PM shocked at low conviction rate for caste atrocities
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COMMENTS 
Expressing shock over the abysmally low conviction rate for cases of atrocities against dalits and adivasis, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asks state governments to pay more attention to the issue and “pursue on priority” court cases related to such matters
Although the Indian Constitution abolished untouchability in Article 17 and made its practise in any form a crime against the Constitution and against humanity, backed by penal laws for its prevention -- the Untouchability Offences Act, 1956 (later the Civil Rights Protection Act, 1976) and the present Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 -- the frequency of such violations has steadily been rising.
According to a 1991 Union Ministry of Social Welfare document: “…Every hour, two dalits (are) assaulted, every day three dalit women (are) raped, two dalits (are) murdered and two dalit houses burnt in India. It is a frequent spectacle, the dalit women are disrobed in public view and paraded naked in the villages for no fault of theirs, often mass murders of dalits (are) committed…”
Even the redress mechanism fails to deliver. Conviction rates under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 are below 30% and pendency is as high as 85.37%. By contrast, the conviction rate under the Indian Penal Code is 42% for all cognisable offences.
These facts shocked Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while inaugurating a conference of state ministers of welfare and social justice in New Delhi on September 7, 2009. “State governments need to give more attention to this issue,” he said while directing ministers to conduct meetings of state and district-level vigilance committees on a regular basis and pursue such cases on priority.
“Reports of atrocities against SCs and STs continue to appear with disturbing regularity. I have in fact written to the chief ministers of all states recently to enforce the provisions of the SC/ST Act,” the prime minister said, underlining the need to make disadvantaged groups “equal partners in the developmental process”.
Referring to the self-employment scheme for rehabilitation of manual scavengers, a programme run by the Ministry for Social Justice, Singh said: “I am told that more than half of the identified beneficiaries under the scheme are yet to be rehabilitated. States should be more proactive in implementing scholarships and hostel schemes for SCs, STs and OBCs.”
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia noted: “In the Planning Commission we have been implementing the SC sub-plan and are engaged with other ministries to ensure its implementation.” Noting that the compliance of states was “not satisfactory”, he said the Planning Commission had written to chief ministers that their annual plans would be cleared only if they implemented the SC sub-plan properly.
Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Mukul Wasnik called for a strategic partnership between civil society and industry to improve the effectiveness of ongoing government schemes for SCs and STs and to ensure social justice in social and economic spheres.
India has been under some pressure from the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Special Rapporteur on Race, and some foreign governments that have made caste one of their central concerns ever since dalit NGOs led a high-profile campaign at the World Conference against Racism in 2001.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), in its 2008 report ‘BROKEN PEOPLE: Caste Violence Against India’s Untouchables’, has detailed how more than one-sixth of India’s population, some 160 million people, are discriminated against, denied access to land, forced to work in degrading conditions, and routinely abused at the hands of the police and of higher caste groups that enjoy the state’s protection.
HRW observes that: “The potential of the law to bring about social change has been hampered by police corruption and caste bias, with the result that many allegations are not entered in the police books. Ignorance of procedures and a lack of knowledge of the Act have also affected its implementation. Even when cases are registered, the absence of special courts to try them can delay prosecutions for up to three to four years. Some state governments dominated by higher castes have even attempted to repeal the legislation altogether.”
Investigations by the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the Human Rights Commission, and numerous local NGOs all concur that impunity is rampant when it comes to implementation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Source: The Hindu, September 8, 2009
Press Trust of India, September 7, 2009
http://www.hrw.org, September 2009
http://www.pucl.org, September 2009