Ajeet Pankaj

Dalit women in India experience gender in an entirely different way from upper‐caste women because, along with gender discrimination, Dalit women face caste discrimination. Their experience of gender discrimination intersects with their caste identity, which intensifies their suffering. Dalit women experience gender‐based discrimination and social exclusion and stigma. Drawing from the Tamil movie Karnan, two Bollywood movies—200‐Halla Ho and Article15—and the Netflix web series Azib Dastan‐Geeli Pucchi (an anthology), we endeavor to answer several questions: What patterns exist in the gender‐ and caste‐based humiliation of Dalit women? How do gender and caste intersect in the humiliation and social exclusion of those women? How is their experience of gender‐based discrimination different from that of upper‐caste women? How do Dalit women assert their agency and struggle against gender and caste oppression in society? What kind of resilience do they rely upon to negotiate gender and caste discrimination? What inspires and motivates them to fight for their dignity? Despite the challenges and hurdles, how are these women achieving their aspirations?

Through delineating the struggles and challenges of Dalits in making of the Dalit middle class, this article seeks to argue that the struggle and aspiration of Dalits to live a dignified life and urban as a space of ‘liberation from caste’ represents a high point in making of the new Dalit middle class. However, existing literature about the Dalit middle class revolves around identity, provision of reservation in education, employment and cultural assertion, but many unfolded narratives of the Dalit middle class exist. This article attempts to reveal the struggle and challenges of the new Dalit middle class to achieve the status of the middle class. Keeping this in mind further, this article aims to explore the transformations in everyday life of the new Dalit middle class regarding consumer behaviour and lifestyle. Besides this, the article provides a detailed narrative of the new Dalit middle class and about their experience of caste and class in the city.

Drawing upon empirical evidence and using Sarah Banks’s concept ‘ethics work’ as a conceptual approach, the article examines the ethical dilemmas facing community development practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article attempts to understand the everyday experience of community development practitioners working with Dalits, women, and labour migrants in India. Further, given these communities’ social and economic vulnerabilities, the article tries to comprehend how practitioners’ engagement with these communities during the COVID-19 response exposed them to various ethical dilemmas. The article also traces negotiation and navigation strategies for dealing with ethical dilemmas and delivering services in the community during the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that promote human dignity.

Suresh, a 45-year-old migrant, worked in a small unit in Mumbai, manufacturing electronic met­ers. The catastrophic effect of Covid had shut down the unit, which resulted in his losing the job. Since the first wave of the pandemic, Sur­esh has been at his native village near Jaunpur in Uttar Pra­desh, where he returned during the lockdown in May 2020, after he lost his job in Mumbai, his address for a decade. He was jobless for almost a year but was hopeful life would get back on track after the government revoked the lockdown. Instead, the Covid second wave amplified the catastrophes, leaving Suresh with no option but to look out for alternative opportunities. With the help of his family members and friends, he started a book and stationery shop at his village

When the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government assumed power and the Shiv Sena’s Udd­hav Thackeray became the chief minister, he delicately kept alive the Marathi asmita issue but subtly sugar-coated his party’s anti-migrant politics with an aim of changing the face of the party. The way the Thackeray government handled the migrant crisis during the Covid pandemic, many believed that the Sena was trying to engage in accommodative and assimilative politics to clean up the party’s image. There­fore, it is important to find answers to some of these questions: What kind of effort did Thac­keray make to change the anti-migrant image of the Shiv Sena? How did Covid-19 and the mig­rant chaos help the party to project itself as an inclusive and accommodative political outfit of the state? How did migrants benefit due to the Sena’s changing political narrative?

Even after 75 years of Independence, caste-based inequality, discrimination, and exclusion prevail in almost every sphere of society. Now the country must revisit Dr Ambedkar's apprehensions about the contradictory world between political and socioeconomic lives.

Drawing upon empirical evidence and using Sarah Banks’s concept ‘ethics work’ as a conceptual approach, the article examines the ethical dilemmas facing community development practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article attempts to understand the everyday experience of community development practitioners working with Dalits, women, and labour migrants in India. Further, given these communities’ social and economic vulnerabilities, the article tries to comprehend how practitioners’ engagement with these communities during the COVID-19 response exposed them to various ethical dilemmas. The article also traces negotiation and navigation strategies for dealing with ethical dilemmas and delivering services in the community during the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that promote human dignity.

Social exclusion has been identified as an obstacle for Dalits in every sphere of society, which deprives them of access to resources. It has multiple forms which exclude Dalits from labour market and which creates adverse impact on their means of living. This article provides a theoretical and empirical perspective on the study of caste-based discrimination in the sphere of resource accessibility and consumer market discrimination. It sets the stage for addressing some of the key questions surrounding discrimination in consumer market and labour market, by highlighting the ways in which the caste system persists through various forms of discrimination. It specifically looks into the plight of discrimination in various labour markets in terms of access to employment, wages and employer behaviour at workplace. It also examines the consequences of discrimination in labour market on Dalits, that is, labouring class and caste relation in the local market. The article, in its essence, co...

Dalits constitute one-fifth of the total Indian population and, being located at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, suffer from the acute problem of discrimination and exclusion in every sphere of society. Despite various government affirmative actions and policies, Dalits experience discrimination, which in turn lead to inaccessibility of welfare services among them. Based on the author’s engagement in field work for data collection,1 this article highlights that discrimination in welfare programme is not only caused by favouritism and corruption but also linked to the sociopolitical structure of the state and society. Through a dense analysis of the process of social exclusion in availability, accessibility and affordability of welfare programmes, this article examines the role of the state and society in the context of discrimination against Dalits in welfare programmes. This article deals with discrimination and exclusion of Dalits during the identification of beneficiaries and ...

