Is There Still Discrimination Agains the Untouchable

New Delhi (CNN)Polamma advisedly descends the 250 steps from the hilltop slum where she lives in southern Bharat to walk one kilometer to the nearest grocery store.

She is nine months significant and has four children to feed, simply at the bottom of the steps customs leaders of a dominant caste forcefulness her to get back empty-handed.

Since Republic of india went into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus on March 25, 57 families who live in Polamma's hilltop hamlet in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, have been barred from going down the hill, even to buy essentials such as food and medicine.

The families are part of the Yanadi community, who work mainly equally waste pickers and drain cleaners and who -- fifty-fifty before the coronavirus -- were segregated considering of their degree.

"We've been locked up hither, similar prisoners -- we alive well-nigh a milk factory, and there is not a driblet of milk for my children to drink. Nosotros are called dirty, and they say we spread the disease," said Polamma, who just goes past 1 proper name.

India's caste system was officially abolished in 1950, simply the two,000-year-quondam social hierarchy imposed on people past nascency still exists in many aspects of life. The degree organisation categorizes Hindus at birth, defining their identify in society, what jobs they tin can practise and who they tin marry.

Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, who fall exterior the four main categories of Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (traders and merchants) and the Shudras (laborers), are considered "untouchables" or Dalits.

Millions of people, virtually 25% of Republic of india's population of 1.3 billion people, are grouped nether the scheduled castes (Dalits) and scheduled tribes (Adivasis) in India's constitution. Adivasis are ethnic Indians who have been socially and economically marginalized for centuries.

Both groups have long endured social isolation, just it's feared the rapid spread of the coronavirus and measures to stop it have worsened their segregation.

Jobs that Dalits and Adivasis have been forced to take for centuries -- cleaners, manual scavengers and waste matter pickers -- expose them to a greater risk of catching the virus.

During the pandemic, their jobs are considered essential services by the Indian authorities, only many say they haven't been given adequate equipment to protect themselves against Covid-19. And if they get sick, at that place's no social safety net to ensure they don't fall even deeper into poverty.

Lower admission to services and higher bloodshed

When the Castilian Influenza pandemic ripped through India in 1918 killing almost 17 one thousand thousand people, caste played a crucial office in determining who received wellness care -- and who died.

Lower caste people living in crowded slums were the most exposed to the virus, and the least able to find nutrient and medicine as the flu spread, according to historian David Arnold, who has extensively researched and written nearly the Spanish Flu epidemic in India.

Historian Amit Kapoor, author of "Riding the Tiger," said 61 lower caste people died for every 1,000 in the community. For upper caste Hindus it was xix for every 1,000, and the figure was fifty-fifty lower for Europeans living in India.

However, Kapoor believes that while people belonging to the lower degree were disproportionately impacted in 1918, the state of affairs now is different. "While caste was very predominant in 1918, in 2020 the impact of epidemics have more to exercise with the economical bureaucracy than the social hierarchy," said Kapoor.

There's little doubt that lower caste Indians are poorer than higher castes.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human being Development Initiative (OPHI)'due south global multidimensional poverty index (MPI), half of scheduled tribes were considered poor compared to 15% of higher castes.

Poverty makes lower castes more than vulnerable during emergencies, co-ordinate to the findings of a 2013 study by the International Dalit Solidarity Network, a network of international human rights groups fighting Dalit discrimination.

For example, afterward the 2004 Asian seismic sea wave, Dalits were forced to remove bodies and debris, for very niggling if whatever pay, and weren't offered any psychological support. Many weren't compensated for their lost possessions, such every bit the bikes and fishing nets that were swept abroad, the report said.

Dalit activists fright the coronavirus volition once again reinforce inequality in Republic of india.

"India has 600,000 villages and almost every village a small pocket on the outskirts is meant for Dalits," said Paul Divakar, a Dalit activist from the National Entrada on Dalit Human Rights.

"This settlement is far from health intendance centers, banks, schools and other essential services. During times like Covid-19, the aid may not even reach this modest pocket."

