Background
That Dalits (Scheduled Castes or SC in administrative parlance) are one of the most marginalised social groups in contemporary India is not something new to Indian academia and policymakers. While many countries have had similar hierarchisation of societies, none was as complex, pervasive, and long-lasting as the caste system that exists in India. The resilience of caste in the face of myriad historical changes including feudalism, colonial rule, and modern-day capitalism is proof enough of its adaptability and the complex grip it wields over Indian society [
1,
2]. This is of crucial relevance in the current study as is the case in any contemporary critique of public policies in India, as caste-based norms remain the dominant structure dictating Indian social organisation through multiple ways [
3,
4]. For, caste has had a significant footprint in the overall status of social development in contemporary India and studies on caste-based inequalities suggest that Dalits constitute the most significant proportion of the deprived sections in India [
5]. As per the 2011 census, Dalits constitute around 16.6% of the Indian population, a major proportion of which are engaged in the agriculture sector or other low-income jobs and is a social group that has very minimal asset ownership compared to others in India. Dalits also constitute the major section of bonded labourers in India and their literacy status remains 66%, lower than the national average of 73% [
6,
7].
Caste question within Kerala’s developmental paradigm
The Indian state of Kerala despite its low economic performance is often hailed for its achievements within human development indices. The State is often considered a model, even for the third-world regions burdened with the history of colonialist exploitation and chronic developmental inequality. The developmental landscape of Kerala is marked by its impeccable achievements in the social sector reflected as high levels of life expectancy, literacy, and low levels of maternal and infant mortality [
8]. An achievement viewed as the product of the state’s long history of social reform movements, agrarian reforms, and land redistribution. While Kerala also boasts of a long history of anti-caste movements and relatively low levels of discriminatory practices based on caste, its development paradigm continues to be riddled with its inability to resolve the growing inequities among its Dalit populations. Dalits constitute around 9% of the state’s population and are characterised by their historically poor indicators of health like low life expectancy, high levels of infant mortality and morbidity rates and poor access to good quality health care, and vulnerability borne out of high levels of out-of-pocket medical expenditure among Dalits in Kerala [
9‐
12].
The continuing presence of health inequities along caste lines in the state is often argued as the product of deep-rooted and historically shaped caste norms leading to social exclusion and denial of opportunities of social development for Dalits including education, landownership, and employment amongst others, despite the strident growth in terms of poverty reduction and human development post the 1980’s in Kerala [
13]. The experiences of multidimensional poverty and subsequent lack of access to adequate social and cultural capital among Dalits have also further intensified the caste-based inequities specifically in the context of the neoliberal policy shift towards privatisation in the state [
14].
Kerala Aardram mission and Family Health Centre (FHC) initiative
While Kerala achieved significant improvements over the years in human development indicators and in the domain of health, its achievements in health post the economic liberalisation of the ‘90 s have often been argued as unimpressive. Reflected through the reversal of its achievements within indicators like infant mortality rate, and childhood anaemia during the period between 2003 to 2012 [
15]. In addition to this, the state also witnessed a significant rise in incidences of chronic diseases and communicable diseases. Increased marketisation of health and the weakening public health sector has contributed to high levels of out-of-pocket expenditure and subsequent inequities within access to good quality health care at low costs for the underprivileged and marginalised social groups, specifically among the Dalits and Adivasis/Scheduled Tribes (STs) [
16,
17]. Kerala known for its ‘good health at low cost’ model increasingly came under pressure and soon transitioned into one of the states with the highest out-of-pocket expenditure for health in the country [
18,
19].
