“I have worked in more than three academic institutions since I received my Ph.D. from a prestigious university in the capital. In these workplaces, the educational qualification of my co-workers and their ability to maintain a façade of political correctness, makes the caste discrimination at work indirect. It is very difficult most of the times to prove it definitively. It is subtle and insidious and manifests itself on a daily basis. Promotions are not directly caste based, but most senior academics are from the privileged castes. It is they who allocate responsibilities and roles at work. Courses we teach should be allocated based on our specialization, but instead I get to teach the courses that others have rejected. My evaluation is based on my teaching expertise of a course that is not my area of specialization. Despite my Ph.D., even in the allocation of administrative tasks, while I get assigned tasks of data collection, others from privileged castes get to analyze, interpret and present that data. This institutionalised discrimination is perpetrated on a daily basis with impunity, many a times even the victim not recognizing the issue. Conversations on caste, equality before law are deliberately diverted and pushed aside in academic discussions as well as in staffroom banter towards less controversial issues. I need this job – either I choose my battles or I give up and work as a contract safai worker as my father did most of his life. I choose the former.”
– a male, dalit lecturer in a private university in Delhi NCR.
The humiliation gets incrementally worse if you are a woman, if you are a person with disability, if you work in a workplace that does not need to maintain a façade of propriety, if you work in a workplace where you are such a minority that your co-workers do not even notice your presence.
There is no doubt that casteism and xenophobia remain widespread across India and other countries in South Asia, as we trace the upsurge in reports of hate crime in the last decade. While there is considerable data available about levels of unemployment, under-employment, over-representation in certain categories of work that are viewed as ‘low’, lack of promotion and disproportionately low levels of access to training, discussion about the day-to-day experiences of workers from dalit, muslim and other backward communities in the workplace is negligible. The effects of caste and religion based discrimination at work is made an invisible issue at work. Employees who report cases of discrimination are either ignored or labelled as ‘troublemakers’. The now infamous Suzuki conflict at the Manesar plant in Haryana in July 2012 flared when an upper caste supervisor used a casteist slur against a dalit worker and the union rose in protest.
The dominant narrative pushed forth by the political elite is that of the existence of a ‘creamy layer’ amongst the underprivileged castes counterpoised with economically weaker privileged castes, reinforcing the demand for reservation of jobs in the public sector on the basis of economic criteria and merit rather than social backwardness. This comes from an idea that we live today in a post-caste society.
Trade unions are also a reflection of society where in most unions across the country, even in unions where the majority of workers are from the dalit, adivasi or muslim communities, the leadership roles are occupied by upper caste men. Consequently, the understanding of caste and its role in defining a person is viewed differently by the leadership than the membership. This makes it complicated for unions to deal with caste discrimination within the workplace. Dealing with discrimination is not just about supporting a worker who wishes to pursue their complaint through formal procedures, it ultimately means addressing the root cause of the complaint that invariably exists in the work environment from which it originates. As a first step, check the number of upper caste employees in top management; in middle management and at lower management rungs in your workplace. What is the percentage of dalits in management roles at your own workplace? What is the percentage of dalits in supervisory roles at your workplace? What is the percentage of dalits in the permanent workforce at your workplace and are they over-represented in the precarious positions? This holds true also for trade unions. How many dalits or adivasis play a decision-making role in the union? How many dalits, adivasis, women are in our union elected body simply as tokenism? What efforts has the union taken in the last 5 years to build a second level leadership from among the workers? How many of these emerging leaders are dalits, adivasis and women? We cannot change our workplaces if we cannot change our own unions. The fight against caste discrimination has to begin from own home, own trade union and own workplaces if we wish to see a more equal and just society.
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