Scheduled Castes in the Indian Labour Market: Employment Discrimination and Its Impact on Poverty

Sukhadeo Thorat · S Madheswaran · B P Vani

Mar 2023 · Oxford University Press

About this eBook

This study offers insight into the discriminatory workings of the labour market and its unequal outcomes with respect to employment, wages, and occupations, and its impact on the poverty of Scheduled Caste wage workers in India. It develops an understanding of the persistence of caste inequality in employment, wages, and occupations between the Scheduled Caste and the higher castes in the private and public sectors in India. It also identifies the causes of high unemployment and low wages of the Scheduled Caste workers, and their segregation in low-paid occupations. The authors provide convincing empirical evidence ofdiscrimination in wages and its impact on reduced wage incomes and increase in the poverty of the Scheduled Caste wage workers. Estimation of discrimination in employment, unemployment, and occupation, and its impact on income and poverty of the Scheduled Caste is net addition to the existing knowledge on the subject.

About the author

Sukhadeo Thorat is Emeritus Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; K.R. Narayanan Chair for Human Rights and Social Justice, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala; Chairman, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi; and Chairman, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. He has published twenty-three books and more than a hundred papers on issues such as agricultural development, inclusive growth, rural poverty, problems of marginalized groups, inter-caste inequality, economics of caste system, and caste discrimination and poverty. S. Madheswaran is Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Policy, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. He has published more than a hundred research papers in reputed international and national journals on various issues related to economics of education, inequality and discrimination, environmental economics, public policy, and applied econometrics. B.P. Vani is Associate Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Policy, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. She is a statistician and has extensive experience in handling large data sets. Vani is currently working on issues related to multidimensional poverty, well-being, and human development indicators.