 OK. We welcome back for our final session. What we are going to do now is a slightly less structured kind of thing. What I'd like to do is ask each spokesperson from each of the four groups to give us a very brief summary of the discussion that went in their respect to a group. If they can, try to boil it down to up to about five key points just for the information of those people who are in a different group and would like to know, have a sense of what discussion went on in the groups they weren't at. Ac mae'n gweithio — rydych chi'n gwneud ar gwaelwch ar gweithgwyr y celfau — bod yn bwysiwch i'w ddiddordeb ydy o'r wladau'n gweithredu a'u bwysig o'i gweithgio'r wladau. A felly gynnigwch chi'n llwyddo i ddechrau'r gweithgawr o'r amser yn Gweithgawr. Ac rwy'n gweithio eu chesaf i'r maes ben cried felly mae'n gweithgawr o'r gweithgawr. Mae'n gweithio'r unrhyw ar gyfer gweithgawr, Is this the appointed spokesperson for social development? Hi. Who was that? Someone who was a cure facilitator in our discussion had to leave, so I'll just report back. Okay, thank you so much. I think we ended up coming up with a lot more questions for our discussions. One of the things we spoke about was looking at hierarchies of power. First of all, we started off. We didn't really get into social development as much. We ended up speaking about women as perpetrators of car space violence and why that occurs. I think one of the points we thought of why it occurs is because of the hierarchies of power. People don't want to let go of their power and privilege. It's quite a difficult thing to do. So we ended up becoming perpetrators of violence. And also women who have limited power and spoke about the agency of women there. We also spoke about prejudice and prejudice being universal. So one of the strands off of that is what can we do here in the UK to look at car space violence? When it comes, for example, into caste marriages. And also there seems to be a fine line between discussing car space violence and issues of inequality in India, but rarely reflecting where it happens in Europe, for example. So it seems to be a fine line between when it becomes actually just racist, just discussing it with one lens and on like saying that happens just in India and just developing countries. And what else do we speak about? There's a need for civil society institutions to self reflect and do the relationships at NGO's form with the higher caste operate as a form of censorship. The difficulties that NGOs can have bringing up caste in policy, because for example I suppose in the UK context for example, because I suppose the UK government wants to be sensitive to the Indian Hindu groups here, who are also in positions of power in the UK and media and so forth. I think the last thing we spoke about was, we asked the question, are international NGOs reflecting on white privilege and white power when it comes to programmes that they implement? And we often see the white saviour complex, so are international NGOs reflecting on this and looking at the impacts this has on programmes on the ground? Thank you very much. Any other member of the group like to amplify or chip in on any of those points? Shall we move on to group 2? Okay, well we have 4 to cover. So group 2 was on economic development. Do we have a spokesperson from that group? Thank you. Hello, okay. We had quite a wide-ranging discussion, but we've sort of tried to boil it down to 4 main points, which I will attempt to summarise coherently. The first big discussion was about the concept of growth, which came up a lot this morning, and we basically tried to, in a very vague sense I guess, focus in on the idea that growth needs to be specifically pro-poor. The main definition of that is that we've talked thus far about how liberalisation has lifted people out of poverty, but that has happened much slower for schedule cast and schedule tribe communities. So a poor growth programme would do a focused growth policy looking specifically at making sure schedule cast and schedule tribe communities have their incomes raised faster than any other specific group, and also look at job creation for those two communities. Then we looked specifically at agriculture, which is the second point. There was a discussion on the role of mechanisation in Indian agriculture in different states and in Bangladesh, looking at how mechanisation can end up either displacing labour or enabling agricultural productivity and growth, but also providing opportunities to absorb labour. So we talked about the importance of ensuring that state-based policies to introduce mechanisation ensure that labour remains a key part of the rural economy. The third major point was about the impacts of liberalisation, which came up a fair amount. We didn't talk a lot about this, but the basic idea is that liberalisation has, as we said this morning, created new pockets of wealth in new castes, new communities, new jadis across the country, and this means that necessarily new areas or new locations of power have been created. So you have new communities who are perhaps more self-interested now in stopping rural social mobility for people below them, across rural and urban areas linked to urbanisation, and how can policy deal with the fact that, whilst people are gaining in wealth, that may mean that it slows down for SC and ST communities social mobility because these new locuses of wealth and power do not want that social mobility to happen. And then the fourth point was again quite a broad one. Looking at the role of the state more broadly in India, we talked about private sector versus public sector and affirmative action and so on, but the point that kept getting raised was that India's economy is largely informal, and so when we talk about policies and have policy-based discussions, we need to interrogate whether that is necessarily where change is going to happen, given that I think it's 90 plus per cent of jobs in India are unregistered and informal. And so is it really useful to talk purely about policy when talking about economic development and SC and ST communities? Thank you very much. Again, would anybody else like to tip in on that, please? I think there was a major point left out in that presentation and that is the research has established that whilst there is a general decline in poverty in the country as a whole, it has not benefited Dalit people in general and women to the same extent, which means therefore the Gulf, the inequality, has widened. So this has two implications for policy. One, that there's need for upgrading the skills and educational knowledge levels of Dalits. That means you need a major investment programme. And secondly, to extend affirmative action to the corporate sector so that discrimination is tackled energetically. