Role of NGOs in Protect Human Rights for Dalits to Remove Social Exclusion- A STUDY
Human security is fundamentally concerned with helping people to deal with unforeseeable threats and sudden downturns, whether environmental disasters or incapacitating illnesses and poor exclusion practices in anywhere in the world. Government alone can not distribute all the welfare schemes and the activities related to manage the disaster situations, in those time government get assistance with the NGOs for providing better services to the affected people. NGOs are the major players which consist identifying the affected people and distributing the necessary help to the violated Dalits people and protect them from the violations. The NGOs, as one of the most visible sets of actors in the related fields of human development and human rights and also playing a significant role in helping to achieve social inclusion. NGOs are especially well suited for human inclusion in the main stream, it is because of their size and reach, closeness to the local population. This study focuses on the involvements of NGOs to remove social exclusion of people belonging to suppressed groups and provide equal status to the dalits people by improving the socio-economic background of the excluded people through creating awareness to offer their rights to create inclusive society. The present study has discuss with some suitable cases in Madurai region and also expose the facts that NGOs play a main role to removal of social exclusion practices to create inclusive society by empowering dalits in the study area.
Key words
Social Exclusion, NGO, Human Right, Inclusive Society
Author details.
Author details.
* Professor, Department of Applied Research, GRI-DU, drabkgri@gmail.com
Introduction
“On the 26th January, 1950 we are going to enter into life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social & economic life we well have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principal of one man, one vote, one value. In our social & economic life we shall by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principal of one man, one value, how long shall we continue to deny it for long we will do so, only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment”
-Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar….
The constitutional and statutory laws in India establish a comprehensive list of human rights. Many laws have been adopted to remove discriminatory practices towards ex-Untouchables/Dalits. Most of these international human rights documents not only provide a detailed catalogue of human rights to which everyone is entitled to enjoy but also categorically proclaim that the principles of “equality” and “non-discrimination” constitute the dominant themes of the modern international human rights law (Vijapur, 1993). The term “Untouchables” is not an appropriate word recent days, as the practice of Untouchability has been legally restricted. Untouchables are known by different names in India; Mahatma Gandhi called them Harijan, children of god. Religious books of the Hindus called them Sudras, Ambedkar called them “depressed classes”. However since 1970 the term “Dalit” has been widely used. Dalit is a Marathi word, first used by Mahatma Jotiba Phule, a 19th century social reformer who led a movement for the upliftment of Untouchables, which means “broken people.” In official documents they are designated as the Scheduled Castes (SCs). Human rights violation may take place in the every level of the nation for downtrodden people by treating those poor and blocking them to get their basic rights from government. Central government may introduce number of policies, programmes, Acts and schemes to prevent the Dalit people from social exclusion to create a healthy inclusive society. But mostly government has failed to achieve the full aim of the plans implemented for them. Those times government may get the assistance from NGOs for to reach the last citizen of the nation to make the plan effective and create inclusive society. NGOs are the voluntary organization that may come forward and take actions against the social exclusion issues to help the excluded people to get their basic rights and subsidiaries from the government to uplift the socio-economic condition and make the equal society by include all the people.
Statement of the Problem
The caste system was the foundation for the traditional social stratification, the problem of exclusion practices in rural community of India was more complicated as it was not simply a socio-economic phenomenon but, and more importantly. Mostly the way of scriptures, we can trace that; Indian society could be broken into a number of different groups on the basis of varnas. The dalits who constitute one fifth of India’s population had a historically suffered from caste and untouchability based exclusion. There is a number of evidences shown that many cases results that there is a lot of discrimination was practiced with regard to wage, education, employment, property ownership and political partnership etc., Most of the SC and ST communities are still striving to fulfill their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. Besides these, today they require better opportunities to live in dignity and self-respect.
Hence, ample opportunities should be made available to them, which would ensure them a secured and dignified life in this 21st century. After independence, the Constitution of India piloted by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar prescribed certain protection and safeguards for the SCs and STs with the objective of promoting their educational, economic and political interests. The Government has yet so far provided various plans and programmers offering them opportunities to develop. It provided general infrastructure and resource development-like providing educational facilities, health services and building communication networks etc. It is observed that the Government programmes - especially those pertaining to SC and ST welfare are never taken seriously, and there are no effective monitoring systems to pinpoint the failures of the plan objectives. There are diversion of resources and lack of utility of the schemes. Therefore, the condition of these communities is still remained very miserable. Therefore, the present effort suggest suitable remedial measures to ensure the effective implementation laws against human rights violation for the development and inclusion of the depressed excluded sections.