He said repeated advice on social distancing threatened to encourage the kind of behavior seen in the northern city of Bareilly when migrant workers were doused with bleach disinfectant.

"Covid-19 is legitimizing these actions all in the name of hygiene and social distancing," said Divakar.

Essential workers

Dalits are forced to take upwards the jobs such every bit cleaning, manual scavenging, working at brick kilns and leather-crafting -- occupations considered "filthy" or "dishonorable" for higher-caste communities.

The sanitation and cleaning work formally and informally employs 5 million people, of which 90% belong to the lowest Dalit sub-castes, according to a five-month study of sanitation workers across India carried out in 2017 past Dalberg Advisors, a development policy and strategy firm, with the support of The Gates Foundation.

The Indian government has accounted sanitation and cleaning to be essential services, which must go along during the lockdown. India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a directive that sanitation workers in hospitals and elsewhere should exist provided with personal protective equipment (PPE), including N95 masks and gloves.

Sanitation workers clean hospitals for vii to eight hours a 24-hour interval, but many say they have not been given sufficient, if whatsoever, protective gear, said Suryaprakash Solanke, leader of a Dalit workers union in Mumbai.

"For years they accept been cleaning and scrubbing hospitals, residential complexes, streets and railway stations. But instead of providing them with protective gear, and rewarding them, people are ostracizing them. Some have even been refused water to drink, when requested while at work," said Solanke.

Vanita Bhaskar Salvi works as a sanitation worker in a hospital in the Mumbai district of Thane. She says she and her colleagues have simply been given unmarried-layered cloth masks to protect them from the virus while at work.

"We are lesser humans. We clean and launder the unabridged ward. When patients soil their wearing apparel, we clean them upwardly. All for 8,500 rupees ($115) a month. And at present we are further at risk of illness as we take no protection gear when nosotros touch and clean all the waste material," she said.

Salvi says she is scared of contracting the virus and would prefer not to become to work, but as the only one with a chore in her family, she has no option.

Kiran Dighavkar, officer at the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, the civic body governing Mumbai, said: "There are enough kits with us for sanitation worker. Masks, gloves, kits, everything."

CNN reached out to officials in the Wellness and Labor Ministry for annotate on allegation insufficient PPE had been provided to sanitation workers but did not receive a response.

The work Dalits exercise exposes them to some other risk: discrimination.

Sanoj Kumar left his task at a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu to return to his hamlet near Bodh Gaya in Bihar before the lockdown was imposed. He said he faced ostracism as soon as he stepped off the train.

"The police started stopping the returning migrants at the railway station and sending them for checkups to the hospital. They were stopping people in a random mode. Those who well dressed and seemed similar belonged to an upper grade and ascendant caste were not singled out. The others like me were stopped and sent to the infirmary," he said.

Later on his checkup, Kumar was sent home and ordered to self-quarantine for 14 days. He says health workers cheque on him every ii days. He obliges because he understands the need to fight the virus, but every time they visit, it adds to his family'due south social stigma.

"They should come up with a better and more sensitive style of doing this," said Kumar.

Informal workers without ID cards

Lower caste Indians are not only more exposed to the coronavirus and face more than stigmatization, but they're also being left out of government subsidies.

On March 26, Finance Government minister Nirmala Sitharaman appear that all healthcare workers would be covered past wellness insurance for three months, and that sanitarian workers would receive special insurance cover. The Rs l lakh ($66,000) measure was part of the regime'due south $22.5 billion stimulus bundle.

Merely to merits it, workers need an employment ID carte validating their status as sanitation workers. Many sanitation workers don't accept that.

According to the Dalit Bahujan Resources Centre, 22% of sanitation workers, manual scavengers and waste matter pickers did not have the 12-digit, biometric national identification number and 33% did not possess ration cards to get subsidized food through the public distribution organization.

The unique national identification number is required to admission many authorities schemes including getting subsidies and direct cash transfers, and health insurance nether the Prime Minister's health project, as well every bit to open a bank account.

