THIS 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) expresses its deep concern over the growing atrocities and injustices against dalits in many parts of the country.  These have increased and assumed new dimensions after the BJP came to power at the centre. 

Unfortunately in the recent period the judiciary is also sometimes giving judgments and making pronouncements that are inimical to the principles of social justice and affirmative action.

Under the BJP government, the pace of the implementation of neoliberal policies gathered pace and budgetary allocations for SC welfare are cut every year. Access of dalits to reservations in jobs continues to shrink. No effort is made to clear the increasing backlogs in government jobs in all departments, in colleges and universities etc. Privatisation has led to a loss of 3,18,969 jobs for SCs and STs. The government’s policy of increasing ‘lateral entry’ into the highest echelons of the bureaucracy has led to the appointment of 40 bureaucrats (all upper caste and from the corporate sector) at the joint secretary level.  400 more such appointments are proposed. The dilution of the roster system in universities will also curtail reserved posts.

As far as reservation of jobs in the private sector is concerned, neither the government nor the courts nor, of course, the private sector itself are at all interested in seeing that pious resolutions are implemented.

The Covid epidemic and subsequent lock-downs impacted upon dalits most adversely.  Sanitation workers were the most exposed to infection and died in large numbers because they were not provided with safety gear.  Dalits comprised the majority of the migrant workers who suffered terribly due to job losses, inhuman suffering in their efforts to return to their homes.  A study on Covid-induced loss of employment found that “the rate of job losses among SCs was three times higher than the upper castes.”

The Covid epidemic resulted in lakhs of dalit children, specially girls, being left out of the education process altogether because of lack of devices like smart phones.  Many of them will not be re-entering schools. In addition, cuts and delays in payment of scholarships, including the reduction of overseas scholarships, to dalit students are seriously hampering their access to higher education and professional courses.

The years since the last Congress have also seen an increase in murder and atrocities on dalits.  The figures from the NCRB tell us that crimes against dalits increased by 9.4 per cent between 2019 and 2020 while crimes against dalit women and children increased by 15.5 per cent between 2017 and 2019. The highest numbers were committed in BJP-ruled states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar and Congress-ruled Rajasthan. In Uttar Pradesh, the years of Yogi-raj have seen mass attacks in villages against dalits. The most horrific of these, the Hathras case, occurred in Uttar Pradesh where the state government did everything to protect the upper caste rapists and its police snatched the victim’s body from her family and burnt it after dousing it with petrol.

While rates of crimes against dalits are growing, conviction rates are still extremely low.  For crimes against dalit women, the conviction rate is only 26.86 per cent. In Bihar it was found that the conviction rate in cases of atrocities against SC/STs is only 8 per cent.

The increasing violence and injustice faced by dalits are directly linked to the Brahmanical-Manuvadi agenda of the RSS-led BJP. It is essential to link struggles for social justice with struggles against communalism and neoliberal policies. 

The 23rd Congress of the CPI(M) calls upon all Party units to join and strengthen the fight against caste discrimination, atrocities on dalits and other weaker sections in the society. It also appeals to all democratic forces and organisations to actively intervene and take up issues faced by dalits.