Caste Discrimination against India's “Untouchables” - Human Rights ...

1. Ensure Dalits’ rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable
conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work,
to just and favorable remuneration
Article 5 (e) (i): The rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and
favorable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to equal
pay for equal work, to just and favorable remuneration.
The denial of the right to work and free choice of employment lies at the very heart of the
caste system. Denial of free choice of employment and allocation of labor on the basis of
caste are fundamental tenets of the caste system and are integral to sustaining caste
inequality and hierarchy. 314 Dalits’ talents, merits, and hard work are of little consequence in
a system where occupational status is determined by birth. Dalits are forced to work in
“polluting” and degrading occupations such as manual scavenging and are subject to
exploitative labor arrangements such as bonded labor, migratory labor, and forced
prostitution. Dalit children are also vulnerable to child labor in these and other areas. Dalits
are also discriminated against in hiring and in the payment of wages by private employers.
Dalits’ attempts to enforce their rights are met with retaliatory violence (see Section VIII(B))
and social and economic boycott 315 (see Section VIII(E)).
In its combined Second and Third periodic reports to the CEDAW Committee, the
Government of India reports that merely “stray cases [of bonded labor] are reported from
time to time.” 316 This is in direct contradiction to the overwhelming amount of evidence of
the Dalit community’s continuing vulnerability to bonded labor. The government neglects to
even mention caste discrimination in discussing indebtedness among the Dalit community,
instead pointing to their poverty and to alcoholism as one of the reasons for their continued
indebtedness and exploitation. 317 Additionally, the effectiveness of the Government’s
measures is not critically examined. While the government reports on the number of
scavengers, bonded labors, and the like who have been “rehabilitated,” it fails to estimate
the number of Dalits who remain victims to these dehumanizing practices. Still, the
314
Human Rights Watch, Small Change, p. 41.
315
Ibid., p. 43, citing Human Rights Watch interview with Joy Maliekal, Mysore, Karnataka, March 30, 2002.
316
India’s Combined second and third periodic reports to CEDAW, Oct. 19, 2005, CEDAW/C/IND/2-3, para. 101.
317
Ibid. para. 104.
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