Dalit rural households dependent on casual labour: Gujarat percentage is very high

By Rajiv Shah
The latest Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) released recently by the Government of India suggests what is by now a well-known fact, reiterated over and over again by different survey — that there are more landless among the Dalits (scheduled castes or SCs) and Adivasis (scheduled tribes or STs) in India’s rural areas than those identified as “Others”, consisting of upper caste Hindus, other backward castes (OBCs) and minorities. Coming to Gujarat, which is touted as a developed state, the charts below, prepared on the basis of the SECC data, further suggest, there are more landless among the state’s Dalits in the rural areas compared to most of the 21 major states selected for the sake of analysis. In fact, an analysis of the data suggests that there are 63.24 per cent Dalit landless households dependent on casual manual labour to earn livelihood, as against 35.62 per cent Adivasis and 35.04 per cent Others. The charts below are self-explanatory:
1. Gujarat has one of the biggest proportion of landless rural Dalit households with 63.24 per cent, higher than most of the 21 major states, and next only to Punjab, Bihar, Haryana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala:

2. As for Adivasi rural households, Gujarat’s 35.62 per cent of the of households are landless, dependent on manual labour, which is equal to the all-India average, though higher than 10 major states out of a total of 21:

3. Coming to “Others” households, which the SECC has identified by clubbing together all non-SC and non-ST households, Gujarat has 35.04 per cent landless households dependent on casual manual labour as the main source of income:

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