Uwe Skoda is an associate professor of South Asian studies at Aarhus University, Denmark.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is a research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger is an associate professor in religious studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. 

Navigating Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Contemporary India and Beyond

Structures, Agents, Practices

By Uwe Skoda, Kenneth Bo Nielsen, Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2013 Uwe Skoda, Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85728-322-1

Contents

Acknowledgements, vii,
List of Contributors, ix,
1. Introduction: Navigating Exclusion, Engineering Inclusion Uwe Skoda and Kenneth Bo Nielsen, 1,
Part I: Spaces and Values,
2. Cosmopolitanism or Iatrogenesis? Reflections on Religious Plurality, Censorship and Disciplinary Orientations Kathinka Frøystad, 19,
3. Dependent Husbands: Reflections on Marginal Masculinities Radhika Chopra, 41,
4. Exclusion and Inclusion: Navigation Strategies among Hindus in the Diaspora – A Case Study from Denmark Marianne Qvortrup Fibiger, 55,
Part II: Communities and Politics,
5. In Search of Development: Muslims and Electoral Politics in an Indian State Kenneth Bo Nielsen, 73,
6. Exclusion as Common Denominator: Investigating ‘Dalit-hood’ Guro W. Samuelsen, 97,
7. Inclusion of the Excluded Groups through Panchayati Raj: Electoral Democracy in Uttar Pradesh Satendra Kumar, 119,
8. Making Sikkim More Inclusive: An Insider’s View of the Role of Committees and Commissions Tanka B. Subba, 135,
9. Encountering ‘Inclusion’ and Exclusion in Postindustrial Mumbai: A Study of Muslim Ex-millworkers’ Occupational Choices Sumeet Mhaskar, 149,
Part III: Resources and Development,
10. Dams, Development and the Exclusion of Indigenous Groups: A Case from Odisha Deepak Kumar Behera, 167,
11. ‘Solutions Emerge When Everyone Works Together’: Experiences of Social Inclusion in Watershed Management Committees in Karnataka Devanshu Chakravarti, Sarah Byrne and Jane Carter, 189,
12. The Death of Shankar: Social Exclusion and Tuberculosis in a Poor Neighbourhood in Bhubaneswar, Odisha Jens Seeberg, 207,

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: NAVIGATING EXCLUSION, ENGINEERING INCLUSION

Uwe Skoda and Kenneth Bo Nielsen

Social exclusion has in recent years received increasing attention from scholars and academics working on issues such as poverty, inequality and development. Indeed, already 15 years ago Else Øyen lamented the fact that the idea of social exclusion had made such rapid inroads into academia that scholars were now ‘running all over the place arranging seminars and conferences to find a researchable content in an umbrella concept for which there is limited theoretical underpinning’ (quoted in Sen 2000, 5). The present volume is the outcome of one such seminar, held in Aarhus in Denmark in the spring of 2010. The aim of the seminar was, however, not to provide further theoretical ‘underpinnings’ to the concept of social exclusion, but rather to examine its empirical applicability in contemporary India: How does an increasingly liberalized Indian economy contribute to processes of in- and exclusion? To what extent does the deepening of Indian democracy offer hitherto marginalized social groups new opportunities for pursuing strategies of inclusion through, or in opposition to, the state? And how does ‘development’ alter the social terrain on which inequalities are negotiated and played out? Finally, how are these processes intertwined? These and related questions emerged as focal points for discussion during the seminar, the spirit of which we seek to convey in this volume. The contributions contained here all seek to considerably expand the notion of social exclusion by applying it in the study of a broad range of cases. The chapters focus on issues ranging from kinship and gender, to censorship, elections, caste, labour, migration and more.

In this introduction we revisit the history of the interlinked concepts of social exclusion and inclusion, and examine how academic debates on these issues have played themselves out in the Indian context. We then adopt the metaphor of navigation to argue for an approach to social exclusion that is more sensitive to the interplay between structural changes and the agency of those social groups and actors, whose lived experience is embedded in relations of inequality. We also, following Karl Popper, introduce the notion of ‘social engineering’ to highlight how various strategic alliances can be formed in response to the experience of exclusion.

