THE SWING FACTOR

population, nearly 55 per cent are cultivators and agricultural labourers. Around 45 per cent of rural SC households are landless. Only 13.9 per cent Dalit households have access to piped water supply compared to 27.5 per cent among the general category and only 10 per cent have access to sanitation as compared to 27 per cent for non-Dalit households. A staggering 53.6 per cent Dalit children are malnourished as compared to 39 per cent non-Dalit children.

In Punjab, the state with the highest proportion of SCs to its total population—31.9 per cent—Dalits own only 2.3 per cent of the land. Over 60 per cent of Dalit households in the state live below the poverty line, according to the Punjab Department of Welfare of SCs and Backward Classes.

“Political parties don’t see these as problems. They want to keep deprivation among Dalits an issue which they can exploit for electoral benefits,” says Sanghmitra Acharya, director of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, Delhi (see column: Caste and the Carcass).

Sukhadeo Thorat, chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, and a research specialist in the economics of caste-based discrimination, laments that Dalit upliftment has remained restricted to sound bites. “Merely opposing the caste system and untouchability by expressing support will not help,” he says. “Actual programmes and activities are needed for the equal treatment of castes. We need to create organisations to fight against the caste system.” But in spite of the advertised enthusiasm for Dalit causes by political parties, their primary problems remain unaddressed. What is ironic is that this discrimination is rampant even when Dalit votes are now what swing elections. This is best illustrated by the electoral graphs of the Congress and BSP, two parties which have lost a huge chunk of Dalit support in recent years. The Congress party’s vote share among Dalits has seen a steady decline—from 52 per cent in 1980 to 26 per cent in 2004 to 19 per cent in 2014. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the party won only seven of MOST ANTIDALIT STATES States where untouchability is most prevalent MOST DANGEROUS STATES FOR DALITS Four states account for 60 per cent of crimes against Dalits the 84 constituencies reserved for SCs, down from 28 in 2009. Since 2014, in assembly elections where Congress was a significant electoral player, the party won seven seats reserved for SCs of the 70 that were up for grabs. The Congress’s SC wing head, K. Raju, attributes this loss of support to disillusionment among Dalit youth. “The number of educated Dalit youth has grown exponentially after the 1991 economic liberalisation. However, jobs and opportunities in government sectors have shrunk because of which they could not take full advantage of the reservation policy. They could not really gain an entry even in the private sector. These aspirational and disillusioned Dalits were looking for a change,” he says.

It’s a similar story for the BSP. According to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), 85 per cent of Dalits across the country voted for the BSP at the peak of its popularity in the early 2000s. In the 2012 UP assembly elections, Dalit support for the BSP went down by 23 percentage points, resulting in a massive victory for the Samajwadi Party. And in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Jatav (Mayawati’s caste) support for the BSP declined by 16 percentage points and other Dalit support sank by 35 percentage points, resulting in the party being unable to open its account.

In Haryana in 2014, most Dalits supported the BJP, which benefited from the growing animosity between Dalits and Jats, the dominant social group in Haryana that usually sides with the Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal. It swept to victory and installed a non-Jat chief minister, Manohar Lal Khattar. The state has, of course, witnessed a dramatic and violent Jat backlash since then.

An analysis of the results of the assembly elections where non-BJP and non-Congress parties have won further explains the role of Dalit votes. For instance, the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, and the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu all garnered a major segment of the Dalit vote in their states. In Telangana, the Congress lost a substantial share of Dalit votes to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, which easily