24/11/07

caste determinism is irrational, mr.gupta?

Research Question: What is the prevalence and incidence of morbidity in children residing in social welfare hostels? Objective: To find out morbidity pattern among hostel children by sex. Study Design: Cross sectional and longitudinal study. Setting: Social Welfare hostels in Tirupati town of Andhra Pradesh. Participants: 598 children (341 boys and 257 girls).Statistical Analysis: Proportions and Chi-square tests.Results: The common prevalent morbid conditions found were skin disorders (25.7%), dental caries (21.5%), history of passing worms in stool (21.6%), Vit.B deficiency (3.2%), ARI (1.7%) and diarrhoea (1.2%). The prevalence of anaemia and helminthiasis in a 20% sub-sample based on laboratory findings were found to be 79.6% and 39.3% respectively. Significantly higher prevalence of anaemia and helminthiasis was found among boys. In the follow up study, the major health problems reported were ARI, skin diseases, injuries, Vit.B complex deficiency, diarrhoea and eye diseases.
most of the students staying in those hostels were dalits. and this is from the archives of the national human rights commission website:
New Delhi October 19, 2007
The National Human Rights has sent notice to the Chief Secretary, Andhra Pradesh, on a report, which said that “Yellow Rice and Rasam” is being provided to the hostelers in the State. The report, which appeared in the “Andhra Jyoti” on September 8, 2007, said that during inspections by the Social Welfare Department Officials, it was found that 120 hostels inspected were providing rice and rasam instead of nutritious food to the inmates. These hostels were located in the Telengana region of the State covering the districts of Warangal, Nizamabad and Karim Nagar. [...] The news report also stated that 645 hostels including 120 girls’ hostels were suffering from sanitation problems, with bathroom and toilets unfit for use. The news report said sometimes the students were forced to attend the call of the nature in the open. Even the girls hostels lacked bathrooms and they had to make temporary bathrooms. Under these circumstances a girl in Anantpur district was sexually assaulted when she had gone to attend the call of the nature.
if the commission had bothered to check on its own the conditions in some of those hostels it'd have uncovered more horrifying truths perhaps: a tdp mla had lamented in the state assembly that more than 1700 of the 5000 odd 'social welfare' hostels in the state had no access to clean drinking water and over 300 students had committed suicide in the last 2-3 years.

every state in india has these social welfare hostels for dalit and adivasi students. since the last twenty years hostels for obc students have also been started. students from class 3 to 8 are admitted into these hostels and are provided free accomodation and food. andhra pradesh has more than half a million students in these hostels and karnataka has more than 3,50,000 - it's safe to assume that around 3-5 million students from the weakest sections of our society stay in these hostels across the country? i am not sure- north indian states like bihar and uttar pradesh don't seem seem convinced of the concept, despite all the noise on social justice that we've been hearing from those states in the last two decades. their idea of social justice just doesn't seem to translate into anything concrete, apart from statues, like, say, hostels for students from the lower castes who really need all the protection and care that the state can offer (it's a different issue that those states which seem to believe in the idea are not really being able to offer all that). bihar has only around 146 hostels. and uttar pradesh has started building a few in the last few years. even a state like west bengal has only 1/7th the number of dalit and adivasi students in hostels as karnataka. one feels happy that some states in india are actually trying to pay more than lip service to social welfare. but, as the study and the report i quoted earlier show, their efforts haven't been satisfactory. here's some more evidence:
A recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General ( CAG) says that the gap between general category students and Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) students in schools is increasing despite various government schemes and projects. [...] The report also criticises the hostel facilities provided to SC/ST students. In many states, hostels have been captured by policemen, state officials, and even beggars. For example in Dumka, Dhanbad, and Ranchi, three hostels for STs and one for SCs built during 2001-04 for 400 students were occupied by police officials and to run a school, while six hostels constructed during 1992-2003 were being used as staff quarters, classrooms and a staff common room, the report alleges.
and more:
BANGALORE: The state government has initiated disciplinary action against 132 taluk officers and 4 district officers of the social welfare department for dereliction of duty. "These officers have been held responsible for not implementing welfare schemes effectively and overlooking hostel maintenance. We have also sent back 24 officers on deputation to their parent department," Social Welfare Minister A Krishnappa told reporters here on Tuesday. [...] Claiming that maintenance and management of hostels run by the department was better compared to Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Krishnappa pointed out that hostel inmates would be provided with computers, television sets and uninterrupted power supply.
one is reminded of all those pearls of wisdom thrown at us swine whenever reservations were discussed in the mainstream media in the last twenty five years or so: give them good schools, scholarships, hostels...why do they need reservations? well, some state governments seem to be doing just that: giving, no, throwing schools, scholarships and hostels at them but not bothering to check whether they're good enough. one is also reminded of an article by dipankar gupta in which he attacks caste determinism:
Caste determinism works against democracy, no matter who the beneficiaries of this mindset might be. It has worked against the Scheduled Castes for centuries, necessitating the provision of reservations for them in the Constitution. These were designed to protect them and help them generate socially valuable skills and assets that were traditionally denied to them. The rationale was that with time, members of the Scheduled Castes would have sufficient confidence in themselves to take the fight against casteism forward and eventually extirpate this curse. No caste determinism here, but a clear respect for the downtrodden and in their capabilities.
could someone please tell me, how does one spot the clear respect for the downtrodden and in their capabilities in the study and the news reports i quoted in this post?

could someone also tell me, why is mr.gupta convinced that all obcs exhibit only one kind of behavior?

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