SPECIAL ARTICLE

Explicit Prejudice
Evidence from a New Survey

Diane Coffey, Payal Hathi, Nidhi Khurana, Amit Thorat

S
A representative phone survey to study explicit prejudice eventy years ago, independent India adopted a Constitu-
against women and Dalits in Delhi, Mumbai, Uttar tion after nearly two centuries of colonial exploitation.
At that time, poverty and destitution were widespread,
Pradesh, and Rajasthan reveals widespread prejudice in
mortality rates were high, and few people knew how to read
several domains and discusses the consequences for and write. Much has changed since then: India is now a rapidly
women and Dalits, and society as a whole. The results growing economy and a world leader in many sectors. Human
suggest the need for a more robust public discourse and development has improved as well: while in 1960, 17% of
infants died in their first year of life, by 2015 that statistic has
active approach to measuring and challenging prejudice
come down to 4%. Only about a quarter of Indians were literate
and discrimination. in 1960 whereas about three quarters were literate in 2015
(World Bank 2017). These advances in economic well-being
and human development should be celebrated, even if, by
some important measures, improvements are not proceeding
as quickly as they should.
In this paper, we investigate another important indicator of
human well-being: explicit prejudice. We quantify and analyse
explicit prejudice against women and Dalits, two of India’s
largest oppressed groups. By explicit prejudice, we mean
beliefs and behaviours to which people openly and readily admit
that reinforce the lower social status of people in oppressed
groups. Studying prejudice and discrimination makes an im-
portant contribution to understanding well-being because, in
addition to being distressing for those who experience them,
they negatively impact education, occupation, economic, and
health outcomes (Thorat 2010; Baru et al 2010; Thorat and
Desai 2012). Further, there is mounting evidence that prejudice
and discrimination have negative consequences not only for
oppressed groups, but for everyone—men and higher caste
people included (Ramalingaswami et al 1996; Coffey and
Spears 2017).1
This paper draws on data from the Social Attitudes Research,
India (SARI), a new survey which interviewed representative
samples of adults in Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan, and Uttar
Pradesh. This data set is unique: to our knowledge, data on
explicit prejudice have been collected only a handful of times
in India, and never before as the focus of a representative survey.2
We, therefore, see our contributions to the study of prejudice
as both substantive and methodological. As we discuss at the
end of this paper, our research demonstrates that it is feasible
to scientifically document explicit prejudice and discrimination
Diane Coffey ([email protected]) teaches at the University of Texas,
Austin. Coffey, Payal Hathi ([email protected]) and Nidhi Khurana using low-cost phone survey methods.
([email protected]) are affiliated with a research institute for Section 1 of the paper introduces our phone survey methods;
compassionate economics (r.i.c.e). Amit Thorat ([email protected]) Sections 2, 3 and 4 present results. Section 2 deals with dis-
teaches at the School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, crimination against women: we find that about half of the
New Delhi.
people in the places we study disapprove of women working
46 JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

