Economic Development of Scheduled Castes in Rural India: Rhetorics and Realities

This paper makes a comparative analysis of the aspects of the economic development of the scheduled castes in rural India across the major states. The results show that the scheduled castes continue to be the economically disadvantaged communities and there has been hardly any improvement. The perceptible changes in certain respects in some states are not due so much to the progressive measures of planning but to the scheduled caste movements and organizations. Therefore the author argues that the entrenched dominant castes never allow the benefits of economic development to percolate down unless forced to.