Author: Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Publisher: Global Media
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 160
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8188869120
Description
The book is about original Indians. Dalits and tribals living in rural areas of the country who still face miserable poverty, hunger, starvation and who are still denied their fundamental rights of equality and justice. It is about untouchables and scavengers who even today cannot dare to walk on the same path usually used by upper caste Hindus. These are people with whom Vidya Bhushan Rawat has worked to ensure that they get their fundamental rights in a society that is bent upon denying any right to them. The book is a collection of reports from rural areas and the author has himself been part of this whole fight for dignity for Dalits and tribals.
The books is a collection of field reports and fact finding mission undertaken by VB Rawat during the last decade and shows as to how much oppressed the Dalit community in India has been. Some of these stories provide answers to popular myths about Dalits like conversion, merit, reservations, tolerance, the courts and human rights movement in our society. The corporate is trying to preempt any move by the government related to reservations of jobs for the Dalits in private sector.
The pretext is that reservation will ruin the efficiency of the private sector as if efficiency is synonymous to caste Indus and a few like them. The Hindu upper caste is fanatically mad about merit. Interestingly it is without ever attempting to find out about their work culture or of their fellow castemen. Now, if public sector is not functioning well, who should be blamed? The Dalits who are not even 7 percent in PSU jobs despite reservation made for them for around 17.5 percent. The 27 percent reservation for backward casts came into force after 1992 and one does not know as to how many Dalits or backward caste people have joined the class one services. The tribal presence is not even two percent in our servies.
This book has those stories from the field where Dalits are fighting for their human rights and dignity. As the Dalit’s assertion begins to show results, the feudal oppression is equally volatile. Indian villages have yet to accept the reality that the Dalits and Adivasis are human being and equal to them.