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, let's move on. Group three, gender. Who's our spokesperson? Group three. Being a group of people sitting in London saying this is what Dalit women should be asking for or should be saying. And so we were keen to hear from the Dalit women present in the room what they really wanted rather than us trying to dictate the discourse. So from that, the first point was that the international community needs to work with women's movements in India and internationally to raise awareness of the issue, to break down the silos between caste and gender. So to see it as a, it's not just about caste, it's not just about gender, it's about both. And that this issue needs to be targeted particularly. It can't just be treated, the two issues in isolation. And then we talked about how we can consciously create spaces for women's voices to emerge, especially in India but also internationally and how we can maximise these spaces. We didn't come up with an answer, but it's a question for everyone here. And also how we can maximise the audiences in our different roles. So in the room we had Dalit activists, we had INGO workers, we had academics, independent consultants and lots of other people. So how we can use these spaces to talk to different people, different audiences to get the message out there about caste and gender being intersected. There was also the point that INGOs in India, as they're writing their country's strategy papers, that there's a role for the international community to advocate for Dalit women's rights to be included in these. That's a great way for this issue to get on the agenda of groups that are doing work on the ground in India. We then talked about social media, how it's obviously a very powerful tool internationally and nationally to help Dalit women to have a voice for themselves. The point was raised that so much in this discourse is researchers doing research on Dalit people in every facet of their lives other than allowing Dalit women or Dalit people in general to speak for themselves. And also that social media is a good way to interact with upper caste Indians that there's a need to get them on board in this from a mindset perspective. There was also an extra point added at the end about manual scavenging. So one member of the team felt that this should be promoted widely on YouTube, the video that we saw. And the term manual scavenging isn't heart-hitting enough that it should be called something like forced excrement collection. Because manual scavenging doesn't actually resonate that much with people that don't know what it is in advance so they, to get the message out there you might consider using another term or a tagline. The final point was that there are so many stories out there about victimhood of Dalit women but there are also so many positive stories that people have seen and experienced themselves. Stories of survival and triumph over discrimination starting from childhood and that it's really important to get these messages out there in social media but also it could be something that INGOs could think about in their own campaigning and awareness raising. Partly because it's important to show the potential for positive change but also because there's so much negative discourse around the lack of potential of Dalit people in India. The idea is that Dalits will never succeed or will never amount to much and it's obviously not true and positive messages about Dalit people could go some way to challenging that. Actually the final point is that film makers going to India should try to represent Dalit women more and in more positive terms so there was a point made that we have films documentaries every night on different Indian cities but rarely did Dalit women feature in these and this would be another way to get the message out there about the situation they find themselves in but also the positive stories that they have as well. Thank you for a third very excellent summary. Additional points please. May I move on to group 4 on human rights? Thank you very much. We also had a very lively discussion and it's worth pointing out that ours was not the only group talking about human rights since all other three groups were talking about human rights issues as well. Our first point was we wanted to encourage international actors and stakeholders such as development NGOs and academic institutions to adopt human rights based approaches in their own organizational structures to focus for example on key issues of non-discrimination internally within their organizations how they facilitate the right to participation and how they are accountable how they fulfill the right to accountability and we pointed for example to Bond which could build on its recent motion on caste based discrimination to reflect further on how its own members can better operationalize these human rights commitments. The second point was the need to globalize the issue. It's important that we widen the scope beyond India and beyond Hinduism. First to help dilute Indian opposition and second particularly on the international level and second to reflect the reality of today that caste based