Table Of ContentGround Down by Growth
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Anthropology, Culture and Society
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Ground Down
by Growth
Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality
in Twenty-first-century India
Alpa Shah, Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby,
Dalel Benbabaali, Brendan Donegan,
Jayaseelan Raj and Vikramaditya Thakur
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First published 2018 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Alpa Shah, Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby, Dalel Benbabaali,
Brendan Donegan, Jayaseelan Raj and Vikramaditya Thakur 2018
Where possible acknowledge all authors in citations. Otherwise, please refer to the
book as ‘Shah and Lerche et al.’
The right of Alpa Shah, Jens Lerche, Richard Axelby, Dalel Benbabaali,
Brendan Donegan, Jayaseelan Raj and Vikramaditya Thakur to be identified
as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3769 2 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3768 5 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0204 0 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0206 4 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0205 7 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed
and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are
expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
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Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Series Preface ix
Preface x
Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche
1 Tribe, Caste and Class – New Mechanisms of Exploitation
and Oppression 1
Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche
2 Macro-Economic Aspects of Inequality and Poverty in India 32
K.P. Kannan
3 Tea Belts of the Western Ghats, Kerala 49
Jayaseelan Raj
4 Cuddalore, Chemical Industrial Estate, Tamil Nadu 82
Brendan Donegan
5 Bhadrachalam Scheduled Area, Telangana 115
Dalel Benbabaali
6 Chamba Valley, Himalaya, Himachal Pradesh 143
Richard Axelby
7 Narmada Valley and Adjoining Plains, Maharashtra 176
Vikramaditya Thakur
8 The Struggles Ahead 203
Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche
Appendix: Tables and Figures 216
Notes 235
Bibliography 253
Acknowledgements 272
Index 273
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List of Illustrations
photographs
1 Hill Valley estate in the Western Ghats, Kerala 51
2 Dalit tea pluckers bringing their day’s harvest in for weighing 60
3 Adivasi migrant labour returning to Jharkhand, waiting at a
bus stop 73
4 Dalit women tea worker’s strike 81
5 SIPCOT Industrial Estate, Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu 85
6 Dalit woman by Dalit houses built through the government
scheme 94
7 Anti-pollution activists in the SIPCOT Industrial Estate near
Melpuram, Tamil Nadu 102
8 Rao’s village mansion, Bhadrachalam 123
9 Koya permanent Indian Tobacco Company employee’s mother 127
10 Koya, Lambada and Madiga women plucking cotton on Kamma
land 130
11 CPI(ML)–New Democracy’s organised protest for house sites 135
12 A slice of the Himalayan Saal valley showing Badagaon (bottom)
and forests and pastures (top) 149
13 A Gaddi shepherd and flock 151
14 Gaddis at work building roads 166
15 Bhils farming in the hills near the banks of the Narmada River 183
16 Boats of seasonal migrants crossing from Maharashtra to go to
the sugar cane fields in Gujarat 188
17 Migrant colony of Bhil sugar cane cutters 202
figures
2.1 Poverty and poverty reduction by social group 36
3.1 Occupations of men by caste group, Hill Valley estate, Kerala 220
3.2 Occupations of women by caste group, Hill Valley estate, Kerala 221
3.3 Years of schooling of men by caste group, Hill Valley estate,
Kerala 221
3.4 Years of schooling of women by caste group, Hill Valley estate,
Kerala 222
4.1 Occupations of men by caste and tribe, Melpuram, Tamil Nadu 223
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list of illustrations vii
4.2 Occupations of women by caste and tribe, Melpuram, Tamil Nadu 223
4.3 Years of schooling of men by caste and tribe, Melpuram,
Tamil Nadu 224
4.4 Years of schooling of women by caste and tribe, Melpuram,
Tamil Nadu 224
5.1 Occupations of men by caste and tribe in a Bhadrachalam village,
Telangana 226
5.2 Occupations of women by caste and tribe, in a Bhadrachalam
village, Telangana 226
5.3 Years of schooling of women by caste and tribe, in a
Bhadrachalam village, Telangana 227
5.4 Years of schooling of women by caste and tribe, in a
Bhadrachalam village, Telangana 227
6.1 Occupations of men by community, Badagaon, Himachal Pradesh 230
6.2 Occupations of women by community, Badagaon, Himachal
Pradesh 230
6.3 Years of schooling of men by community, Badagaon, Himachal
Pradesh 231
6.4 Years of schooling of women by community, Badagaon,
Himachal Pradesh 231
7.1 Occupations of Gujar and Bhil (Adivasi) men of three Nandurbar
villages, Maharashtra 233
7.2 Occupations of Gujar and Bhil (Adivasi) women of three
Nandurbar villages, Maharashtra 233
7.3 Years of schooling of Gujar and Bhil (Adivasi) men of three
Nandurbar villages, Maharashtra 234
7.4 Years of schooling of Gujar and Bhil (Adivasi) women of three
Nandurbar villages, Maharashtra 234
map
India, showing our field sites and main migration patterns xx
tables
2.1 Percentage distribution of population by poverty status and
social groups, 2004–05 and 2009–10 35
2.2 A ‘trickle-down’ process? The pace of poverty reduction in
relation to economic growth 1999–2000 to 2009–10 37
2.3 Multidimensional poverty among India’s social groups and
states in a comparative perspective 40
