Suchergebnisse

Secular Sectarianism: Limits of Subaltern Politics. Edited by Ajay Gudavarthy (New Delhi: SAGE, 2019). viii + 280 pp, ₹1095. ISBN: 978-93-532-8677-4.

John Solomon, A Subaltern History of the Indian Diaspora in Singapore: The Gradual Disappearance of Untouchability 1872–1965. London and New York: Routledge, 2016, 220 pp. (hardback). ISBN: 978-1-138-95589-9.

India cannot make progress by excluding educational opportunities from its Dalit people who form nearly 17 per cent of its population and populate 580 of its 593 villages. Again, for the Dalit activists and functionaries, it is imperative to note that without addressing the issue of sub-group divisiveness the case of Dalit emancipation will remain only a distant dream. It requires consorted policy efforts to combat the evils of illiteracy and to create further opportunities for the Dalits to achieve higher level of education. Nevertheless, policy road map and implementation needs to be informed by thorough understanding of the societal dynamics: the dialectics of Dalit positioning in the social hierarchy and its relationship with the class and power structure. Important as the external (Dalit–non-Dalit) relationships are, understanding the internal dynamics inside the Dalit domain is no less crucial.

This article tells of changing social and spatial identities in the countryside of con temporary West Bengal. It draws on a study of interactions between those seeking wage work in agriculture and the people trying to recruit them. We find a continuing and nested process of both self-identification and categorisation. Unconscious as well as conscious ethnic affinities are consolidated and changed. At the same time, identities are used instrumentally by workers to make the outcome of negotiations less demeaning, and by employers to bargain more effectivelyfor the workforce they need. The context is one of the emergence of capitalist production relations in agriculture, presided over by a coalition government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The newly pros perous agriculture has been a source of wealth for capitalist employers, reinforcing constructions of difference in relation to the migrant workers they employ. At the same time, many employers are attracted by the prospects of urban,jobs and life-styles and invest in their children's education. Migrant workers show a similar ambivalence, being attracted by the potential earnings and consumption possibilities arising out of being employed in the West Bengal 'rice bowl', and simultaneously repelled by the dangers they associate with the place.

Over 500,000 people are regularly engaged in seasonal migration for rice work into southern West Bengal. This study analysis social processes at work in the interactions between employers and workers, and the welfare/illfare outcomes. Group identities based on religion and ethnicity are strengthened through the experience of migration and deployed by some migrants to make this form of employment less degrading. In West Bengal seasonal migration can involve practical welfare gains. Importantly, an informal wage floor has been put into place and managed by the peasant union allied to the largest party in the Left Front regime. However, the costs and risks of migration remain high. (DSE/DÜI)