Abstract
While empirical research on caste inequalities over the past few decades has been steadily increasing, books on persisting patterns of caste discrimination using empirical evidence at the macro level are few and far between. Deshpande, in this volume, brings together and expands on her past research on caste discrimination and disparity. She engages with secondary datasets such as the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) and the National Sample Surveys (NSS), and also highlights important primary data to study economic discrimination and disparity through a caste prism.
Substantively, the major themes covered in this volume include discussions on the theories of economic discrimination including ‘statistical discrimination’ and ‘taste for discrimination’; the extension of these theories of discrimination to caste; gender and its interaction with caste disadvantage; individuals’ experiences of caste discrimination; and the critical review of the impact of reservation policies. Deshpande raises important questions on the persistence of discrimination despite policy intervention and shows ‘how economic outcomes are shaped by caste, even after all other attributes including class, have been accounted for’ (p. 6), thus emphasising the importance of ‘identities’ (p. 11) in the labour market.
Methodologically, Deshpande provides an interesting review of a multiplicity of methods that social scientists have used to study caste disparity and discrimination. She uses the NFHS and the NSS, which have information on household characteristics and broad caste groupings (SC, ST and in some cases OBC), to describe the patterns of caste disparity. She also reviews recent correspondence and experimental studies used by economists highlighting discrimination faced by candidates in the hiring process (e.g., Deshpande summarises Thorat and Attewell’s correspondence study on caste discrimination in the urban labour market). The other side of discrimination, that is, the way people experience it, is covered by Deshpande’s own work (with Katherine Newman) on student’s expectations and experiences regarding the labour market process. Using a longitudinal approach and in-depth interviews with students from three universities in Delhi, the authors ‘compared…job expectations, job search methods, actual placements and the differential role that social networks…play in determining their options in the world of work’ (p. 190). Deshpande and Newman find that Dalits have ‘lower occupational expectations’ than non-Dalits, are less likely to use ‘family connections’ for finding jobs and also expect to spend a longer period searching for a job (on average, the study finds that Dalit students expected to get a job in 9.6 months in comparison to 5.25 months for non-Dalit students). Most crucially, while the language of the hiring process is of ‘merit’, the actual practice in the interview is heavily loaded against Dalit students. This research complements studies on employers’ opinions on the role of ‘merit’ in the labour market selection process (Jodhka and Newman’s work reported by Deshpande).
While it may be assumed by some that discrimination is antithetical to the workings of the free-market economy, the summary of the economic literature shows that it is otherwise and discriminatory practices can flourish in a free-market setting (p. 11). The overall empirical evidence suggests persisting discrimination and disparity in both public and private sector jobs and in higher education.
A refreshing aspect of the book is the gender perspective. Through an analysis of NFHS data, the multilayered discrimination faced by women becomes clear as we see that ‘the caste-gender overlap … unambiguously suggests that Dalit women are worse off than upper caste women’ in terms of employment, earnings and autonomy (p. 139). While these findings are significant, more discussion on gender in the final chapters would have tied together an interesting look at the interaction of gender, class and caste, by possibly linking it to the authors’ qualitative work and discussion on the reservation policy.
Deshpande’s findings on persisting discrimination are particularly important as theories of industrialisation and modernisation (e.g., Treiman 1970) have suggested that the link between social origins (including ascribed characteristics such as caste) and destinations (e.g., occupation or class) weakens over time as ‘merit’ based criteria such as education gains in importance. This would lead to increased social mobility and rising equality of opportunity. While Deshpande does not provide evidence on possible intergenerational social mobility per se, she shows through the data on occupational distribution by caste that in absolute terms, there has been a lack of mobility for those from disadvantaged castes over time. While the broader classification of occupations in the datasets does not allow her to explore this issue in sufficient detail, particularly at the disaggregated jati and occupation level, the finding that ‘caste shapes occupational attainment’ (p. 68) is apparent. Deshpande finds enduring caste disparity in occupational distribution with a sharper overlap at the extremes such that occupationally, ‘SCs (and STs) are disproportionately clustered in the lowest rungs…while the “others” dominate the more prestigious occupations’ (p. 74). The author similarly documents inter-caste disparity in education, landholdings and other assets, finding little support for upward caste mobility.
Given that the occupational structure itself changes over time, in the future it will be useful for scholars to engage with this issue by looking at intergenerational occupational mobility for different castes by separating ‘absolute’ or raw mobility rates from ‘relative’ mobility rates (where structural changes are kept constant). This will provide further evidence of possible caste (im)mobility or changes over time.
Overall, Deshpande’s review of economic theories and the definition and measurement of discrimination, when read with the sociological literature on the subject (see Pager and Shepherd 2008) along with Thorat and Newman’s (2010) rich collection of recent research on economic discrimination in India, will be of broader interest to sociologists of India engaging with questions of discrimination and disparity.