Short Answer TypeRead the passage given below and answer the following questions:
Kumar embodies the spirit of the dalits of Gohana. In his early 30s, he is not the scavenger the caste society ordered him to be, but a senior assistant in an insurance company. Most dalits have embraced education and stepped across the line of control of the caste system.
“There are many of us who have a Masters Degree and work in private and government jobs. Most of our boys go to school and so do the girl,” he said. […] The young men of the Valmiki colony are not the stereotyped, submissive, suffering Dalits that one would traditionally expect to encounter. Dressed in imitation Nike shoes and Wrangler jeans, their Body language is defiant. However, the journey of upward social mobility remains tough for the vast majority of landless Dalits in Haryana. “most boys drop out after high school because of acute poverty,” said SudeshKataria, an assistant engineer working for a multinational company.. He has a diploma in electrical engineering from the industrial training institute, Gurgaon. Kataria’s best friend at ITI, a jat, once invited him to a family wedding but insisted that he shouldn’t reveal his identity. “At the wedding a guest asked me about my caste and I lied. Then he asked me about my village and I told him the truth. He knew my village was a dalit village.” A fight broke out between the hosts and the guests how can they let a dalit in? “They washed the chair I sat on and threw me out,” Kataria recalls.
Katarina wants a new life for the Dalits- he campaigns throughout the village of Gurgaon with other educated Dalits. “Our people will rise, stronger and powerful. We need to unite. And once we unite and fight back, there will be no Gohanas or Jhajjars. Not anymore.”
The initiatives taken by the State to abolish caste discrimination are as under:
1. The most important state initiative for caste discrimination is the one popularly known as ‘reservations’. This involves the setting aside of some places or ‘seats’ for members of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes in different spheres of public life.
2. One of them is reservation of seats in the State and Central legislatures (i.e., state assemblies, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha); reservation of jobs in government service across all departments and public sector companies; and reservation of seats in educational institutions
3. There have been a number of laws passed to end, prohibit and punish caste discrimination, specially untouchability. One of the earliest such laws was the Caste Disabilities Removal Act of 1850, which disallowed the curtailment of rights of citizens due solely to change of religion or caste.
4. The Constitution abolished untouchability (Article 17) and introduced the reservation provisions mentioned above. The 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act revised and strengthened the legal provisions punishing acts of violence or humiliation against Dalits and Adivasis.
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