Book review: Ishita Mehrotra,Political Economy of Class,Caste and Gender: A Study of Rural Dalit Labourers in India

The book illustrates the case study of a Dalit from the rural Kushinagar district, located in Uttar Pradesh (UP) of India. The author is an independent researcher with interest in the larger area of political economy. This book is a product of her fieldwork conducted during 2009–2010 in Kushinagar, a major site for Buddhist pilgrimage. It asserts the Dalit woman’s role, wider social relations of power and inequality, and everyday negotiation with the dominant patriarchal society. The author brilliantly used Bernstein’s theoretical framework and reviewed the works of Andre Beteille, Usta Parnaik, Barbara Harriss-White, and so on, to understand the forces of capitalism in relation to rural labourers and the nature of Dalit labourers in India. Bernstein’s theory, for instance, emphasises the expansion of India’s GDP while posing significant job and discrimination challenges, leading to the emergence of new classes, intra-class differentiation, occupational multiplicity, and so on. Small and marginal farmers make up the majority of farmers in India. Most of them are Dalit women labourers who have been left behind in communities because of social and cultural barriers that prevent them from finding employment outside of the villages. But again, within this society, a Dalit woman was not even permitted to access the kitchen of her Rajput employer and had to wash utensils in the courtyard, accepting the demarcation created by the patriarchal society. The book employs the Marxist model from political economy theory, with the concept of a mode of production in which landlords or large capitalist farmers distinguish themselves from the peasantry, which is primarily landless, exploited, and wage labourers. In representing larger India, ‘this class structure has been widely debated, and there is no agreement on any class structure’ till today. The instances of Chamar in Dokhgadh, Ahir in Sapatganj, Kharwars, Dhobi, Dusadh, and Dhamars in Baaspur, among others, are discussed in the book.

According to the author’s field study in the four regions of Uttar Pradesh, a few Zamindars hold a dominant position in the rural areas. In terms of religious practices, Hindus are the majority in most of the villages, and the few non-Hindus are all Muslims. Between the 1970s and 1990s, a few changes to Uttar Pradesh’s agrarian society occurred, including redistributing Gram Sabha land to Dalits (Schedule Caste). In comparison, between the 1980s and 2000, the number of SC landowners rose. According to the author, most of the Indian case studies on rural labour ignore female labour in favour of focusing on male labour. She adds that the study sheds lights on rural labour relations because of how capitalism infiltrated agriculture, notably during the so-called ‘green revolution’, which catalysed her research.

While 75% of rural women continue to be in agriculture, the feminization of agricultural labour is more about men moving out of agriculture into rural non-farm employment or migrating to work in towns and cities.. Other jobs, such as para-teachers and health workers, are available in rural areas for women, but many of them are contractual or pay lower wages. Another important role debt plays in labour relations, as highlighted by the author, is that it has been used by capitalist, social and economic power to maintain dominance. Due to this straitjacket set by society, women’s exploitation and humiliation subsidise the male labour struggle, and the lack of women’s ownership of productive assets will further weaken their bargaining position in the household and on the job. Depending on their caste and class position, women are affected differently by capitalist agrarian change, with men’s economic advancement linked to women’s subservience. Consequently, there is no escape, since labourers’ awareness of exploitation is subsumed by their caste identity and the articulation of class interests. According to the author, female labour is tied to agriculture because of a gendered division of labour, and female labour is also unlikely to be awarded contracts due to the belief that women are weaker than men who engage in such physical labour.

The Dalits in the UP’s selected villages draw attention to the categorizing of scheduled castes. It is the superficial belief that badkas, the upper caste, are intelligent and do not fight amongst themselves, or if they do, they are known to be quiet, whereas chutkas, the lower caste class, are loud and brash people who like to fight and are well-known by all the villagers. However, in terms of representation, the complexities in identifying the caste and sub-castes stand in both the upper and lower castes. For example, the Gupta surname is used by Baniyas, Raunihars and Telis but not in UP and is categorized as Other Backward Castes. Due to the importance of social relations, interpersonal behaviour and political association, they identify themselves as sub-caste and not with the surname Gupta. Thus, class or caste correlates to a greater extent, reflecting that the ‘upper castes’ are mostly landowners and economically sound and a source of employment for their female labourers. However, Dalits are marginal landowners and sometimes landless, with no economic or political benefits but relying on bank loans, public provisions, and so on throughout their lives.

Caste also plays an important role in politics in the form of identification. As a result, political support is expressed based on caste.. Caste, as a mode of identification, must enter into class consciousness when upper caste classes like Pradhan are the dominant political forces. As this book suggests, workers see themselves as Dalits, agricultural labourers who live in huts and are classed as poor, and believe their situation will not improve if anyone acts under the influence of the upper caste. Additionally, Dalit women rarely participate in Panchayat debates, and male labourers only attend when required. Many places in India, like Kushinagar, continue to subjugate Dalits, and the cycle of power and inequality becomes one of the never-ending facets of caste and class struggle. This book claims its significance because the data provided by the author can be used to develop appropriate policies to benefit labour cases, particularly women, and it also recommends that the government should play a significant role in generating education for women through labour-intensive rural industrialization. The disadvantage of this book is that it employs theoretical work that may be difficult for a general audience to comprehend.

However, it justifies its case study of the northern state of India by identifying Dalit relations in the larger section of India’s political economy. Because Dalits constitute 25% of the Indian population, they often witness caste-related violence, caste discrimination, honour killing, human rights issues, rape, murder and so on. India’s caste system is the world’s largest surviving social hierarchy and has traditionally been justified by religious belief in karma. The sociopolitical differences are visible. Dalit children are forced to sit in the back of classrooms, they are not allowed to use the same wells, visit the same temples or use the same utensils in the villages. In many villages, the state administration installs the sanitation facilities, provides electricity and pumps for water usage, but neglects the segregated Dalit area. Dalits are denied even basic necessities such as medical care. With all its above-mentioned importance, this book is relevant to the larger discipline of political science, sociology, international relations and other social sciences.