Relevance of the Study
India has a rich and glorious cultural legacy, but it should be noted that nowhere in the world. Caste system is a unique feature of Indian life we find the extent of discrimination that is perpetuated by one group of people against the other, as it is done in case of low caste Untouchables by the high caste Hindus in India. It is believed that originally there were only four broad/main castes the Brahmins (the priestly class), the Kshatriyas (the warrior class), the Vaisyas (the merchant and peasant class), and the Sudras (the Untouchable class). But over the last two thousand years, these four castes have been astronomically sub-divided into thousands of castes and sub-castes. The 2011 census revealed that there were two thousand three hundred and seventy eight “main Castes” and tribes in India. The official list of “scheduled castes” prepared by the then British authorities of the Government of India in 1935 contained four hundred twenty nine Untouchable castes. Thus, traditionally Sudras/Dalits were excluded from engaging themselves in reading and learning profession and participating in Aryan religious customs and ceremonies. In principle, marriage was permitted within one’s own caste. This rule was often broken, but any Brahmin male who took a Sudra to be his wife would become the object of particular scorn. If a Brahmin male had only one wife and she was of Sudra status, he would be considered to be in a state of ritual impurity and would be forbidden to attend family ceremonies like sradha (rites for the dead) ancestor worship. On the other hand, any Sudra male who approached a Brahmin female, behaved like a Brahmin caste, or did any harm to a Brahmin person would be subject to serious punishment, sometimes even death (Yamazaki 1997, 5). Another scholar (Zinkin 1962, 59) cites a rule from scriptures, which stated: If dalit assumes a position of equality with high caste men, either in sitting, or going along the road, they shall receive corporal punishment. A Sudra committing adultery with women of the first three castes shall suffer capital punishment, or shall be burnt alive tied up with straw. If a Sudra intentionally reviles a Brahmin or criminally assaults him; the limb with which he offends shall be cut off.
For centuries, and even now, these Untouchable castes have been subject to various restrictions in their movements or relationships with other people, especially the high caste persons. They still face many social disabilities, like denial or restriction of access to public facilities such as wells, schools, roads, post offices and courts; denial or restriction of access to temples where their presence might pollute the deity as well as the higher caste worshippers; and from rest-houses, tanks and shrines connected to temples. They have been denied access to services such as those provided by barbers, laundrymen, restaurants, shops and theatres, and are required to use separate utensils and facilities within such places. They face a lot of restrictions on style of life, especially in the goods indicating comfort or luxury. Riding on horseback, use of bicycles, umbrellas, footwear, the wearing of gold and silver ornaments (in fact, their abject poverty could never afford them to do so), the use of palanquins to carry bridegrooms were all forbidden for these people. Traditionally, they were required to have their homes/huts constructed outside the village and quite away from the high caste families; this practice is followed even now in almost all villages. This segregation is believed to have a divine sanction. While the touch of an animal was not considered polluting, the very sight of an Untouchable was enough to pollute and called for the performance of special cleansing ceremonies. Domestic and agricultural animals could live and eat in the same house with high caste Hindus but the Untouchables could not even live in the same town. For many orthodox Hindus the cow dung is ritually so “clean”, that a Brahmin priest will use it to wash away his impurities. Even now untouchability continues to be widely prevalent and is practiced in one form or another in most of the villages in India. This fact has been empirically established by a recent study of Action Aid India. (Shah, et al. 2006). Here, the attempt was made to analyze the role of NGOs to remove the social exclusion practices in Tamil Nadu with some recent cases to give a better suggestion to government for using NGOs to create an inclusive society for all the people and protect the Dalit people from human rights violation.
Objectives of the Study
- To study the role of NGOs practices adopted for Inclusion practices in Tamil Nadu.
- To understand the problems faced by the Dalit people in the process of inclusion by violating human rights.
- To analyses the selected cases of the excluded communities with reference to human rights violation.