discrimination is a global issue and a multi religious issue. Thirdly we focused on the increasing importance of the role of the international corporate sector encouraging them to recognize and address caste based discrimination in their supply chains in caste affected countries and the need to raise more awareness of this type of discrimination in order to address their labour rights obligations and issues and to do this with regard to the UN's business and human rights guidelines and working with those companies you have offices in caste affected countries to encourage affirmative action policies in regard to recruitment and promotion and then our fourth point was that greater attention should be paid in both development programs and in the research that is done to the issue of accountability as one means of empowering human rights defenders on this issue and we were very impressed with the example from Ashif's campaign of how research on gaps in accountability to existing legislation was extremely important in empowering women in the case in the example that he gave in showing concretely the failures of the government. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any additional points that may have slipped through? No, I think that's it. So thank you all four of you very much for excellent summaries of those discussions. As I said before they will be they have been recorded in their own rights and they will be written up in more detail so you'll be able to access more than just the key points in due course. The manual scavenging term is also I'm just picking up on that. It's struck me as a strange euphemism that has to be explained and you know it might be something that the movement could pick up on on the clarification. There used to be night soil carrying which is equally kind of quaint or rather quaint. Also the existence of Dullet tools of biographies in quite large numbers again in the literary study which we haven't dealt with here. I mean we teach a course here on the politics of culture in contemporary South Asia at master's level and we always have a session on Dullet narratives. It's taken that in the past if I remember correctly. A very powerful body of literature which is perhaps should be brought to the attention of the wider world in this course as well. Sorry those are my own personal reflections. We've got some time left so we've got the final item in the agenda is a panel discussion. So I think the idea is David if I'm right to ask the presenters from the day to if they wouldn't mind resuming the stage and this will be an opportunity really to a kind of a free for all of fire the questions you've been sitting on all day and haven't had a chance to ask all the comments and the suggestions that you may have for discussion by a particular member of the panel that you haven't had a chance to ask a question of or more generally but David you're going to chair this bit. We've got Mike a couple more microphones. You've got those roving ones. Yes please. Yeah that's true. There is a chair. As Mike just said this is the final session we'll continue until half past and then we have a drinks reception and then everybody will stay around for that. As Mike said it's an opportunity for people to put further questions I think the two questions that perhaps we would could organise our thinking and questions around is first of all what do we need to know I think there are questions that came up about things that we areas of research that have yet to be undertaken some of the mapping that Barbara showed us in the morning suggested questions that we might want to ask there are lots of questions that we don't have answers to about the nature of the differences of the experiences of Dullet's and different parts of the region and also in different sectors of the economy I think a second perhaps question is not just what do we need to know but how should we come to know it what sort of research should be done with whom how should the research be led what's the role for action research as opposed to research done by academics and I'd certainly be interested to have some comments from panel members on that question of how we should know who should do it and the second question is what is to be done and likewise who is to do it we have questions of what is the role of international organisations but we also have the question of what processes of self-organisation and action that have emerged from the grassroots and this is a good point for me to introduce Dr Sundar Ababu who was a resource person in the social development group who has really been central to recent processes of self-organised interventions in areas of Dalit rights but in particular land and resources development in various parts of Tamil Nadu but also much more broadly creating the possibility of links and alliances between different subordinated oppressed disadvantaged groups whether Adi Varsi whether Dalit whether Fisher Folk and other groups so I hope that Dr Sundar Ababu will bring us haul us down to the ground realities of grassroots work to show the moments at which organising thinking around ideas of caste actually become useful but when they're not useful some of the practical strategies that emerge from from working from field work that you've been involved with so with that sort of question first of all ask the panel of anybody and the panel would like to kick off with further comments on any of those and any of those points and then people from the audience if you'd like put your points and then we'll see how it goes what do we need to know what do we need to know well I will take the last issue that you mentioned the role of international organisation particularly funding and its linkages with the self-organisation that you mentioned I think there are certainly effort on the part of Dalit to organise but the organising poor is always a difficult proposition so there are organisation but weak and scattered and the support from international funding during