Coverage

Land, Labour & Economy

Land ownership, occupational segregation, bonded and gig labour, workplace discrimination.

In focus

A farmer at the corner of his plot, his papers under his arm. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
  1. EXPLAINERWhat is Panchami land, and who holds Tamil Nadu's Dalit land grants now?
  2. EXPLAINERWhat is DC Manna land, and why are Dalits in coastal Karnataka still waiting for it?
  3. ANALYSISAndhra Pradesh police blocked, for 111 days, a reel of Dalit families describing the land they lost to Google's data centre

I am a farmer, without my land I am nothing.

P Venkat Rao, Dalit farmer, Tarluvada · The Guardian, 26 Sept 2026
186,000 of 1.2 million acres

Panchami land left in Tamil Nadu out of the land granted, the state's social justice minister told the Assembly, citing RTI replies.

ETV Bharat, 7 Sept 2026
The main building of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. File photo. — TheVyomanaut, CC BY-SA 4.0
  1. ANALYSISA FAccT paper says caste bias in AI images is a ranking between groups, which one-label audits miss
  2. EXPLAINERIndia's model blood-donor form doesn't ask for caste. Why did a form at an Ooty camp?

Legal protection is the only means to guard the vulnerable from caste exploitation in places where dominant castes have privilege and preponderance.

Karthik, Ambedkar King Study Circle, on Seattle's ban · Seattle City Council, 24 Jan 2023
More than half

Of the founders of India's first 100 unicorns, start-ups valued at US$1 billion or more, are IIT graduates.

ThePrint, 16 Jun 2022
A woman keeps her own record on her phone in a village lane. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
  1. EXPLAINERWhat is DC Manna land, and why are Dalits in coastal Karnataka still waiting for it?
  2. EXPLAINERWhat is Panchami land, and who holds Tamil Nadu's Dalit land grants now?

When we refused to allow the revenue officials to survey our land, they told us that it would be taken at any cost as the plot was assigned to us by the government.

— Cherlapally Baliah, a Dalit farmer in Islampur, Medak district, to The News Minute, 2022
Shankersinh Vaghela, former chief minister of Gujarat. File photo. — Mahedigo, CC BY-SA 4.0
  1. EXPLAINERWhat counts as manual scavenging under India's 2013 law, and who falls outside it
  2. DATA & RESEARCHSanitation workers counted 101 sewer deaths in the first 188 days of 2026. The government counted 16 for the half-year, none as manual scavenging

They have to mechanise the entire system. More importantly, they have to delink caste from occupation. Families that have been doing this work for generations must be given dignified alternative livelihoods. Until that happens, people will continue entering sewers because they have no other choice.

— Bezwada Wilson, national convenor of the Safai Karamchari Andolan, to ThePrint, August 2026
92%

of the 54,574 sewer and septic-tank workers in towns and cities verified under NAMASTE, the federal scheme for sanitation workers, belong to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class communities: 67.9% Scheduled Caste, 15.7% Other Backward Class and 8.3% Scheduled Tribe.

Source: Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, answer to Lok Sabha Unstarred Question 3453, 17 December 2024. The same answer said the work "is an occupation based activity rather than caste based".
AI-generated image: a young woman researcher in a deep-blue kurta sits at a wooden desk in an empty university computer lab at night, drawing two small squares joined by a line in a notebook, a laptop beside her showing two grids of grey tiles
Illustration: a researcher sketches two linked squares beside a laptop showing grids of grey tiles in an empty computer lab at night. — DalPro Frames (AI-generated) – Why AI image?
Explainer

What the evidence shows about caste bias in AI

Tests since 2023 find that chatbots and image generators reproduce caste hierarchy. Most are lab tests, not audits of hiring or lending tools in real use in India.

OCT 5, 2026 · 6 MIN READ