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GOVT DRIVE FAILS TO LURE DALITS The Telegraph-India, Dec 18, 2001 FROM G.S. RADHAKRISHNA Deverakonda (Nalgonda), Dec. 17: Want to be treated like an equal? Then pay up more. The Andhra Pradesh government's anti-untouchability campaign has only exacerbated the plight of the seven crore Dalits who make up about 15 per cent of the state's population. Upper-caste shop owners now charge them more, while in some villages, angry landlords , upset with the government diktat, refused to hire Dalit labourers, cutting off a major source of their income. The untouchability campaign began from November 1. It ensured that the Dalits were allowed to enter village temples or tea-stalls and draw drinking water from the main source. But the deliverance soon became a scourge. Tea is now served to Dalits in tea stalls for almost double the amount charged earlier. Served in disposable cups, a Dalit ends up paying Rs 1.50 per cup against the 50 or 75 paise he paid for the same quantity when served in earthen pots. "This freedom is costing us more and more," says Mangadhaiah, a Dalit of Manikonda village in Mahboobnagar district. The upper castes have a ready reply. "We cannot serve him in the same glasses used by other villagers. He has to pay a higher price if he wants to be treated like an upper caste," says Muthayalu, a tea-stall owner in Manikonda. Parameswaraiah, the village sarpanch in Shankarapalli, Rangareddy district, sums up what this "freedom" means on the ground. "As it is a government order, I see to it that no Dalit is turned away from the village temple or tea shops. But he cannot come along with the others. He has to come after all the others have gone and sit far away from the shop," the sarpanch said. Despite the government campaign, in most villages of Warangal and Nalgonda, Dalits are given food wrapped in newspapers - they cannot be served in plates. In some villages in Mahboobnagar, Dalits are also not allowed to buy fine rice, even if they can afford it. "We are sold only coarse rice by the local shops," says Venkataiah, a Harijan farmer in Rudraram, in Rangareddy. State home minister T. Devender Gowd denies such discrimination. "By law we have made such offences punishable with either six months rigorous imprisonment or a Rs 5,000 fine for the first offence and two years rigorous imprisonment and Rs 20,000 fine for subsequent offences." But Left parties, which conducted a survey in around 2,000 gram panchayats out of a total of 21,000 in the state, contend that the campaign had merely been an "official" programme. "Within days after giving the Dalits entry into village temples in the constituency of state health minister N. Janardhan Reddy, they were barred. In spite of revisits by Telugu Desam Party leaders and the minister to that village, the Dalits continue to be kept away," says CPM state secretary B.V. Raghavulu. Most Dalits in Nalgonda district say the untouchability campaign has brought them more suffering as landlords hired labourers from Guntur district in the last crop-cutting season. The result was nearly 2,000 Dalits went without work. "We would be better off remaining as untouchables rather than starve. We don't know whether the village elders will allow our children to go to school next year because of the government action against some of them this year," said Bikshapatamma, of Chandanpur in Rangareddy. ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