The self configuring dexterous autonomy of MANET imposes some network challenges constrained to traditional dynamic routing behaviour. So as working with different mobility and traffic patterns with normal management schemes may lead some minor pitfalls to some important network performance parameters and hence can degrade the whole network performance. Here, Our aim is to make some DSR and MAC based cross layer optimizations and testify it on different mobility and traffic scenarios so as to justify the robustness of our proposed improvement.

This article explains the contemporary context that influences the policies and practices of community work in India. The transformation in the policy arena and welfare approach underlines the influence of neoliberal governmentality. We observe that neoliberalism as a political–economic approach is persuading socio-economic decisions and increasing market influence. Precisely, we are tracing the policy trajectory vis-à-vis informal sector workers who have adverse implications for their social security and social protection. By illustrating the current policy and legislative approach, we explain an uneasy relationship between neoliberalism, governmentality and welfare. The changes through new labour codes have restrained the minimal protection that was available to the workers. By granting significant flexibility to the employers at the cost of workers, neoliberal policies accentuate the predicament of precarity. Besides, recent policy changes have impacted community engagement with ...

This article explains the contemporary context that influences the policies and practices of community work in India. The transformation in the policy arena and welfare approach underlines the influence of neoliberal governmentality. We observe that neoliberalism as a political-economic approach is persuading socioeconomic decisions and increasing market influence. Precisely, we are tracing the policy trajectory vis-à-vis informal sector workers who have adverse implications for their social security and social protection. By illustrating the current policy and legislative approach, we explain an uneasy relationship between neoliberalism, governmentality and welfare. The changes through new labour codes have restrained the minimal protection that was available to the workers. By granting significant flexibility to the employers at the cost of workers, neoliberal policies accentuate the predicament of precarity. Besides, recent policy changes have impacted community engagement with the poor and vulnerable. Through an analysis of neoliberal policies and strategies of governmentality, this article underscores the challenges for community engagements.

This narrative is based on my previous experience and telephonic discussions with Dalit (Dalits are an ex-untouchable caste of India, who have been subject to discrimination and exclusion historically and placed at the bottom on the Indian social system) migrants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The narrative aims to highlight the life and trajectory of Dalit migrants preand during the pandemic. In addition, the narrative illustrates their everyday strategy as a group in response to the pandemic. Further, the narrative describes various means and methods of Dalit migrants to advance community solidarity, which has helped them to survive and escape the city, to return to their villages.

Dalits constitute one-fifth of the total Indian population and, being located at the bottom of the caste hierarchy, suffer from the acute problem of discrimination and exclusion in every sphere of society. Despite various government affirmative actions and policies, Dalits experience discrimination, which in turn lead to inaccessibility of welfare services among them. Based on the author's engagement in field work for data collection, 1 this article highlights that discrimination in welfare programme is not only caused by favouritism and corruption but also linked to the sociopolitical structure of the state and society. Through a dense analysis of the process of social exclusion in availability, accessibility and affordability of welfare programmes, this article examines the role of the state and society in the context of discrimination against Dalits in welfare programmes. This article deals with discrimination and exclusion of Dalits during the identification of beneficiaries and delivery of the state-sponsored welfare services. It specifically looks into the discriminatory mechanism in welfare programmes, particularly the programmes that are directly linked with poverty eradication and employment. This article uses the lens of social exclusion to examine caste discrimination in welfare programmes.

In India, there are a number of Dalit autobiographies and Bollywood movies that narrate the humiliation of Dalits in various spheres of their life. The autobiographies of Dalits and a few prominent Bollywood movies capture the struggles of Dalits to obtain a high level of education. Education has been one of the primary instruments for Dalits to achieve upward mobility. Drawing from two prominent Dalit autobiographies by Tulasi Ram and Omprakash Valmiki, two Bollywood movies-Pariksha and Arakshan, and my own fieldwork experience with Dalit students confirms the experience of Subodh, a Dalit student who is currently pursuing higher education in Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow. The experiences of Subodh exemplify the humiliations a Dalit experiences in educational institutions and the struggles of Dalits to use education to achieve upward mobility.

Social exclusion has been identified as an obstacle for Dalits in every sphere of society, which deprives them of access to resources. It has multiple forms which exclude Dalits from labour market and which creates adverse impact on their means of living. This article provides a theoretical and empirical perspective on the study of caste-based discrimination in the sphere of resource accessibility and consumer market discrimination. It sets the stage for addressing some of the key questions surrounding discrimination in consumer market and labour market, by highlighting the ways in which the caste system persists through various forms of discrimination. It specifically looks into the plight of discrimination in various labour markets in terms of access to employment, wages and employer behaviour at workplace. It also examines the consequences of discrimination in labour market on Dalits, that is, labouring class and caste relation in the local market. The article, in its essence, contextualizes from literature and empirical evidences collected from the field.

The emergence of a socio-cultural consciousness among Dalit migrants in Mumbai, and its manifestation in the form of symbolic places and important days (birthdays and death anniversaries) related to their ideologues, are highly significant from the perspective of subalterns living in various cities, on the one hand, and the making of
their own sacred spheres in cities, on the other. The symbolic means contribute enormously to making such a culture, and hence their identity, visible in Mumbai. It is in this specific context that the paper explores the undercurrents of changing cultural dimensions and emerging socio-cultural transformations in Mumbai. It seeks to explore the role of symbolic means in the emancipation and cultural hegemonic assertion of Dalit migrants. The paper also captures the narrative around the relationship of Dalit migrants with native Dalits, and how it helps them negotiate with everyday forms of anti-migrant politics in the city of Mumbai.