Social Exclusion: From Concept to Analytical Practice

Originating in the writings of René Lenoir (Borooah 2010, 31), the notion of social exclusion was initially promoted by a research project at the International Institute in the mid-1990s. Later, an Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Bulletin from 1998 focused on the subject (de Haan 2004, 4), and with the entry into the debate of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who authored an Asian Development Bank document on social exclusion the same year, the ‘uncontrolled proliferation’ (Borooah 2010, 31) of studies of exclusion was well on its way. Today, according to one observer, ‘social exclusion’ and its twin term ‘social inclusion’ are the two terms most widely used in recent years by both politicians and social scientists (Sonowal 2008, 123). If this is the case, one could reasonably ask: Why do we need yet another book on the topic? Our argument in this introduction is that there is a need to scrutinize the concept of social exclusion from an empirically grounded point of view. We feel that a large part of the scholarship on social exclusion has been too broad in its analytical ambition, and too narrow in its empirical application. In this volume we seek to address this imbalance by letting the empirical base dictate the scope of analysis. The chapters demonstrate that this opens up new avenues in the study of social exclusion and inclusion.

Amartya Sen’s work on social exclusion has by now acquired an almost iconic status within the field. Sen introduced a series of distinctions that underpin his view of the social processes that either produce or mitigate social exclusion. For instance, people may be both unfavourably excluded and unfavourably included, that is, included on greatly unfavourable terms or conditions. Exclusion may similarly be either active or passive. It can be the result of deliberate attempts by social or political elites to deprive people of opportunities, or the outcome of more subtle and mundane everyday social practices embedded in local relations of power. Exclusion can be partial or complete, and its formal and informal forms may coexist (Oommen 2010, 22–3). The list of foundational distinctions is considerable and has continued to grow in the wake of the Sen’s intervention. But as Sen points out, the real importance of the idea of social exclusion lies in its practical influence in emphasizing the role of relational features in deprivation (Sen 2000, 8); or, in Sukhdeo Thorat’s (2011) terms, the importance of social relations in the analysis of poverty and inequality.

Yet, as more than a century of Marxist scholarship amply demonstrates, the argument that poverty and deprivation are relational and social phenomena is certainly not a recent invention. One could plausibly argue that the surge in popularity of the concept of social exclusion after the year 2000 has a lot to do with the fact that it seems to offer a Marxist- inspired approach to inequality and poverty, without the ideological baggage of a more- or-less discredited Marxism. While some see this as a dilution of the radical potential of a more conventional Marxist analysis, others appreciate the efficacy of ‘social exclusion’ in stressing the need to consider the social bases of economic activity in any analysis of deprivation (Hickey and du Toit 2007, 2). In any event, the fact that the idea of social exclusion has become widely accepted and even mainstreamed in both academic and policy circles is mirrored, in the context of India, in the establishment of the many new university centres across the country by the University Grants Commission (UGC), and recently, the publication of a comprehensive World Bank report titled Poverty and Social Exclusion in India (World Bank 2011).

In the wake of the publication of the IDS Bulletin and Sen’s work, scholarship on social exclusion greatly proliferated and, unsurprisingly, interpretations of the concept have differed greatly. France, the United States and the United Kingdom (along with the rest of Northern Europe) would develop very different paradigms of social exclusion, associated with different forms of theoretical and ideological baggage. Yet, as de Haan points out, the paradigmatic forms of conceptual critique and honing that led to the diversification of definitions have tended to come at the expense of more rigorous empirical applications of the concept (de Haan 2004, 4). In this volume we therefore focus on precisely the empirical applicability of the concept of social exclusion in the Indian context. While this does not mean that we discount or dismiss conceptual discussions, as the chapters by Frøystad, Byrne, Carter and Chakravarti amply demonstrate, it does mean that our authors explicitly foreground the empirical and processual dimensions of social exclusion and its lived consequences. Below, we elaborate on how our approach to social exclusion in India differs from the available scholarship on the topic.