last 40, 30, 50 years has helped to organise the Dalit particularly in NGOs and civil society organisations all funding agency in India particularly and outside Dalit has been issue on their agenda Dalit women came later so whatever little funding that was given to the Dalits NGO and activists it has helped to develop the collective action through NGOs and other groups and also development of the little leadership at local level it has helped quite a lot but during the last 10 years or so because of the withdrawal of the funding agency from India because of the government policy perhaps all funding agency that have origin in Europe have gone back none now left only 4 of them were allowed to stay one is defeat German, Canadian development agency and 4 foundation now their status has also been reduced to minimum now I think one of the bad consequences of this withdrawal of the funding was on the Dalit particularly because Dalit had began to mobilise and develop into a self-organisation and this withdrawal of funding little as it is has hampered them I think therefore there was appeal from others that the funding organisation here in UK and different countries should retain the priorities to help them Thank you I am Rikki Naran from the International Dalit Solidarity Network I would just like to share with you and in particularly the research community that you may find some of the resources available within ideas in particular on our website helpful at least to some extent we try to capture as much as we can on international developments and on the issues that have been discussed today which is brought from the members of the communities in the affected countries and we issue a monthly newsletter email and a free subscription and we try to capture again developments in the UN on the particular issue of caste discrimination we would also like to extend an invitation for a closer association with researchers as research associates to IDSN and this is a possibility that is opening up now and it is mainly with a view to enable further flow of information and underlining the importance of the research that is actually taking place so if this within the research community so if information on the topics, the studies, the research could be shared in some common platform within the IDSN or related to the IDSN we are happy to see how this could be facilitated thank you and by the way congratulations to us and the organisations behind this conference it has been an amazingly rich experience, thank you in the morning Barbara White showed some maps which indicated roughly speaking that some areas of the country the discrimination pattern was far greater against the list than in others in a variety of areas so the one issue is what are the criteria for success in tackling discrimination and affecting the policies of affirmative action and why are there others that fails so maybe research could focus on that issue providing guidelines where it can be more effective you know, in what ways and secondly the funding agencies could help equip the Dali's organisations in particular to conduct a social audit of those policies with a view to make those authorities accountable to what they are expected to achieve thank you you are talking about the aid agencies if the government of India thinking their policies they are concerned UK based INGOs are supported by taxpayers money and the generosity of the people and they have to spend their money wisely now if you take the number of the global poor one third of the global poor are coming from community affected by discrimination one third means I categorically say 400 million people of a CST dalt Christians dalt Muslims dalt Sikhs dalt Buddhis and a certain amount of backward communities so from an international perspective global perspective from the poverty reduction perspective NGOs have to thematise this particular area caste discrimination Dali's and caste discrimination they have to thematise so far never thematic subject area in any of the aid agencies secondly as they are thematised they have to allocate appropriate funds for this particular subject and it can be given to NGOs working in India I mean NGOs being quotation what kind of NGOs and how they are constituted are they capable of observing the target population in its decision making powers and the assets created are in their name and decision making is with them now there are NGOs working here also UK based NGOs we need to raise the consciousness of UK public on the causes of poverty that has been there since player shot has been the development secretary that NGOs have undertaken the responsibility to educate the UK masses on the cause of poverty the root cause of poverty of global poor and its impact on the types of British citizens here which they have not done and so far they have been awaiting this subject and there is a network called the British OOC NGOs in development they have the advisory capacity as well as you know even now they are funding also to a certain extent to defeat advisory capacity to defeat now this network is composed of more than 450 NGOs including all the major aid agencies of disaster emergency committee and all that and in two of their everybody meeting we try to bring in a special try to be brief because there is an important point but if you try to be brief because there is quite a lot of I won't have a chance do you want me to say this point if I last we have succeeded with the support of Christian aid and we are very thankful to Christian aid for that the motion is this this house recognises that caste and discrimination based on work and descent actively contribute to the structural causes of poverty and inequality among Dalits and other excluded communities it calls for born members to express solidarity addressing this problem as appropriate once they have adopted it they are obliged to form support groups and one meeting was convened on the 15th of May there is more meetings to come but if more members