- To suggest the suitable measures to overcome the problems faced by dailt in the inclusion to engage NGOs to protect the Dalits from human rights violations
Non Governmental Organizations in India
In the past decade, India has witnessed the emergence of an enormous organization such as community-based organizations, self help groups, cooperative and trade unions in the various sectors of the economies. These organizations of the poor have developed strategies for addressing poverty at the local level with an objective of improving their living and working conditions and enhancing their bargaining power. These experiences have been restricted to limited areas and have not been replicated on a large scale. Nevertheless, enabling the poor to form their own organizations has, in many cases, proved to be the most successful and sustainable strategy for fighting conditions of deprivation and poverty. Today, a lesser role is being argued for the state and greater role for non-state actors, which include the institutions of the market as well as non-government organizations (NGOs).
Voluntary organization is a group of persons who organize themselves on the basis of voluntary membership with external and State control, for the furtherance of some common interests of members. They can pursue a general interest or interest of the group which formulated the organization. Briefly, the absence of external or state control defines the inherent strengths and weakness of the voluntary organizations at the same time.
NGOs are expected to play a critical role in all conceivable aspects of development. In fact, the role of NGOs itself is changing over the years due to change in the function and philosophy of other development organizations. The role of government has changed from a police state to welfare state and subsequently to a development state. Correspondingly, NGOs had undergone various generations of changed role such as charity, relief, welfare, development and empowerment. The mainstream thinking on the role of government and NGOs in poverty alleviation and social inclusion has changed through the decade at both international and national level. Through a well defined policy towards NGOs rarely existed, NGOs were approached by Central Governments and funding agencies to assist in implementation of the community development and social welfare programmes. In the field of development, NGOs range from large charities to local self-help organizations, coordinating bodies as well as lobby groups (ODI, 1998). During the 20th century, NGOs have earned for themselves a rich, respected, revered and reliable place in the history of development both in India and globally (Ditcher, 1988., Ramaswamy, 1991 and Fowler, 1992). In India, NGOs are called by different names likely voluntary organizations, non-party processes, social action groups and so on. And it will differed from others by an activity, method of approach, welfare measures and sources for getting funds and so on.
Social Exclusion in India
In India, there is a distinct and all-pervasive system of discrimination based on caste. The United Nations and its agencies refer to it as “discrimination based on work and descent”. What it means is that people who are born into specific groups, trades or castes are unable to escape from the stigma of their background or their origins. Hence those born as leatherworkers, barbers, agricultural workers or manual scavengers (toilet cleaners) will remain in those employment sectors all their lives. Sometimes people escape from the system by moving to the large towns or cities, but overall the system remains heavily in the same position.
"Dalit" is a term which has had increasing currency in recent years. Literally, it means "the oppressed". It encompasses peoples who used to be called "untouchables", or "Harijans"; who are often also referred to as "Scheduled Castes", because the way they are referred to in the constitution of India. "Adivasi" is a term which refers to those who are members of "Scheduled Tribes". That is, individuals who are racially distinct, as indigenous peoples, in contradistinction to the Caucasian peoples who invaded and settled India centuries ago.
Government frame many policies and implements a number of schemes and programmes to empower the ‘dalits’ but still there is a lot of gap between the normal people and oppressed community. Still many Medias were pointed out the lot of issues related to the discrimination every day. Higher education is a dream for lower caste children still now; mostly they are engaged only for the casual employment. The basic rights for the downtrodden people were still denied. They are expecting some support from externally to meet their things and still there are lot of excluded practices was identified in the rural areas in various formats. The local body dalit representatives are having the power only for namesake, but originally the power owned by the upper caste people of that locality (The Hindu., 22-2-2012).
Role of NGOs for Social Inclusion
Many number of issues related to social exclusion were identified only by the NGOs working in those locality. Majority of the NGOs were started with an aim of creating inclusive society and remove the discrimination from the modern world. Traditionally the first effort of every reform activity may take only by the NGOs and then the government come forward and takes action for those problems some of the efforts taken by the NGOs along with the help of the government to bring the suppressed and depressed section to the higher level and thereby involve them in the process of inclusion.
- The welfare funds for the socially oppressed people were distributed by NGOs
- Identification of local problem for the downtrodden people
- Identify the obstacles to meet out their basic rights
- Help to reach the government schemes to the appropriate people
- Create awareness about the basic education and self empowerment
- Planning and implementing the welfare schemes for the development of the socio-economic condition for the oppressed community
- Mobilize all the available local resources and take initiative to improve the local standards
- Build the self reliant and sustainable self developed community
- Mediate the needed people and government or other agencies
- Create people participation towards the needed government programmes and policies.
