(FREE) UPSC Current Affairs 2024 PDF

THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 14 July 2020 Yet another challenge to the Dalit movement(The Hindu)

Yet another challenge to the Dalit movement(The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1:Society
Prelims level: Dalit movement
Mains level: Social empowerment

Context:

The pandemic is forcing us to understand the changing nature of society. In north India, specifically, it has also reshaped the discourse on marginalisation.
Dalit issues are part of this discoursebut are submerged in the broader discussions on economic vulnerabilities highlighted by COVID-19.
This pandemic has brought about two important shifts in the political discourse on the marginalised.
As the lockdown caused untold suffering to poor, migrant labourers, it brought them from the margins to the centre of deliberations.
Second, discussions on the space for the marginalised in the public health system and their safety are in focus.
However, the concerns of Dalits remain hidden under the broader categories of poor, vulnerable, marginal, etc.

Changing vocabulary:

In contemporary debates, there is a reappearance of class-based vocabulary.
Caste-based issues have either become invisible or are only visible as part of the wider discourse.
Leaders such as Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati and Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad have not been able to engage effectively with these new shifts.
They have not been able to carve outa location in these new debates for their own politics.
They have to reorient their exclusively caste-based language and reshape their political discourse to be in tune with the times.
There are a large number of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes among the migrant labourers.
But Dalit leaders in north India have not been able to represent their concerns.
It is possible that these shifts in political debates may continue in the post-pandemic phase at least for a few years as vulnerabilitiesof the marginalised will increase.

Key challenges:

The Dalit movement in north India is habituated in using caste-based binaries in its mobilisational language but has failed to respond to the changing political diction.
In fact, leaders have not changed their political diction for 30 years, since the time of the Kanshi Ram-led Bahujan movement.
The movement is facing a crisis of agendas and social programmes.
The constant repetition of unfulfilled claims and commitments and slogans and promises create disillusionmentamong a section of their support base.
Another issue is that the Dalit movement in north India is grappling with a leadership crisis.
In States such as U.P., Bihar, Punjab and Rajasthan, Dalit assertions are mostly centred around the electoral politics of Dalit-Bahujan political groups and parties.
Even alternative social movements led by Jignesh Mevani and Mr. Azad seem to be caught in the logic of electoral politics.

Leadership crisis:

During the Bahujan movement in the 1990s, the idea was that the movement and the party could facilitate each other.
But the BSP, which emerged from the Bahujan social movement, developed gradually as a party structured like a pyramid.
Under Ms. Mayawati, it has stopped its reciprocalrelationship with the Dalit movement.
In the BSP, the emergence of political leaders of various Dalit-Bahujan castes at different levels became frozen.
This caused erosion in the broader social base and ultimately weakened the Dalit movement.
The Dalit movement is constantly facing new challenges but its leaders are not able to change their strategies and grammar of politics to respond to them.
Under the influences of the Ambedkarite ideology and the Dalit-Bahujan movements, an assertive and politically aware Dalit consciousness was being formed among a section of Dalit groups.
In the meantime, interventions by Hindutva leaders among Dalits mobilised a section of the most marginalised Dalits under the Hindutva flag.
Now the pandemic has posed a new challenge for the Dalit movement.

Conclusion:

Caste-based identities formed the ideological resource base, but now concerns have gone beyond caste and religion, thus posing a different challenge.
The challenge may be temporary but it may lead to a paradigm shift for Dalit politics.
The Dalit movement has to evolve new social strategies for its expansion in order to keep up with the changing times.
Online Coaching for UPSC PRE Exam

E-Books Download for UPSC IAS Exams

General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the draft scheme for cashless treatment of motor accident victims, consider the following statements:

1. It has been envisaged in the scheme to provide compulsory insurance cover to all road users in the country.
2. The scheme also includes creation of a Motor Vehicle Accident Fund.
3. NHAI has been entrusted to implement the scheme.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 3 only
(b) 1 and 2 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) None

Answer: B