of the NGO community show interest in this definitely this can be taken to concord that's European network from their UNDP from the United Nations point of view so this is a entry we got in their structure that can be taken forward and I request that all the NGO's born members of the 15th of May to support this motion again and also to take this conference to take this as an agenda to take it forward so this is a very good and practical suggestion as to how to consolidate a community to address the question in the past so yes responses from people and the panel to those of you I don't know if it's a response but just my comments I think we really need to face the reality that situation back home is very complex and the struggles of our community has also been very real and whether we all in this room are there or not that struggle for justice and dignity has been there for a long time it will continue in its own way that is the spirit of resilience of our community but I think in this whole complex reality today we need to find ways together how we could accelerate or escalate that struggle and those demands for justice in that whole arena I just want to say two points one is that as activists and especially as Dalipimin activists in this whole complex scenario we've really stuck our necks out challenging the state and also challenging perpetrators and actually tackling the state impunity because of that now also issues of us women, human rights defenders itself is an issue whether it's in the digital spheres or whether it is in the physical sphere so what can we as the international community look to actually contribute in that area is my ask second is that Dalipimin are organizing they are having their own narratives and their articulations it's a slow process but it's very much happening and I think the point was made earlier about agency of really Dalipimin leaders on the ground and I think this group can really offer us in our organizing links with other radical women of colour organizing that is happening across the globe also trans peoples organizing and how those challenges are being faced so there's so much for us to learn from those those streams of organizing and I think that is another ask that I want to place to this group the issue of addressing the where the international development is especially the funding to those issues are declining quite rapidly and it's a reality but on the other hand the influence of the business sector is quite rapidly increasing in India and South Asia region so I certainly see there is a need for bringing little more of focus on these issues with us with the business community using appropriate mechanism whether it would be UN business and human rights framework or the whole issue of equality diversity what are the mechanisms I think that's an area where we need to look at it but the challenge part is also the whole issue of what Ashwini and others also shared in fact a couple of us we sit in the affirmative action council of CII it's not such a sign a signatory to an affirmative action policy I think the whole challenge is how you convert that policy into action there you see the major challenge and there are 13 points in the affirmative action policy this is a very very self-explanatory which puts the responsibility at the CEO level at the board level to deliver but you sign and you don't produce the report this is exactly the culture of where you enact and you showcase and you neglect or you forget so this is an area where I think we need to reimpose so I certainly feel one is a fear of penalty through law which you do but if it comes voluntarily and which you believe that it is in your business case you need to promote equality and diversity that's a much stronger statement but we need a stronger debate and discourse on this issue it's not cannot be left to the few adult groups or adult human rights movements alone to do that so that's where I certainly see a greater role for people professionals working in the media and the private sector the business sector to articulate these issues much more strongly that is where I think we can create a momentum and if the business community can take it where the 90% of the jobs either in the informal or other sector that is available certainly I think some of the economic challenges or a lack of opportunities could be certainly addressed the second point I want to make David one is most of these issues we are looking from a punitive point of view so you have committed atrocities there is an issue of where this is the punishment so even the law we have is the Shedelkar Shedelkar Prevention of Atrocities Act there is no even though the name is a prevention act I have yet to come across where it has actually prevented an atrocity so therefore how do you make this law much more preventive so therefore it is the cost is the state of mind how do we change the mind so I am yet to come across a proper framework a training framework we have a good excellent frameworks on gender training on areas other issues I am yet to come across how do you look this address this framework which can take the individuals and the groups through a process of exploration of what this identity means so somewhere I think there is a role where we need to look at how do we create the knowledge and as well as the mechanisms you create that kind of a discourse can take otherwise it cannot be the struggle of 20% against the rest of 80% but if you can change the minds of 80% I think that 20% can be a product to time in much more other areas which I think it will help not only the Dalis but also the entire economy so in that sense I see there is an investment we need to look into that thank you I just want to add just on the just adding to the excellent points that you raised on this voluntary affirmative action it's worse than that so one is you sign and you don't do anything that of course is happening and they are passing it off in this corporate social responsibility so they'll