Revision summary
Untouchability and dominant-caste power organise SC exploitation. Landlessness and stigmatised labour are the economic core. Reservations help a layer; most remain informal and dependent. Local police and panchayat often sit with the exploiters. Ambedkar’s constitution is the legal counter, not yet the social fact.
Model answer
Introduction
Exploitation of Scheduled Castes is organised extraction of labour, land, and honour. It is not a leftover custom only. It is a living structure of jati power.
Body
Ritual and social factors
- Untouchability and purity rules, which Dumont centred, still restrict wells, temples, and marriage.
- Srinivas’s dominant caste uses those rules as a labour discipline, not only as a philosophy.
- Sanskritisation rarely opens the bottom rungs; it may even tighten distance.
Economic factors
- Landlessness, attached labour, and low-paid sanitation and leather work keep dependence.
- Green Revolution and later markets often enriched the dominant caste first.
- Urban jobs and reservations help a minority; most remain informal.
Political and legal factors
- Ambedkar’s constitutional safeguards exist. Atrocities continue where police and panchayat sit with the locally strong.
- Communal and party uses of Dalit votes can be another harvest without land reform.
- Village studies from Dube to Bailey already showed faction as a machine that can include or punish Dalit clients.
Gender
- SC women face caste plus sexual control in field and town, a double exploitation.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD P[Purity untouchability] --> E[SC exploitation] L[Landless labour] --> E S[Local state capture] --> E
Conclusion
SC exploitation rests on purity ideology, landless labour, and captured local state. Law named the wound; dominant-caste economy still profits from it.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Write in detail various provisions provided by the Constitution of India for the scheduled tribes under Fifth and Sixth Schedules
Next question on this syllabus topic (2016 · Q8(a)). View answer →
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Is poverty the only factor?
Poverty is central. Honour, well, and temple bans are extra levers of exploitation.
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Did Sanskritisation end this?
No. Mobility of middle jatis can leave SC labour in place.
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