New Delhi: Citizens belonging to SCs, STs, religious minorities and women have suffered discrimination due to their social identities and this in turn has affected their access to resources, opportunities and even civil rights, Vice-President Hamid Ansari on Saturday said.
He was delivering inaugural address at the Decennial Celebration Conference of Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (IIDS) on 'Inequality Revisited: Theory, Evidence, and Policy' in Jawaharlal Nehru University.
"The Scheduled Castes and the OBCs suffer caste-based discrimination. The tribals endure both physical and social isolation. Religious minorities, principally the Muslims, lag behind the majority population in most human development indicators and also experience social discrimination.
"Women who constitute half the population face prejudice, although its nature and form varies according to their caste, ethnicity, and religious backgrounds," he said.
The Vice President said that the SCs, STs, and OBCs account for about half of India's population and together with religious minorities and nomadic and denotified tribes, they comprise around three-fourths of our population. "This signifies the magnitude of the challenge and the importance of addressing it," Ansari said.
The Vice-President said that our developmental experience, since independence, shows that there has been a significant improvement in the living standards of our people, including the marginalised groups.
Poverty, an important indicator, has declined in rural and urban areas and across social, religious and economic groups, especially in the last 20 years. Similarly, incidences of malnutrition, infant mortality rates, maternal mortality, literacy rates, proportion of homeless, drinking water, and sanitation facilities have also fallen at all-India level and within the groups, he said.
Ansari, however, expressed his concern that despite these overall positive changes, the outcomes of our developmental agenda have been uneven across social, religious and economic groups.
Ansari said that these groups have generally improved their situation, but at a slower rate compared to others. "As a result, disparities between these vulnerable groups and other sections of our population, still persists. The SCs/STs, the Muslims, and women lag behind when compared with the rest," he
said.
The Vice-President emphasised that building a just and inclusive socio-economic order is a necessary condition for sustained peace, harmony and progress in our society. "It is also a moral imperative for all of us as human
beings," he said adding it would require social and economic empowerment of the marginalised groups and their adequate participation in decision-making.
This will need to be a collective effort with the civil society, academia, government and non-governmental sector and every citizen joining hands in partnership for its attainment, he added.
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