Michael Kropac

Dalit Empowerment and Vocational Education

An Impact Study

© 2006 by

Michael Kropac Winkelriedplatz 2 4053 Basel, Switzerland 0041 (0)61 361 36 03 Mail: kropac@gmail.com

For all people of Navsarjan who resolutely follow their ideal of an egalitarian society

Preface and Acknowledgements

Preface and Acknowledgements
The present work is based on my thesis submitted to the University of Basel (Switzerland) in December 2005. Ever since I have started to study Geography, I wanted to write a thesis that would be read by more people than only my supervisors and would prove to be useful in some way. A traineeship during my studies as well as various projects and a general interest to discover the ‘mystery’ called India had brought me to the subcontinent several times since 2002, and it was soon clear to me I would focus on a topic in the Indian context. Even before I visited India for the first time I knew that it was not only about the Taj Mahal, tigers and finding enlightenment in some yoga class, but also about development, poverty and caste. Once in India, the contrast between vibrant economic development and widespread poverty became more than obvious, but the idea of caste remained somehow ambiguous. As foreigners are often only able to speak English, they can only communicate directly with those strata of society who also speak this language – most often these are not the poor or deprived of the Indian society, but those at the ‘upper’ end. Hence, I was assured many times that the caste system “does not exist anymore”, that the Untouchables live in poverty because they are “lazy”, that they “don’t want to do anything else than sweeping and cleaning”, or questions about caste were just simply ignored. It took me a while – until 2004 – to have a real look behind the scenes of the supposedly “abolished” caste system. The