open some stitching centre for poor women or something like that whereas the charter in the affirmative action the voluntary charter is very explicit about what that measure is supposed to be but the kinds of measures that companies are passing off as affirmative action it has nothing to do with those 13 points so it doesn't address caste based discrimination it doesn't talk about inclusion some stitching centre some literacy school it has no understanding of caste at all but if you read the annual reports they will pass it off as their commitment to the affirmative action program so it's a version at a much bigger scale and that is the danger with this voluntary thing which is that how do you hold companies accountable and so that was one of the issues that we were discussing with the IDSN and trying to say that if you make it as a good business case then maybe there's some chance that companies will adopt it so that's something that we will do I wonder if I could bring Senator Babu in here in terms of local accountability and some of the way in which work at the grassroots can also generate accountability of a more direct time Good evening I would like to start with what Anand was referring as knowledge and discourse in the context of Dalits see like since morning we have been talking a lot of sad stories and the mess that is around us but we also have other history which is not that bad also I think many of you have noticed I just noticed at the entrance Thiruvallur's statue Thiruvallur himself is a Dalit is a caste caste is one lower and so his name comes as Thiruvallur and Thiruvallur was supposed to be 2200 years old now so it's 200 years before Christ so there are enough traces and enough sources in history and literature about Dalits scholarship that existed so one side we have this version that the Manusnuti doesn't give access to knowledge for the Dalit communities but on the other side we have certain communities which are now coming under the schedule caste but having a lot of history and background on literature second aspect which I wanted to draw attention was see one of the issues which I personally think we face at the ground level is this term Dalit Christians Had it been probably if it was Christian Dalits as people used to call before things would have gone ahead I feel that we went into a status quo mode when we rephrased it as Dalit Christians because there I feel that like when we talk about the ground many of these people actually want to talk about the caste Christian but then they are separate in religion but when you bring this Dalit Christian as a category and then the way the donor agencies have approached the whole thing the whole energy was directed against the state or the government so what happens to the Dalit Christians because the Dalit Christians have to ask for the rights ask for their protection from the state so somewhere we were lost I think in that kind of a coinage had we stuck to the Christian category probably many other discussions would have gone ahead this is something which we are discussing at the ground level we are trying to explore what went wrong and how things have been articulated and also we are trying to like I am part of the federation which are working on land rights in South India we are trying to understand caste from the perspective of ecosystems so the different ecosystems seem to be having different understanding on these caste hierarchies so the the five ecosystems like the hill and people around the hill people on the coast people around the simplified areas people living near forests and people living in the plains closer to the river so the caste hierarchies and untouchability seem to be very strong with communities and societies around rivers which had more access to the freshwater and which got involved in agriculture in a big way the caste seem to be weaker with the people who were associated with the hills or the coast the desert so the untouchability factors were very very strong that's what we were witnessing in our field we are trying to explore and we are trying to do further studies on these issues about how gender and caste is being understood in different ecosystems and trying to understand also religion from that perspective so these are some of these initiatives which are going on and we are involved with some grassroot research on these subjects a lot so much a question just a short comment I noticed that we are talking about multinational corporations and other non-Indian states all the time as some kind of neutral players who need to be sensitized to caste discrimination and to caste atrocities but I think what also needs to be done is to reveal the active participation and promotion of some of these corporations and states in encouraging very politically contested capitalist process of economic development in India that is deepening caste inequalities and that is creating a lot of the caste tensions that are behind some of these atrocities so that's my point this isn't a question it is a comment just it's a lot of things today there was a lot of things we learned today one of which was the complexity of the issues and I think that what we need to look at is not so much a solution to the problem as a process which will get us towards some situation of justice I think a starting point for that if we go back to one of the original ideas of this conference was to challenge development actors about how they're going to properly engage with the issue of caste in a way that they haven't been hitherto one of the things that everybody in this room could do I think within the next couple of days is to go to the NGOs that they work for go to the NGOs support go to the NGOs they volunteer and ask them what are you doing to end the system of caste based apartheid in South Asia and keep pestering them until they come up with decent answers Eugene points out the imperative of the bond resolution in the UK this year there also is it's not explicit the