In full recognition of the widening gaps within the health landscape in terms of reduced public presence and growing distrust in the public health system, the Government of Kerala initiated the Aardram Mission in 2017 [
20]. Aardram mission is part of the 2017 ‘Nava Kerala’ (
translated as ‘
New Kerala’) Mission conceived by the incumbent government (led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)), that sought course corrections in terms of the historical exclusion of various social groups within the state’s developmental trajectory. The Nava Kerala mission within its umbrella consisted of four key sub missions 1) The Aardram mission, 2) Life mission (Livelihood, inclusion, and financial empowerment), 3) mission to revamp public education and 4) ‘Haritha Keralam’ mission (to ensure statewide hygiene, waste management, soil conservation and sustainable farming). These missions were part of the Left government’s aspiration to ensure a developmental model that is much more equitable and inclusive of the underprivileged and marginalised sections in the state [
21].
The Aardram mission through its approaches, therefore, also aligned itself with the new national policy roadmap set out by the National Health Policy, 2017 that sought to achieve Universal Health Coverage. These included initiatives such as ‘Ayushman Bharat’ that aimed at the transformation of Primary Health Centres and Sub-Centres as Health and Wellness Centres (HWCs) with the specific aim of delivering Comprehensive Primary Health Care that is easily accessible for communities at the grassroots [
22,
23]. On a similar note, the Aardram mission also in view of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and to effectively lay out the roadmap for its achievement of SDG-3, ‘Good health and Well-being’, aimed at a comprehensive transformation of existing public health services in the state. Among the key objectives of the mission included strengthening the existing primary health care delivery in the state through the Family Health Centre (FHC) initiative. This entailed the conversion of the existing network of primary health centres across the state as upgraded FHCs that have a revised emphasis on comprehensive primary health care including strategies that ensured preventive and promotive care as well as primary health care approaches focussed on social determinants of health. The mission has been envisaged by the State as its vehicle to overcome its existing burden of rising non-communicable and ageing population and thereby achieve its SDG targets and reduce the rising out-of-pocket health expenditure in the State [
24].
The policy affirmation on comprehensive primary health care through the Aardram mission along with the other three missions under the ‘Nava Kerala’ Mission, therefore, presents itself as a unique opportunity for the state to take cognizance of unaddressed health inequity gaps that continue to exist in Kerala. The current study, therefore, locates itself within this context of revived commitment on the part of the Government of Kerala on comprehensive primary health care, reflected through the Aardram and FHC initiative and aims to examine how it problematise the situation of Dalits and the ways to overcome their health challenges.
Discussion
The Aardram mission and the FHC initiative clearly suggest Kerala Government’s commitment to reviving the primary health care provisioning in the State. This is also reiterated by the fact that it pivots itself on comprehensive primary health care as its approach to achieve the larger goals of equity and social justice for the state. However, the analysis of the policy suggests the persisting gaps in its conceptualisation and articulation of equity and underprivileged specifically from a caste lens. The existing discourse on marginalisation within the primary health care policy in Kerala is characterised by a blindness to caste-driven inequities and the existing social realities of Dalits as a marginalised social group. One that is also curious given its acknowledgment of Adivasis and coastal communities as marginalised, groups which too are historically marginalised in the State [
9,
37‐
39]. The simultaneous presence of Adivasi and coastal communities within the discourse on marginalisation yet unacknowledging the question of caste and Dalit inequities warrants the need to theorise the possible reasons for Dalit invisibilisation. While the discourse on health-related vulnerability and the related dimension of equity examined does suggest the overarching influence of individualistic and person-centric views of health, shaped by a market-driven order of discourse, I believe there is more that is clearly in action when it comes to the discourse on caste and related equity dimensions [
40]. Although obvious, the dismissal of caste also, therefore, moves beyond the conventional influence of neoliberal tendencies that are urgent to individualise disease and health outcomes without ever engaging with the larger societal factors determining health disparities across social groups.
