On contemporary political, social, economic and cultural issues of Dalits in India.

Bridging the Social Gap: Perspectives on Dalit Empowerment addresses four interrelated issues. It conceptualises exclusion-linked deprivation of excluded and indigenous groups in Indian society and elaborates the concept and meaning of social exclusion in general, and of caste-, untouchability- and ethnicity-based exclusion in particular. It then presents the status of disadvantaged groups of Dalit and Adivasi and captures inter-social group inequalities in the attainment of human development. It then goes on to analyse factors associated with high deprivation of these disadvantaged groups in terms of low access to resources, employment, education and social needs. Finally, it highlights the role of caste discrimination in economic, civil and political spheres in the persistence of group inequalities. All these issues have been explained using simple language; relevant and recent data; case studies; news highlights related to civil, social, economic and political rights violation for easy and better understanding of readers.

This book explores the relationship between mainstream and marginal or subaltern religious practice in the Indian subcontinent, and its entanglement with ideas of nationhood, democracy and equality. With detailed readings of texts from Marathi and Hindi literature and criticism, the book brings together studies of Hindu devotionalism with issues of religious violence. Drawing on the arguments of Partha Chatterjee, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, the author demonstrates that Indian democracy, and indeed postcolonial democracies in general, do not always adhere to Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality, and that religion and secular life are inextricably enmeshed in the history of the modern, whether understood from the perspective of Europe or of countries formerly colonized by Europe. Therefore subaltern protest, in its own attempt to lay claim to history, must rely on an idea of religion that is inextricably intertwined with the deeply invidious legacy of nation, state, and civilization. The author suggests that the co-existence of acts of social altruism and the experience of doubt born from social strife - ‘miracle’ and ‘violence’ - ought to be a central issue for ethical debate. Keeping in view the power and reach of genocidal Hinduism, this book is the first to look at how the religion of marginal communities at once affirms and turns away from secularized religion. This important contribution to the study of vernacular cosmopolitanism in South Asia will be of great interest to historians and political theorists, as well as to scholars of religious studies, South Asian studies and philosophy.

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.

Generally, the development involves mobilization of natural resources, augmentation of trained manpower, capital and technical knowledge how and their utilization for the attainment of constantly rising national goals, higher living standards and the change over from a traditional to a modern society.

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.

Part I - Dalit Dimension, Part II - Women Dimension, Part III - Old Age Dimension, Part IV - Social Development Dimension, Part V - Peasants and Agricultural Labour. Study of sociology in India invariably relates to the composition of segments, communities, institutions, social organizations, regions, issues, problems faced by these segments, challenges uncounted in the process, social welfare programmes for the people vulnerable to problems, impact of development intervention among these segments, planned directed social change, people’s participation in development transactions, social caste and benefits including social audit, capital formation, induced development, micro level planning, and public private partnership based development initiatives in the direction of social development. However the Indian social structure perpetuating inequality arising out of caste, gender, region, people’s vulnerability to injustices, human rights implications, etc., act as stumbling block in creation of a society. Consequently India is faced with sustained inequality in view of the system of social stratification within the larger framework of the social structure. Social relationships in Indian context is marked by social standing and identification in the system of hierarchy which seem to have perpetuated strongly the phenomenon of caste based inequalities which ultimately resulted in various forms of discriminations and distance between community and determined their social status. As a result, social segment categories were based upon their ascribed status, ownership means of production particularly land and other movable and immovable properties. Consequently this has led to emergence of social evil practices between social segments categorized as upper and lower, gender inequality between male and female, regional imbalance between rural and urban in terms of development intervention and creation of infrastructure.