- Motivate and articulate priorities to the needed social service action
- To strengthen the civil society to provide equal rights to all
- To increase the bargaining power to empower the downtrodden people
- Arranging micro credit to develop the entrepreneurial skill for the oppressed community people
Dimensions of NGOs Involvement in Social Inclusion Process
Educational Dimension: Exclusion also results from denial of rights to have education and poor access to education and uneconomic employment opportunity are traditional characteristics of Indian society for the socially excluded people. Lack of access to education and occupational structures for various reasons especially the state’s failure to provide free or affordable education and generate adequate employment opportunities in the past. In hill and remote areas were taken care by the NGOs. In order to provide education to the poor they take effort to construct and run the schools for the welfare of the Tribal students to empower them by improving their literacy level. These actions were taken by the many of the NGOs especially religion based missionaries which they all focused for the tribal welfare and tribal development. In Tamil Nadu the Districts namely, Theni, Dindigul, Nilgiri and Coimbatore are the most benefited areas for the welfare activities taken by the NGOs. Especially this effort has helped the excluded people to home better and higher education opportunities to increase the inclusive process among the student community.
Economical Dimension: The main moto of the NGOs is to eradicate the poverty. In almost all the districts the NGOs arrange micro credit for poor which cover a sizable portion of rural dalits. Further to empower them by creating skill among them for taking up of business opportunities in order to improve the economic standard in rural area of their life. Many of the NGOs undertake the economic activity like formation of SHGs providing micro credit for the rural people to reduce the role of money lenders and the poverty. This facilitates to reduce the level of economic backwardness of the oppressed people in the society and to make them following economically equal on par with other communities in the society.
Social Dimensions: The famous issue near Madurai i.e Utthapuram which was published in almost all the daily News papers/Magazines more than a year has explored to the world by the local NGO. Last century the fore fathers were built the discrimination wall in the Utthapuram village near to Madurai. The village was cutted into two parts and one is for upper caste people and another part for dalits. No dalit people was allowed to cross the wall, this was identified by the NGO namely Theendamai Olipu Munnani Madurai Region (Discrimination eradicating Frond) exacted near Madurai has explored it and information disseminated to the world and it helped to remove the discrimination wall and it take effort to get their rights for the local people and for construct the inclusive society.
Fragmented labor: Exclusion may also be the result of the disappearance of well-organized industrial structures. In the process they have fragmented industrial labor and weakened the organizational ability and their bargaining power of the working class from oppressed community. The NGOs related to industrial labourers was involved to create the balanced society by creating awareness about their rights in the working places.
More number of NGOs is run only with the aim to uplift the dalits and protecting the Human Rights among them namely Tamil Nationalist Groups, Dalit Outfits and Human Rights Organization, Council for Professional Social Works, Peoples Watch, Human Rights Watch and so on. were to fight against the social exclusion by protecting the human rights of the excluded downtrodden people to create the inclusive society in Tamil Nadu.
Conclusion
Human Rights are a human dignity to prevent that is very important to take actions without any denies. Exclusion operates at the level of individual, group, institution, locality, and region and so on. It is both cultural and material, and is hierarchical in terms of needs and intensity. Therefore, there is a need for a disaggregated approach in understanding the patterns and processes of exclusion and the nature of the excluded, taking into account historical and contemporary disabilities, and problems of lack of integration of particular groups. Inadequate social and economic infrastructure in areas that have insufficient resources for participation in mainstream development also has been at the root of various “sub-national movements”. People respond to social exclusion in various ways, ranging from passivity to group action. Because of a long history of fatalism, which is embedded in the caste system, it is more often than not the case that the excluded themselves are not aware of their exclusion, and even if they are aware, they do not act. Economic development is a tool for dalit empowerment to reduce the human rights violation against the dalit people. There is a need to raise awareness of exclusion, leading to mobilization and group action. Disadvantages arising out of exclusion in India take multiple forms namely economic, educational, social, political and cultural and are all deeply rooted in traditional society. The group action is only possible with the help of fullest involvement of NGOs. In recent days the exclusion by education, employment, economic status and gender is more popular in society. Government, NGOs and interested people may join together to fight against social exclusion to create an inclusive society. NGOs need to give more attention to implement the economic measures to uplift the vulnerables in the society to protect their human rights. With the words of great social reformer, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkat that, “turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your path. You cannot have political reform; you cannot have economic reform, unless you kill this monster”.
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