Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

Caste in India, despite its historical resilience, has been undergoing transformation since independence. If caste as a system of rigid stratification has been on the decline, castes as autonomous interest-serving groups have been on ascendance. This book critically engages with the changing notions of caste and its intersection with public policy in India. It discusses key issues such as social security, internal reservation, the idea of Most Backward Classes, caste issues among non-Hindu religious communities, caste in census, caste in market, and service castes and urban planning. Drawing on in-depth case studies from states including Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and West Bengal, the volume explores the cyclical process of how caste drives policies, and how policies in turn shape the reality of caste in India. It looks at the impact of factors like protective discrimination, adult franchise and democratic decentralisation, horizontal and vertical mobilisation, land reforms, and religious conversion on social mobility, and traditional hierarchy in India. Empirically rich and analytically rigorous, this book will be an excellent reference for scholars and researchers of public policy, public administration, sociology, exclusion studies, social work, law, history, economics, political science, development studies, social anthropology, and political sociology. It will also be of interest to public policy and development practitioners. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Institute of Public Policy; individual chapters, the contributors.

World University root node

Caste Matters in Public Policy: Issues and Perspectives

CASTE MATTERS IN PUBLIC POLICY: Issues and Perspectives

Based on an ethnographic fieldwork in rural Andhra Pradesh, this chapter argues that the social hierarchy is changing and the constitutionally assured protective discrimination policy is a major contributor to this change. Though underutilised on the education and employment front, this policy, especially the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, has made for a substantial political tool. The policy measures coupled with the lower jatis moving up the economic hierarchy, thanks to the migration to the Middle-East, and the higher jatis slipping down the hierarchy makes for a dynamic socio-economic milieu. The chapter further analyses the significance of such benefits in a neo-liberal economy to the lower jatis, on one hand, and its contribution to the political maximisation of primordial identities, on the other. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Institute of Public Policy; individual chapters, the contributors.

Economic prospects, protective discrimination, and the changing hierarchy: An ethnographic study in a coastal village in Andhra Pradesh

Preface

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This chapter introduces the theme of the volume, namely, the interface between the social institution of caste and public policy. After a brief statement on the changing avatar of caste, it explains three aspects of law and policy in relation to the dynamics of caste: the essentialisation of caste in colonial census, the engagement with caste in the constitution through the provision of protective discrimination, and the rise of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) following the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations. It discusses the key aspects of the role of caste in policy formulation in contemporary times as a backdrop to the theme of the volume. It concludes with a note on the organisation of the volume and introduction to the contributions included in it. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Institute of Public Policy; individual chapters, the contributors.

Introduction: The career of caste in public policy

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