A good place to start here would be, therefore, to problematise the nature of representation of caste as a possible axis of marginalisation in Kerala as well as the ways in which the policy engages with Dalits. The primary health care policy discourse examined in the study was evident in its dismissal of the caste question or in recognizing caste as a potential axis of marginalisation. The policy narratives were characteristically evident with an ominous reluctance to mention the word caste or scheduled castes related to discourses on marginalisation and health inequity in the state. Beyond the recognition of Adivasi and coastal communities, the marginalisation narratives in the current study almost exclusively existed along the axes of biomedical markers of age and sex, access to drinking water, and hygiene. The palpable need to dismiss any reference to caste within marginalisation discourses within the current study alludes to a conscious or unconscious yet strong repugnance towards discussions on caste. Quite similar to what sociologist Satish Deshpande argued in his thesis on ‘castelessness’, where he discusses how various historical legal, and policy decisions on the issue of caste and reservation in India have shaped a new ‘common sense’ of caste in India. He argues that the word caste is almost often immediately reinterpreted as ‘lower castes’ within the collective discourses. This also has parallels to similar recontextualizations within other universal categories of gender and race. Gender is almost often construed as women from a conventional patriarchal common sense and race as people of colour from a white supremacist sense [
41].
The reductionist logic of caste as ‘lower caste’ has significant relevance in the current study too, since dismissing caste also by extension suggests the exclusion of Dalits themselves as a marginalised social category. Through the avoidance of discussions on caste, there is an uncanny resemblance of the Brahminic logics of purity and impurity being carried over to the realm of social discourses on health and by extension exclusion of Dalits. An evident contempt to even discuss caste among the ruling elites, leading to the existing caste blindness within policies. This is also in line with the ‘Social Nausea’ argument by sociologist Awanish Kumar, where he argues that Indian policy today suffers from the potent combination of social isolation backed by the regressive notion of Brahminical caste and that of social nausea of elite castes towards utterances of caste and Dalits. The result is the inability of public policies on health to effectively address the real issues of the masses in India [
42]. The fact that one can discern a similar ‘nausea’ towards utterances of caste within the examined policy discourse is also not helped by the current nature of the health system policy landscape in the state. The realm of senior health policy officials in Kerala is constituted mostly by non-Dalits barring a few Dalit officials as observed during the study. A phenomenon that extends beyond the state boundaries, as the health system and its manpower in India is also similarly characterised by the significant underrepresentation of Dalit sections and overwhelmingly dominated by non-Dalits despite policies of affirmative action. Often also argued to be one of the key reasons for the existence of healthcare policies and provisioning that remains unfair to Dalits in the country [
4,
43‐
45].
The discursive ostracization of Dalits also seems to have been facilitated by the differences in the geographical attributes of Aadivasis/coastal communities and Dalits in Kerala. Historically Aadivasi and fisherfolk communities have remained distinct from their non-Aadivasi/coastal counterparts in Kerala. Specifically, in terms of the almost exclusive geographical presence of Aadivasi communities along the Western Ghats and fisherfolks within the long coastal belts of Kerala with their own distinct socio-cultural identities [
46,
47], one that is also repeated frequently within the policy narratives in the study. Dalits, however, don’t really present in the strictest sense a geographical distinction that makes them stand apart from non-Dalits except for the fact that landless Dalits are accommodated in contemporary Kerala in 26,198 ‘colonies’ across the length and breadth of the state, marked by their abject poverty [
4]. Chronic health challenges of Aadivasis and coastal communities, therefore, become relatively difficult to silence within policy discourse on health equity in Kerala owing to their discernibly distinct spatio-cultural patterns. On the contrary, Dalits given their lack of any popularly tangible spatio-cultural distinctions are easier to discursively invisibilise using ‘Savarna’ strategies of constructing abstract categories or limiting the issue within economic dimensions that are shorn off the social effects of caste segregation.
