Dalits in Neoliberal India : Mobility or Marginalisation?

This volume deals with the mobility and marginalisation experienced by Dalits in India. It highlights the contradictions and disjunctures they face, resulting in simultaneous improvement and deterioration of their status in society. It discusses their rise and progress along with continuing exploitation and oppression, as well as their polarisation in terms of class, education, economic position, caste, identity, and political interests.

India’s economic growth has brought opportunities for many but to what extent has it benefitted its ethnically-shaped underclass: the Dalits? Have Dalits fared better in a neoliberal India or have structural economic and social changes served to magnify Dalit disadvantage? This volume offers a varied picture of Dalit experience in different states in contemporary India. The essays draw on factual research in rural and urban areas by experts in the field. With case studies ranging from Dalit entrepreneurs in Bhopal to housewives in Tamil Nadu to ex-millworkers in Mumbai, the book contends that radically progressive change and advance is attended by discrimination and exclusion, as well as surprising new areas of stigma.

With contributions by political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and economists, the volume will be key reading for scholars and students of Dalit and subaltern studies, sociology, political science, and economics.