Hyderabad: India Discrimination report reveals interesting facts about how Muslims and SC/ST are discriminated in the labour market, capital, and capabilities. It has been translated into Urdu by Center for Development Policy and Practice. Professor Amitabh Kundu has released this translated report at CDPP, Hyderabad on Thursday (19 January).
A panel discussion has been constituted to discuss the report which includes Prof. Sheela Prasad, Prof. Aseem Prakash, and Prof. Abdul Shaban.
Prof. Kundu, discussing the report, highlighted that this has never been translated into any other language. Further, this is the first time a hard copy has been released with an official launch.
The report is based on secondary data and uses the Okaka blinder method to examine the extent of discrimination among Muslims, and SC/STs in salaried, self, and casual employment. Interestingly, this report also considers the inherent economic discrimination resulting from social constructs.
Women volunteering not to take up a job also come under discrimination, as per the report. This is because they are discriminated by the existing social structures. Some of the important takeaways from this report are that the Muslim rural-urban migration came down for Muslims after COVID-pandemic. Further, Muslims have almost 70% discrimination in urban areas, and SC/STs have 30% discrimination.
However, this report does not include other religious groups such as Christians and Sikhs as the report is premised on the earlier literature that women and Muslims are more vulnerable and discriminated. Another limitation of this report is that it needs to capture the social inequalities because of the unavailability of data.
Prof. Sheela opines that the report’s findings are disturbing and that our society carried social discrimination into the labour market. Prof. Shaban espoused that he would proudly take this report into his class to present scientific facts to his students. Prof. Aseem Prakash said that this report shows that the Dalit and Muslims cannot be combined into the same group.
Prof. Kundu says this report is a good resource for further research. At the same time he added that it is an important report to be made public.
