Indian social and economic hierarchy, are both continuous with and also different to those of the past. Although the ideology of caste based on purity and pollution may be diluted, as a social relation of oppression, caste and tribe continue to be pervasive in contemporary India.

Our stories begin in the run-down tea plantations of the Peermade belt in Kerala where, from the 1860s onwards, Dalits from the villages of Tamil Nadu were brought to work as indentured labourers in the tea plantations developed by the colonial planters. This is the site of Jayaseelan Raj's research. Though Kerala is known the world over for its high levels of education and its unparalleled success within India in relation to human development, our book reveals a story of centuries of exploitation hidden in the midst of the beautiful rolling landscape of tea estates, the site of many a tourist visit to India.

Here, the processes of cutbacks in the terms and conditions of labour that accompanied economic liberalisation were sharpened by a global collapse of the tea economy in the 1990s. While some plantations started to close down, others were taken over by Indian multinational companies which used the moment to put much more precarious working conditions for labour into place.

Dalit men overwhelmingly lost their permanent work in the estate tea factories and Dalit women saw their permanent tea plucking jobs being cut back too. Though the jobs were very low paid, at least they had come with security of employment and also some welfare benefits (such as free healthcare, housing and the promise of pensions), but these benefits were cut back too. It was predominantly older Dalit women who continued to hold permanent tea plucker jobs in the tea plantations, thus at least providing the family some security of housing.

The Dalit youth – now more educated than their parents – tried to find better jobs in the cities back in Tamil Nadu. The best that most of them could get, though, was semi-skilled work: dyeing textiles and stitching and making garments or operating machinery. Away from the confines of the tea plantations many of these Dalits chose to hide or change their surnames in the face of overt caste discrimination in Tamil Nadu. Caste in India is often indelible in one's surname, and this made it difficult for these tea plantation Tamil Dalits to get a house or a job and much else when people knew their surname.

Jayaseelan Raj details how the local trade unions have been co-opted by the management of the tea plantations. However, in August 2015, 12,000 Dalit women tea pluckers in the Munnar tea belt, mobilising in a month-long strike, showed exceptional courage in fighting against the deteriorating terms and conditions of work that they increasingly face. Though they were not as successful as they had hoped, remarkably they bypassed the unions' formal leadership, charging them with nepotism and corruption, and mobilised autonomously to fight for higher wages.

The bargaining power of this local labour force – and their access to this kind of work – is, however, increasingly being undercut by the plantation owners bringing in seasonal migrant labourers who are even poorer than the local Dalits. In the Peermade this is Adivasi migrant labour from Jharkhand (Santhals), whom Jayaseelan Raj followed back to their homes in eastern India. They are brought in to do the tea plucking work that Dalits are compelled to move out of. For the tea plantation owners, the Adivasis are a cheaper, more docile workforce that can be hired on a casual piece rate basis without any of the rights the permanent Dalit workers had to housing, pensions and healthcare. Usually brought in just for eight to ten months a year, displaced from their kinship support networks, and not speaking the local language, they are not in a position to mobilise – as the Dalit women have done – against the plantation management.

From Kerala, the book moves east to the coastal belt of Cuddalore district in Tamil Nadu where Brendan Donegan worked. This region, an erstwhile landlord-dominated agricultural belt, has, again with economic liberalisation, been targeted by the State Industries Promotion Corporation for Tamil Nadu for the development of highly toxic chemical and pharmaceutical industries now lining the Bay of Bengal. The one that has an immediate impact on Donegan's site is a newly established gelatine factory whose entire production is for export. It is run with a business partner in Japan, has joint ventures in China and Taiwan, and makes gelatine from cattle bones for gelling agents in food, pharmaceuticals, photography and cosmetics, and hence locally is called 'the bone factory'.

The shift from agriculture to industry has meant that Dalit and Irula Adivasi labour is no longer bonded in agricultural servitude to high caste landlords. However, while Dalit women still primarily work in the village, Dalit men are now incorporated into the lowest rungs of the chemical industry – in Donegan's village most are working in daily contract wage work, cleaning bones with toxic chemicals. The jobs are controlled by the erstwhile landlords whose relatives own the factories, get the permanent jobs, and who themselves now dominate the supply of labour and material to the factories, apart from having moved out into other lucrative and powerful positions like operating a tollgate on the highway, becoming a Member of Legislative Assembly of Tamil Nadu, a film director or owning a five-star hotel.

The overall transition in the village is the classic one from field to factory, but one that is underwritten by a stark caste divide in which the low castes occupy the most precarious of jobs in the informal economy, in this case the dirtiest tasks of cleaning animal bones. Meanwhile the Irulas, who have not been given Scheduled Tribe status by the government, stick to agricultural labour and fishing: none do factory work. A few Irulas add long commutes to already lengthy working days to work in Pondicherry on construction sites, or migrate seasonally.

Though there is no upward mobility for the Adivasis, for some Dalits affirmative action, together with a long history of missionary work and related Dalit mobilisation, have enabled them to occupy state sector jobs, albeit in the lower echelons (mainly in the police). However, as the Dalits in the factories try to rise against their exploitation, their bargaining power is being increasingly cut by seasonal migrant Adivasi and Dalit labour, again brought in from eastern India (Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar), repeating a process that we also saw in the tea plantations of Kerala. Super-exploited, these migrants live in squalid conditions. There are often 40 to 70 people in one room operating as a dormitory, where they have to share the spot in which they sleep in shifts. And they work longer hours for less pay than any of the local low caste labour.

From Tamil Nadu, we move to the heart of the country to the banks of the Godavari in Bhadrachalam, Telangana where Dalel Benbabaali was based. Typical of the Adivasi-dominated areas of central and eastern India (in the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha), this is a place where Adivasi land rights have been constitutionally protected but which also contains a wealth of India's natural resources (coal, iron ore, bauxite and timber). Despite a long history of social movements, which most recently includes the Naxalite revolutionary struggle and the formation of the new state of Telangana from the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, Adivasi land and forest rights in these areas have been successively eroded.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Ground Down by Growth by Alpa Shah, Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby, Dalel Benbabaali, Brendan Donegan, Jayaseelan Raj, Vikramaditya Thakur. Copyright © 2018 Alpa Shah, Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby, Dalel Benbabaali, Brendan Donegan, Jayaseelan Raj and Vikramaditya Thakur. Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745337686
• ISBN 13: 9780745337685
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304