sustainable development goals but there is a recognition of a need for inclusivity within the sustainable development goals NGOs development community are going to have to respond to that also I think as they start to grapple with that we need to be pushing at them consistently in terms of saying this is an issue which you have to address and not tolerating whatever they come up with inadequate answers to it Would it be possible to have a respecting score for South Asian organisations for UK investors and traders Would it be possible to construct a Dalit respecting score or measure for South Asian organizations so that UK investors and traders are aware of it respecting score score or score or score so that investors can understand that in addition to his point is it when it comes to child labour eradication there are relatively successful stories we have had trade movement why don't we pick up some of the models and include the caste agenda based on those models because you can recently there were Bangladesh fire in a textile sorry government industry so is it possible to copy and incorporate such ideas when it comes to caste discrimination as well where you will act as a pressure group or a method to put pressure on the business houses and it's going to be a very challenging one because the Indian government public in general seems to be on a very self assertive or we are on the developed nation kind of mentality but there should be a way and method where you can put child labour issue kind of propaganda I want to make only one point about the civil society space in India so like everybody knows civil society space in India is shrinking and actually civil society now facing two problems one is a funding related problem because they are not getting funding as previously they like receive and turats have already raised this issue and another various kind of foundation or like the legal provisions where civil society are not able to raise their issue very openly or like they are not able to organise any protest or anything legislation like FCRA regulation at a some level government of India passed some rules like CSR they make a provision in the companies act and now like the company need to put 2% their income into the CSR but the same time this money they invest for their business also like they use their money for the more development of their business and sometime some companies invest this money to the government projects and they give to the government for example like national sanitation campaign so many company invest this money to the government project so these kind of things are there and that's why like the international like organisation and outsiders believe that India government now more pro civil society and they are promoting to the industry to invest in the civil society so these kind of things are there so my like the international researchers and the organisation now need to work on this issue and highlight these kind of problems and the second thing our prime minister will come to UK so I think if civil society here like the civil society organisation and the researchers during the visit if highlighted these kind of issues then these issues get more attention thank you just to yes I think we are going to we are going to draw to a close now so last comments from the one more in response to the the index of dignity or social discrimination and is used for the policy purposes and some research agenda which David has raised in the beginning I think looking at the research it is possible to develop an exclusion index based on the some sort of secondary data I have tried and I think Ashwini Indeshpande has also tried in her book but you cannot build up any relationship for example we have number of cases registered under touchability act number of cases registered under the atrocity act figure were given so you can work out a ratio number of cases per thousand of population for the states and see which states incidence of discrimination are much higher than others and then see the relationship with incidence of poverty or human development index but I don't think it is it really work because state like Bihar where the atrocities are much lower number of cases registered is much lower because awareness is not there institution do not help but I mean nevertheless one can make that attempt I will only make one point at the end is about the private sector see why is it that the private sector in India the philanthropic efforts are very less the roots are to be found in the religion the it is not that there is no philanthropy in India but the philanthropy is cost bought you look at the banks Saraswad bank that is the Brahmin bank Shudra bank that is the bank started by Shudra and banks are there by the cost names and there must be millions of of social network around the cost we do not know what is lacking by the private sector and civil society is the social philanthropy for Dalit and that because there is no passion there is no morality in the Hindu philosophy whereby you can develop a sympathy for them religion tell them not to help them and the the Hindu civil society is victim of that ideology and that is why there is a lack of philanthropy towards the Dalit so you do require law you do require compulsion too and the only thing that you can do I will make last point David I would take much time only point that you can do because that is our experience that whatever affirmative action policy has been developed for private sector it was by proving to them that they practice discrimination in employment we gave them evidence and it is only that with Kurtz Kurtz the ice with the private sector the moral argument now therefore in this context I will make a suggestion that we require and research agenda on one point namely what we know is that there is a discrimination there is a sufficient evidence now to prove that there is a discrimination in market non-market social sphere and then there is an outcome variable we know the