Indian Debates on Exclusion and Inclusion: Foregrounding Caste

It is generally recognized that social exclusion in India revolves around social relations and institutions that exclude, discriminate or deprive certain social groups on the basis of a broad range of group identities (Thorat and Louis 2003). Contributions to the debate have accordingly focused on the ‘excluding’ operations of tribal identity (Kjosavik and Shanmugaratnam 2004; Sonowal 2008), religious minority identity (Alam 2010), ethnicity (Das 2009) or gender (Sreekumar 2007). But generally speaking, the field of social exclusion studies has been dominated by caste and by studies of the exclusion of Dalits in particular (e.g. Jenkins 2006), although recent studies have begun to include a focus on the in-/exclusion of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) (Verma 2005).

The literature on the exclusionary principles and practices of the caste system goes back to the dharmashastric literature and the Manu smriti, through early travellers’ accounts and census reports. The literature is too vast to review here (e.g. Dubois 2007; Hutton 1947), so for the present purpose we shall discuss only what two prominent scholars of the caste system in the early postcolonial era – Pocock (1957) and Dumont (1980) – have had to say.

In his article ‘Inclusion and Exclusion: A Process in the Caste System of Gujerat’, Pocock wrote of how a ‘dialectical’ formula of inclusion and exclusion formed the basis of caste hierarchies. Pocock argued that

To speak of inclusion is to recognize at once its corollary exclusion. A caste that includes itself with a superior at the same time excludes an inferior and we shall see that this is also the case within the caste. (Pocock 1957, 28)

This double process, Pocock suggests, is structural in character and operates continuously between castes, villages, marriage circles, and even down to the family level. Each group at every level seeks to ‘include’ itself into higher ranked groups, who in turn seek to maintain their superior status by ‘excluding’ downward.

Dumont focused on the ideology – the ideas and values – of the caste system. He understood the caste hierarchy as essentially religious in nature, and conceptualized it as a series of dichotomies or inclusions which he termed ‘hierarchical oppositions’. This can be exemplified by the varna system. In the varna system, Shudras are ‘opposed’ to all other varnas that are collectively considered as twice-born; yet the Shudras are included in the varna scheme vis-à-vis non-varnas or avarna (outcastes). The twice-born retain their higher rank but include the Shudras as varna, nonetheless, in a process that Dumont calls ‘an encompassing of the contrary’. Dumont thus reminds us of the inherent complexity and complementarity of the caste system, which requires both Brahmins and Dalits to achieve the hierarchical coexistence of the pure and the impure at a general level.

When Pocock and Dumont wrote, the institution of caste had already assumed an authority within the anthropology and sociology of India that continues to shape discussions today. Caste in India is the classic example of a ‘gate-keeping concept’, or a foundational category, that implicitly informs analysis and limits theorizing and description (Mathur 2000, 97). The ‘authority’ of caste has thus tended, paradoxically, to partially ‘exclude’ studies of other forms of social exclusion from the academic field. For instance, few studies have attempted to look simultaneously or comparatively at the experience of different social groups (Hasan 2009, 11). Moreover, the conspicuous influence of caste on the scholarship of social exclusion in India may well be related to the fact that policy debates on the topic have centred on the question of reservations. And here, there has been a broad consensus on the need for special policies designed for the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) populations; as Zoya Hasan notes, it was from the outset generally agreed that SCs and STs had historically been subjected to an appalling degree of subordination and exclusion that was too stark to overlook (Hasan 2009, 5). In contrast, reservations for other excluded groups have been much more controversial. Both ‘Mandal I’ and ‘Mandal II’ generated fierce political contestation, and the recurring debates about reservations for religious minorities like Christians and Muslims continue to generate considerable heat and remain hotly contested issues among the public and policymakers. In both policymaking and academic discourse on social exclusion in India, certain identities are thus privileged while others are neglected or marginalized. This, we believe, has unnecessarily limited the scope of application of the concept of social exclusion in the context of India. The contributions to this volume seek to considerably broaden the scope of social exclusion and inclusion by focusing on a broad range of topics that have so far not been analysed under this umbrella. As stated, this includes kinship, elections, migration, censorship and much more. We propose to view the processes of in- and exclusion through the conceptual prism of navigation and engineering, which we introduce below. Though our authors do not necessarily and explicitly refer back to these terms, we use them here as a broader framework for the discussions that follow in the individual chapters. In so doing, we have found particular inspiration in the works of Appadurai (2004) and Vigh (2009).

