The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) serves to safeguard interests and rights of India’s Scheduled Caste population who have endured historical injustice, exploitation and marginalization.
- More than seven decades after independence, systemic discrimination persists exposing vulnerable communities to violence, denial of basic needs and barriers blocking pathways out of vicious cycles where vulnerabilities intersect and reinforce each other.
- A re-examination of existing capacities, orientation and level of empowerment afforded to NCSC for executing its mandate to uphold founding constitutional principles of equality by promoting full representation, protection and development of Scheduled Castes is needed.
Key Challenges Facing Scheduled Caste Groups
- Atrocities and Violence: Crime rates against Dalits surged by 7% in 2020 despite a nationwide lockdown. Uttar Pradesh recorded most cases, followed by Bihar and Rajasthan. Assam saw highest percentage spike. Conviction rates remain under 30%.
- Economic Exclusion and Poverty Traps: Over 90% Scheduled Caste households still depend on manual casual labour, bonded labour, or wage employment for highly irregular/underpaid work. Less than 9% own any agricultural land. Pandemic aggravated financial hardships.
- Health and Nutrition: Infant mortality rates for SCs substantially higher than national average. Over half of Scheduled Caste children under 5 years are underweight, wasted or severely malnourished – implications for survival, immunity risks and future capability deprivation.
- Gaps in Access to Basic Services: Wide gaps in literacy (66% vs national average of 73%), completion of secondary education (over 80% drop out by class X), regular access to tap water (49% vs 67% for STs), clean cooking fuels (less than 5%), toilets, electricity etc persists between marginalized and better placed social groups directly undermining health, education and skills acquisition.
Why an Empowered NCSC is Imperative
- Promote Inclusive Anti-Discrimination Laws & Policies: Facilitate reviews of existing interventions and draft legislation or executive instructions expanding discrimination protections. Monitor enforcement and regular sensitization campaigns.
- Oversee Justice Delivery for Atrocity Victims: Recommend mechanisms like special courts, state legal services to SC victims authority, guidelines for adequate compensation and rehabilitation for survivors of attacks and families.
- Bridge Inequality of Outcomes in Key Services: Assess budget allocations across welfare programmes through an equity lens, identify districts with poorest access/ uptake of existing schemes by SCs, provide roadmap for administrators to bridge gaps.
- Uncover Rights Violations through Investigative Powers: Suo motu cognizance of complaints, conduct on-site fact finding missions including surprise visits to remote areas, document statements and testimonies, forensically analyze samples/specimens, seize relevant records for review, recommend binding corrective steps.
- Ensure Accountability in Policy Implementation: Review action taken reports on findings, recommendations and direction issued to various authorities, assess quality of follow-up measures, highlight persistent areas of neglect, dereliction of duty or administrative apathy to enable course correction.
Priority Focus Areas
Heightened Vigil on Atrocities and Rights Violations
- Dashboard tracking attacks on SCs, charges filed, arrest and conviction rates for rigorous monitoring of trends and investigation efficiencies across all states.
- Surprise inspection visits by NCSC state level officials to key sites witnessing maximum crimes against Dalits to undertake situation assessment, examine lacunae in response protocols and enforcement steps.
- Easy to access, confidential grievance redressal channels allowing Scheduled Caste communities to directly report discrimination faced in accessing public entitlements like subsidized ration supplies, agricultural loans, housing or requests for bribes solicited by officials.
Justice Facilitation and Support System to Victims
- Funding support for legal aid clinics and counselling assistance initiatives focused on aiding Scheduled Caste victims in registering complaints, pursuing court cases and navigating post-violence support systems.
- Central Protection Cell to respond within defined time period to requests of immediate assistance measures for victim security like police protection, safe transit to medical facilities/shelter homes in cases of imminent threat.
- Rehabilitation Fund offering interim financial relief for loss of livelihood/ shelter/ property for survivors of atrocity pending court verdict on compensation from offenders.
Social Audits and Research to Guide Evidence-based Policy
- Grassroots level qualitative impact assessments through collaboration with Dalit rights groups, activists and civil society to capture lived experiences, identify excluded groups within communities and issues escaping policy attention.
- Commission pioneering research filling critical evidence gaps on forms of discrimination facing Scheduled Castes segmented by gender, occupation, disability, geography etc and pathways for overcoming barriers to accessing entitlements.
- Open access online library as repository of audit findings, investigative reports and recommendations enabling public transparency.
The Road Ahead
- Effecting deep-rooted systemic change enabling sustainable improvement in condition of Scheduled Castes warrants great political will and partnerships between empowered institutions like NCSC, executive machinery across different levels, law enforcement, judiciary, civil society and community groups.
- By embracing participatory approaches to diagnosing the most pervasive yet overlooked challenges facing marginalized SC communities and co-develop solutions leveraging their insider insights and placing them at the center of decision-making on matters critically impacting their lives, a reinvigorated NCSC can lead the country closer to achieving the unfulfilled promise contained in the Preamble to the Constitution – securing for all citizens justice, equality and dignity as core components defining state actions and societal relations.
