Standard and poor? SCs, STs in Kerala, Tamil Nadu better off than others

Three states however buck this trend; across caste groupings in Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the rate of ownership of basic consumer durables is high. In fact, the asset ownership rate for scheduled castes in these three states is better than that of OBCs and upper castes in all other states.

Newly released census 2011 data shows that while 17.8% of households across India do not own a phone, computer, TV, radio, bicycle or any vehicle, this proportion is 22.6% for scheduled castes, 37.3% for scheduled tribes and 14% for "others".

While more than half of "others" own a television, less than a quarter of scheduled tribes own a TV. Less than 2% of SC families own a TV, phone, computer and some mode of transportation, the usual signifiers of a "middle class" Indian family.

This new data fits in with the argument that economist and Indian Council of Social Science Research chairman Sukhadeo Thorat has been making. Thorat is critical of the view that economic liberalization has narrowed the gap between scheduled castes and others.

Yes, poverty is declining, but the rate of decline of poverty is much lower for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes than for upper castes. There has undoubtedly been growth, but SCs and STs are not getting to participate equally in it," Thorat says.

There is considerable regional variation in the new census data.

Scheduled tribes are worst off in Madhya Pradesh, followed by in Rajasthan, Tripura and Maharashtra, where over 40% of STs do not own any basic consumer durable. Dalits are worst off in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa, where a third do not own any such asset. Unlike with the SCs, asset ownership for STs is worse than other social groups in all states.

While poverty among STs is fairly widespread across all states with a significant ST population, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Punjab are the only states where the proportion of SCs who do not own basic assets is around 10% or lower, lowest of all in Tamil Nadu. Asset ownership among SCs in these three states is higher than that among "others" in all other states.

While part of the explanation for Tamil Nadu's status as the best state for dalit asset ownership might be that the previous state government ran a scheme giving free television sets to poor households, this is not the only explanation, as ownership of other consumer durables like phones and computers is also among the highest in TN. In comparison, in Bihar, where the state government ran a scheme to give all school-going girls a free cycle, less than half of all households own a bicycle.

Research by Institute of Applied Manpower Research director-general Santosh Mehrotra has shown that the human development indicators of SCs and OBCs in Kerala and Tamil Nadu are better than those of upper castes in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Moreover, all four states have a similar proportion of 'backward castes' in their population: so the key determinant of each of these states' human development situation is not its caste composition, but its politics and governance, Mehrotra says.

"A combination of social mobilization and good governance has lifted all boats in Kerala and Tamil Nadu," Mehrotra said. Social mobilization alone is not enough, Mehrotra adds, or the last twenty years in Uttar Pradesh would have led to tangible outcomes like improvement in health and nutrition, and not just intangibles like dignity and a sense of empowerment, as important as they are.