"It has been seen that well-nigh Dalits and Adivasis, find it difficult to get these authorities ID cards ... or ration cards. Either the information doesn't attain them, or the enrollment camps to get biometric IDs are never gear up in their villages and mostly they are asked to pay huge bribes to get these IDs made," said Alladi Devakumar, executive secretarial assistant of Dalit Bahujan Resources Heart.

Many sanitation workers who work as breezy labor don't even have employment IDs. Salvi says she tried to arroyo the dean of the hospital where she works to ask for an employment identity card that would enable her to claim health insurance benefits and board the few buses that are running for essential service workers in Mumbai during the lockdown.

Without the ID card, she cannot get on the autobus and has to walk ninety minutes each way to work. Merely when she approached the role, she says the Dean shouted for security.

"She threatened me and said don't you dare come within and chosen the guard to take me abroad. She thinks nosotros are trash, and now she has more reason to care for united states similar trash," says Salvi. CNN contacted the Dean, just she declined to comment.

No access to bank accounts

Estheramma lives with her married man and two children in a dump g, five kilometers away from the densely populated city of Guntur in the southern land of Andhra Pradesh. She's an Adivasi waste matter picker and makes a living by collecting the waste from dumps, segregating the waste product and selling it. She and her customs live segregated on the dump. There is no ration shop nearby nor are there any health care facilities close to her.

Like many other Dalits and Adivasis, Estheramma doesn't have an active banking company account or a national ID card -- the two basic instruments needed to access direct cash transfers by the government.

Without this she won't be able to claim the Rs 500 ($7) offered each month for the adjacent three months to women, who are bank business relationship holders registered under the government'south financial inclusion program.

"At that place are people, peculiarly Dalits and Adivasis who don't have accounts, then there are those who accept accounts but are non able to operate them considering the control of it is with someone else, either their upper caste literate landlord or the ration shopkeeper," says P. Sainath founding editor of People's Archive of Rural Republic of india, a digital journalism platform that archives stories from rural Bharat.

Since many banking concern accounts are tied to mobile phone accounts, local shopkeepers aid many illiterate Dalits and Adivasis carryout their bank transactions.

"Sometimes, the bank accounts are automatically opened when someone buys a mobile connection and the person is not even aware that this bank account exists. And according to the government, all the direct cash transfers come to the newest bank business relationship of the casher, and so at times they have no clue that they have received money," adds Sainath.

Estheramma has a ration card and is eligible to receive the government benefit of 5 kilograms wheat or rice and i kilogram of preferred pulses for free for the next 3 months, only she said she tin't go to the ration shop because it's run past shopkeepers of dominant castes who are not letting her come up in, citing Covid-19. She says she's living on small food packets distributed by charities.

"The relief package should non be centralized or linked to biometric IDs like Aadhar," said economist Jayati Ghosh, chairperson of the Center for Economic Studies and Planning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"This will leave many out of the relief. This has to be done through country governments where they manus over these benefits through other beneficiary accounts of employment and food security."

More 11,900 have been infected with the coronavirus in Republic of india, and more than 390 people take died, according to the latest numbers from the John Hopkins University.

Information technology's a staggeringly small number in a nation of 1.iii billion people. The Indian government is expected to extend the nationwide lockdown beyond May iii, only information technology is nevertheless too early on to approximate the final impact on the country'due south poorest.

People like Polamma, Salvi and Kumar hope they'll be offered greater protection, but it hasn't come nevertheless.

After two weeks of lockdown, Polamma was finally able to access the grocery store later on the police interfered at the request of Dalit activists. But she said no wellness workers were visiting her community to cheque on significant and lactating mothers.

Salvi takes a painkiller every day and walks to the hospital to clean and practise her job with no protective gear. And Kumar and his family are staying indoors to comply with the lockdown guild -- and to avoid corruption.

"Every time I step out, people start shouting 'corona, corona,'" he said. "Earlier they would walk at a distance because I am a Dalit, but now they call me the disease itself."

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/asia/india-coronavirus-lower-castes-hnk-intl/index.html

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