Navigating and Engineering

Navigation is a metaphor drawn from seafaring. It does not merely refer to simple or everyday movements in time and through space. Rather, as Vigh argues:

The concept […] highlights motion within motion; it is the act of moving in an environment that is wavering and unsettled, and when used to illuminate social life it directs our attention to the fact that we move in social environments of actors and actants, individuals and institutions, that engage and move us as we move along […] Where we normally look either at the way social formations move and change over time, or the way agents move within social formations, navigation allows us to see the intersection – or rather interactivity. (Vigh 2009, 420)

Thus, Vigh emphasizes a double dynamic. As actors strategically (re)position themselves within social formations, both undergo processes of change. Sometimes the ground may be shaky; at other times more stable. Moreover, both Vigh and Appadurai highlight the immediate and the imagined nature of social navigation, which is informed both by concerns in and for the present as well as with future dreams and aspirations (Vigh 2009, 425). It is in this sense that Appadurai speaks of ‘the capacity to aspire’ as a ‘navigational capacity’. From the point of view of the poor and excluded, this capacity may be limited. Yet, despite all societal constraints, what marginalized groups often seek strategically is to optimize the terms of trade between recognition and redistribution in their immediate, local lives (Appadurai 2004, 65).

It is the ambition of this volume to uncover and make visible navigational efforts and techniques by excluded groups in specific but oftentimes opaque cultural contexts. A related advantage of foregrounding such efforts with a firm empirical point of departure is that it brings out the much more messy and contested nature of social experience. In a given context, a multitude of social processes combine to produce complex patterns of inclusion and exclusion that are neither stable nor fluid, but which may be made malleable by both individual and collective agency. The fact that diachronic or synchronic configurations of structure and agency close off certain avenues of influence while opening up others is a central theme in all contributions in this volume. Thus, we follow Vigh in suggesting that the idea of navigation

[…] directs our attention both to the way people engage in the world and the way they move towards positions they perceive as being better than their current location and the possibilities within them. Yet in doing so it highlights the limits of the power embedded in our capacity to define and control our social world. (Vigh 2009, 432)

At the same time, we suggest that in the study of social in- and exclusion, it is fruitful to marry the concept of navigation to that of social engineering. We make this suggestion well aware of the fact that the concept of social engineering in the Indian context often denotes strategic manipulation and is colloquially tinged with certain negative connotations. The prime example is the strategically forged electoral alliances between formerly antagonistic communities such as the Dalits and Brahmins by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh (UP), or the attempt to ‘unite’ the Most Backward Castes and the lower sections of the Dalits in Bihar – a formula recently emulated by the Congress. At the same time, however, the notion of social engineering has also been used in India to describe socioeconomic changes brought about by certain actors, schemes and tools such as self-help groups, microcredit organizations or food-for-work programmes, which aim to reduce poverty and further social inclusion.

Outside the Indian context, however, the concept has been widely used across disciplinary boundaries, and particularly in political science. Our understanding of the term is guided by Karl Popper who, in the slightly technocratic language of the 1960s, advocated ‘piecemeal social engineering’. By this he implied a stepwise improvement or reform of social structures. Popper wrote that

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