What’s also not helping is the adversarial position historically adopted by the political left including Communist parties in India and in Kerala towards caste and caste-identity politics. The urgency in declaring caste-identity politics as an antithetical force to Marxian class politics has often contributed to the political left’s inability to accommodate the struggles of various historically marginalised social groups in India including Dalits [
1]. The subsumption of caste from an economic lens manifested here through the discursive practices like considering ‘urban slums’ from an exclusively economic perspective, are characteristic extension of the political position held historically by Communist parties in Kerala. However, this obfuscates the deep-rooted links between caste-driven inequities and subsequent economic impoverishment of Dalits in contemporary Kerala. Based on the 6
th report of the Administrative Reforms Commission of the Kerala government, majority of the state’s slum population is constituted by marginalised Dalit sections and is characterised by poor housing status, subpar infrastructural facilities, and sanitation services amongst a host of others [
36]. Besides urban slums, a crucial fact in the context of Dalits and related developmental inequity is their formal government-sanctioned ghettoization in Kerala. Exclusively owing to their caste status Dalits in Kerala have over the years forced to live within demarcated land areas, often known as ‘SC colonies’. Out of the total Dalit population of 9.1% in Kerala, 7.9% are still ghettoised within such demarcated colonies by the government [
4]. The researcher’s own findings from informal observations of various village panchayats in Kerala and observations of Dalit colonies as well as existing evidence on the status of Dalits in Kerala too suggest this pattern. Dalit neighbourhoods in Kerala are often marked by their limited land availability. More than single Dalit households are located within a small area of under 2–3 cents. The Dalit neighbourhoods often also face the issue of limited availability of running water. Owing to these conditions, safe drinking water and waste disposal remain key areas of concern drawn from their social location of caste in Kerala [
44]. However, by failing to acknowledge these pathways of economic impoverishment shaped by caste identities within a health policy like Aardram mission, the primary health care policy the state continues to sustain the tradition of caste exclusive developmental discourse in the state.
An obvious corollary being the stark contradictions within the state’s health policy that is adamantly caste blind despite chronic disparities both in terms of access to basic determinants of health as well as health outcomes among Dalits. A toxic contrast, arguably drawn from the ‘Savarna (upper caste) gaze’ that is relentless in its attempt to normalize Dalit invisibilisation within its discourse on health inequities. Achieved in this case through clandestine ways of shaping discourse on health inequities that is quick to deny the spotlight on caste-inequities either through dismissal or by ‘mobilising health vulnerabilities’ to amorphous social groupings that shall never have a Dalit focus as its priority. A rather lucid demonstration of how caste continuously arranges and rearrange itself to find ways and means to continue its status quo and maintain the social order of caste hierarchies in Indian societies [
45]. These patterns allude to a health system discourse in Kerala whose gaze is fundamentally casteist and sustains this caste ‘enculturalisation’ within its policy discourse on health through multiple intersecting factors. Borrowing Althusser, the health policy discourse that is blind to the realities of caste in Kerala signifies a ‘contradiction’ or an unjust and dominant ‘social formation’ brought into existence by an ensemble of ‘uneven developments’ [
48]. Uneven developments including but not limited to those ranging from the influence of macro-level neoliberal discourse on healthcare policies to more meso/micro level contextual aspects like power asymmetries between Dalits and non-Dalits in shaping developmental discourse, unfair representation of Dalits within positions of power, dominant political ideologies and unequal growth opportunities available for Dalits in Kerala, all of which has its own historical contexts and distinct ways of emergence in Kerala.
I, therefore, argue that as a first step it is important to deconstruct current policy discourses on development in the state by carefully breaking them down to their individual contradictions that constitute their exclusive positions and subjecting them to deeper understanding and subsequent problematisation [
49]. Insights to this could be drawn from the rich traditions of post-colonial critiques that aims to dismantle the infamous ‘white gaze’ within Western developmental discourse in an attempt to similarly call out and problematise the ‘Savarna gaze’ within Indian development discourse [
50]. A committed effort to speak into existence the caste contradictions manifest as systematised exclusion of Dalits and caste-driven power asymmetries within knowledge creation spaces in India, an objective implicit also within the current study. Discursive approaches of research reflexive of caste dimensions within policy discourse analysis are therefore a first step in this attempt to shape fair alternatives to dominant discourses that create and recreate unfair social practices and systems.
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