level of poverty, malnutrition education, the awkwardness what we do not know and that is why policy is affected what we do not know is how does social discrimination or economic discrimination through what channel is affect the Dalit access to resources the channel we have not been able to identify what we know is labour market discrimination and high unemployment among Dalit but how does this discrimination affect I mean employment affect the unemployment and employment or education there is a large drop out among the shadow cause there is a discrimination in the classroom how does the discrimination in the classroom discourage the children and lead to drop out and disinterest so that channel has to be captured through a research thank you very much points that continue informally with our research just to add to some of our friends made intervention friends the last 10 years are now the previous prime minister or the present prime minister you might be hearing very often that India is shining India is developed India is developed in the science and technology communications and they said it here India has attained self-sufficiencies we don't want external cooperation so by saying this trying to sweep away all the realities of the other part of the community which are suffering and India trying to get the permanent membership in the security councils of the UN that is their main objectives that is why today are the previous government they extended millions of euros to European Commission which the world has been shocked and Indian government is extending cooperation to many other countries but the point is the reality is that so many millions of Dalits been suffered in terms of poverty, health and many other services entitlement but it is been denied my point is that even some of the INJs also take this index and trying to face out from this kind of interventions from the country by saying that India has developed and there has been many research acromic research, action-based research which reveals which has not been properly taken care and even now the government has asked some of the INJs to close down their offices in India but mainly their focus is to show that India has been developed but the reality, the other reality remains the same so this need to be taken care and what Dr Prakash Lewis said the discrimination index need to be taken into account while we formulating the policies of the INJs and my own experience that the people who have been involved in the formulating policies also sometime misguide I know my experience one of the UK-based organization that took a stand not to support any activist of their travel cost to going to the German conference participating because it is going to be against the state so that is the kind of conclusion or arrived or recommendations are made by the the consultant who are appointed by the INJs so that aspect need to be really taken care of while formulating the policies finally from morning I have been hearing the term very often lower cost and upper cost I think somewhere we have to get away from that there is no lower cost and higher cost is our mindset so whenever you want to quote please quote us quoted that it is a upper cost so called upper cost and so called lower cost or use the dominant cost and if you want to refer the Dalits or Dalits otherwise dominant cost otherwise then consciously or unconsciously we are also in my mind the same cost values thank you very much if not then it just leaves it just leaves it to me to to close the session formally and then we will look upstairs for our drinks reception I would like to give a big thank you to all of our panel members and I think somewhere we have been extremely fortunate to bring together such an extremely high profile, talented and eminent collection of individuals and people have travelled a long way sometimes overcoming all sorts of obstacles and acquiring their travel arrangements visa arrangements and what not but I'm delighted that everybody actually more or less everybody made it and thank you for such incredibly stimulating thought-provoking and important contributions we have a lot of food for thought and as Mike has said we will consider this as a sort of base for pulling together ideas making this material presentations and some of the discussion material available on the web page and we will be opening blogs for continuing discussion and there is an existing set of questions for people to post comments so we would like to regard this as the beginning of a conversation and a debate on the relationship between caste discrimination inequality and development and gender as an essential part of understanding those forces of caste and caste discrimination and to see this as something that will be the start of something which will continue and especially the hope is that those people representing organisations will take whatever has been gained and from these conversations back to organisations from which they have come and to pose those questions that were raised a moment ago so thank you very much indeed and thank you also for those co-organisers of this event really this would not have been possible without the lead taken by Karuna Trust by Christian Aid Anti-Slavery International Village Service Trust and the Dalit Solidarity Network this has really been a collaborative effort we've had many meetings over many months thinking about how to organise this and bring it to you and I'm extremely grateful from the point of view and speaking as I may, if I may for the South Asia Institute of SARS and Mike who's here thank you Mike for the hosting from the South Asia Institute thank you all and now we go upstairs of course, yes just to thank Jane Savery of the Sentence and Program who gave up her Saturday forest Sungita who must be very fit now from running around with a mic and Helen the same wherever she is and everybody else who made it possible everybody everybody let's all go and have a celebratory drink thank you