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viii ground down by growth
2.4 Percentage distribution of population in specific educational
categories by poverty status and social group, 2004–05 41
2.5 State-wise incidence of poverty and vulnerability by social group 43
2.6 Social-cum-regional-cum-gender inequality in long-term
poverty: incidence of malnutrition (chronic energy deficiency)
among women, 2005–06 47
3.1 Types of contracts of tea plantation workers, Hill Valley estate,
Kerala 216
3.2 Relationship between education and occupation, Hill Valley
estate, Kerala: occupational categories for each educational
group, caste-wise (%) 217
3.3 Ten case histories of tea worker households, Hill Valley estate,
Kerala 218
3.4 Caste-wise distribution of skilled/semi-skilled jobs, Hill Valley
estate, Kerala 220
4.1 Relationship between education and occupation, Melpuram,
Tamil Nadu: occupational categories for each educational group,
by caste and tribe (%) 222
5.1 Population and landholding profile of a Bhadrachalam village,
Telangana, by caste and tribe 225
5.2 Distribution of landownership by caste and tribe (%) in a
Bhadrachalam village, Telangana 225
6.1 Distribution of landownership by community, Badagaon,
Himachal Pradesh (%) 228
6.2 Average number of years schooling by community, age-range
and gender, Badagaon, Himachal Pradesh 228
6.3 Relationship between education and occupation, Badagaon,
Himachal Pradesh: occupational categories for each educational
group, community-wise (%) 228
6.4 Schooling of Gujjars by generation, Badagaon, Himachal
Pradesh 229
6.5 Differentiation within the Gujjar and Gaddi communities,
Badagaon, Himachal Pradesh 229
7.1 Numbers of Bhil (Adivasi) households that have invested in
allied activities, three Nandurbar villages, Maharashtra 232
7.2 Average household income and expenditure from agriculture
for Gujars and Bhils (Adivasi) of three Nandurbar villages,
Maharashtra 232
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Series Preface
As people around the world confront the inequality and injustice of new
forms of oppression, as well as the impacts of human life on planetary
ecosystems, this book series asks what anthropology can contribute to the
crises and challenges of the twenty-first century. Our goal is to establish
a distinctive anthropological contribution to debates and discussions that
are often dominated by politics and economics. What is sorely lacking, and
what anthropological methods can provide, is an appreciation of the human
condition.
We publish works that draw inspiration from traditions of ethnographic
research and anthropological analysis to address power and social change
while keeping the struggles and stories of human beings’ centre stage. We
welcome books that set out to make anthropology matter, bringing classic
anthropological concerns with exchange, difference, belief, kinship and the
material world into engagement with contemporary environmental change,
the capitalist economy and forms of inequality. We publish work from all
traditions of anthropology, combining theoretical debate with empirical
evidence to demonstrate the unique contribution anthropology can make to
understanding the contemporary world.
Jamie Cross, Christina Garsten and Joshua O. Reno
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Preface
Alpa Shah and Jens Lerche
Growing inequality is undoubtedly one of the most significant political
challenges of our time. Income inequality, the gap between the rich and
everyone else, has dramatically escalated in the last 30 years in many parts
of the world, not least the US and the UK. Oxfam (2016) recently reported
that the richest 1 per cent now have more wealth than the rest of the world
combined.
India, once to some extent shielded from the market forces of global
expansion, is now no longer an exception. Right behind the US, China
and Germany, and ahead of the UK, India ranks fourth on the list of dollar
billionaires.1 The Indian wealthy now increasingly mark the country’s
landscape with their air-conditioned malls, gated communities and high-rise
apartments with swimming pools. But there is also an India of dislocation
and despair. The ‘trickle down’ of India’s spectacular growth rate is a very slow
drip. Armies of migrants from the countryside live under tarpaulin tents,
with almost no citizenship rights, while building the infrastructure that is to
sustain the Indian boom. Indebted farmers are committing suicide. Protests
are increasing against displacement for mining and industrial development.
Marking poverty in a land of plenty, around 800 million Indians survive on
less than $2 a day (Kannan 2012: 36). Indeed, it is now no longer news that
8 Indian states have more poor people than 26 of Africa’s poorest countries
put together (Alkire and Santos 2010).
What is less well known is that social discrimination marks the contours
of poverty in India; that certain social groups – India’s low castes and tribes –
are overwhelmingly represented among the poor. Ground Down by Growth
asks how and why, despite India’s celebrated economic growth, the mar-
ginalisation of low castes and tribes persists in the country. It explores the
inextricability of identity-based oppression – of caste and tribe in particular,
but also region and gender – and class relations in the belly of the Indian
boom. In this Preface, we provide the backdrop to the questions we ask in
this book and how we seek to address them.
economic growth, inequality and poverty
Alongside China, India is the world’s fastest growing major economy and
the two are predicted to become the world’s largest and most dynamic
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