SERICUL TURE AND THE PROCESS OF CHANGE - Institute for ...

The Case Of Scheduled Castes: Scheduled castes
constitutionally present a single category and stand apart as one group in
the minds of the non-scheduled castes. They do not, in reality, fonn a
single entity among themselves. There is a social distance maintained
among different sub castes with one another. Even among them,
generally those at a higher stratum are relatively better off than those at
a lower level This gets reflected even in their participation and
perfonnance of sericulture.
The participation of the scheduled castes in sericulture is very
meagre as most of them have to face many of those constraints outlined
earlier. The major constraint is the lack of access to land. Nevertheless,
there have been a few persons who are engaged in sericulture. Their
performance, however, is not satisfactory except in a few cases. Those
who are relatively more successful than their other kin were usually the
ones who had earlier worked at the non-SC sericulturist households as
pennanent contract labourers. They also continue to have a working
interaction with their former masters, even after taking up sericulture.
This is evidenced by the case of Murugan of EN Pura.
In E ~ Pura, there were seven SC sericulturists who took up
sericulture. Cnfortunately, six of them had given it up, within a year or
so. The only survivor is a former pennanent contract labourer Murugan
who had earlier worked in a sericulture household. Today, after taking
up sericulture, he continues to get advice and support from his fonner
patron. He, in turn, extends labour support, whenever his fonner patron
faces a labour crisis. All the SC cases of drop-outs in E N Pura belong to
Palavam SC, a sub-casle, which is placed in the upper strata among the
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