outside the home if their husbands earn enough to support the 1.1 Sampling Strategies
family. Section 2 also presents evidence of two discriminatory Random digit dialing is a common method for recruiting rep-
behaviours that threaten women’s autonomy and health. First, resentative samples of survey respondents. SARI uses a form of
we document that the vast majority of women in the areas we random digit dialing designed around India’s mobile network.
study practice ghunghat (veiling), which is important because, In India, the department of telecommunications assigns com-
on average, women who practise ghunghat have less say in de- panies five-digit “series” that they are allowed to use at the
cisions about their own lives than the women who do not. Second, beginning of the 10-digit mobile phone numbers they sell in a
we find that in some places, more than half of the women report particular mobile circle. The SARI team generates a sampling
that they eat after men do. This practice matters because women frame of potentially active numbers in each mobile circle by
who eat after men often eat less and lower quality food. first creating a list in which series appear in equal proportion
Section 3 presents results on discrimination against Dalits. to the number of subscribers a company reports, divided by
We find that more than half of non-Dalit Hindu adults in the number of series it has. We then add a randomly generated
Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh live in households where some- five-digit number to each series to form a 10-digit mobile number.
one practises untouchability. In Delhi and Mumbai, reported SARI surveyors call these numbers in a random order.
prevalence of practising untouchability is lower, but still very In order to ensure that adults who do not have their own mobile
high. This is surprising considering that untouchability has phones are included in our sample, we use within-household
been criminalised in India for decades. We also find that respondent selection. The person who answers the phone is
between 40% and 60% of non-Dalit adults in the places we asked to list the eligible respondents—adults 18 to 65 who are
study support a legal prohibition against marriage between the same sex as the interviewer—living in his/her household.
lower and higher castes. We interpret this finding in the con- Qualtrics survey software, which surveyors use for recording
text of Ambedkar’s observation that the social ban on inter- responses, randomly selects a respondent from that list.3
marriage is “the most fundamental idea on which the whole
fabric of caste is built up” (Ambedkar and Moon 1979). Clearly, 1.2 Sample Sizes and Response Rates
there is wide popular support for enforcing caste boundaries, Table 1 provides response rates and sample sizes for the four
even at the expense of individual freedom. cities and states where SARI data was collected. We compute
Section 4 presents respondents’ opinions about reserva- response rates as the number surveys in which a respondent
tions, the government’s primary response to discrimination. answered at least a third of the questions divided by the number
We evidence that, despite these high levels of explicit sex and of mobile numbers that were valid (as opposed to non-existent,
caste-based prejudice, there is nevertheless relatively high switched off, or not available) when they were first called.
support for reservation policies. We note however, that many SARI’s sample sizes are consistent with other representative
people in our representative samples are not familiar enough samples used to analyse social attitudes. SARI’s response rates
with reservation to give clearly stated reasons for supporting will appear low to people who are accustomed to working with
or opposing these policies. field survey data collected in face-to-face interviews. However,
Section 5 discusses our results. Our results show that it is Table 1: Response Rates and these response rates are high
feasible to collect data on explicit prejudice using a low-cost Sample Sizes compared with phone surveys
phone survey. Measuring social attitudes, explicit prejudice, Place Response Sample done in other countries; a
Rate Sizes
and discriminatory behaviours add to a much-needed conver- (%) Men Women Total Pew Research Center study
sation about the extent to which India is achieving the justice, Delhi 18 753 658 1,411 from the United States (US)
liberty, equality and fraternity envisaged by the Constitution. Uttar Pradesh 29 791 808 1,599 found an average response
This conversation is all the more urgent in light of mounting Mumbai 16 1,695 NA 1,695 rate of 9% in its 2012 surveys
evidence that faster improvements in India’s human develop- Rajasthan 25 1,611 1,749 3,360 (Kohut et al 2012). Kohut et al
Source: SARI (2016).
ment depend on social progress. (2012) concluded that despite
relatively low response rates, phone surveys that are weighted
1 The SARI Survey to match the demographic composition of the population pro-
SARI is a phone survey that builds representative samples of vide accurate estimates of public opinion.
adults aged 18 to 65 by using probability weighted random
digit dialing and within-household respondent selection. We 1.3 Statistical Weights Using 2011 Census
adjust our estimates based on statistical weights constructed Like other surveys, we use statistical weights to adjust for the
using the 2011 Census data. Although phone surveys have been fact that people from some demographic groups are more likely
used in developed countries for several decades, they are rela- to respond to the survey than others. We use data from the
tively new in India because mobile coverage has only recently 2011 Census to construct weights that account for the intersection
become high enough to collect high-quality samples. Further of (i) two sex categories: male and female; (ii) two place of
information about survey design and data collection, as well residence categories: urban and rural; (iii) five education level
as the strategies we use to reduce non-sampling error, can be categories: no schooling, primary and below, middle and below,
found in Coffey (2017) and in the online survey documentation secondary and below, and above secondary; (iv) 10 age group
(SARI 2016). categories: 18–19, and nine 5-year age bands from 20–65.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 47
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 1: Percentage of Adults Who Say That Women Should urban Uttar Pradesh, and rural Uttar Pradesh—who say that
Not Work Outside the Home (%)
Year of of
year thetheGSS
GSSSurvey
survey married women whose husbands earn a good living should not
1970
1970 1975
1975 1980
1980 1985
1985 1990
1990 1995
1995 2000
2000 work outside the home. There are no data for women in Mumbai
100%
100 100%
because SARI interviewed only men in Mumbai. There is rela-
tively little variation across regions in disapproval for women’s
80%
80 80%
US, men and women India, India, work outside the home: in most places we studied, about half
(1972–98) women (2016) men (2016)
60%
60 60%
of adults disapproved. In most regions, there are no statisti-
cally significant differences in the percentage of men and
40%
40 40% women who say that women should not work outside the
home, but differences between men’s disapproval and women’s
Not available

20%
20 20% disapproval are somewhat more pronounced in urban areas
than in rural areas.
0%
0 0% For comparison, we plot, as a time-series, the proportion of
Delhi
Delhi Mumbai urbanUrban
Mumbai Rural
Rajasthan rural Rajasthan Rural
rural UP Urban
urban UP
Rajasthan Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh adults (men and women, 18+) in the US who said that they
Source: SARIIndia,
(2016) and (2016)
women GSS 1972–98. India, men (2016) USA, men & women (1972 - 1998) “disapprove” when the General Social Survey (GSS) asked
Thus, respondents are assigned to one of 200 possible bins in them the following question: “Do you approve or disapprove
Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and 100 possible bins in Delhi of a married woman earning money in business or industry if
and Mumbai (which have no rural respondents). A respond- her husband is able to support her?” We note that SARI’s ques-
ent’s statistical weight is the ratio of the number of people in tion was intentionally worded for comparison with this ques-
the 2011 Census in that bin to the number of people in the SARI tion, which was asked of GSS respondents between 1972 and
sample who are in that bin.4 1998. With the exception of female respondents living in
­Delhi, SARI respondents’ disapproval for women’s work in
2 Prejudice against Women each region of India is higher than what it was in the US 45
We report on three indicators of prejudice against women. The years ago.
first is an attitude that is important to debates about gender Although the GSS stopped collecting data on this question in
and development: whether respondents think women should 1998, a CNN–OCR International poll updated the figure for the
not work outside the home. The next two indicators are behav- US in 2012. At that time, only 2% of adults said that they dis­
iours that are widely recognised as having social and health approved of women working outside the home (CNN 2012). It is
implications: whether women practise ghunghat and whether noteworthy that in both the US and in India, stated ­approval
men eat meals first. For all three measures, we find high levels for work outside the home is higher than the actual labour
of prejudice and discrimination against women. force participation rate.6

2.1 Work Outside the Home 2.2 Practising Ghunghat

Several recent studies have documented India’s low and Social scientists recognise ghunghat, the practice of women
declining female labour force participation (Chatterjee et al veiling their heads or faces with the end of a sari or a dupatta,
2015; Afridi et al 2016). At 27%, India’s female labour force as reinforcing women’s unequal position in families and in
participation is lower than that in 170 out of 188 countries5 ­society (Chowdhry 1993). Our own analysis of the nationally
for which the International Labour Organization published representative 2011 India Human Development Survey (IHDS)
data in 2016. This has negative consequences for India’s data supports these observations: Hindu women who do not
development: women’s work contributes to economic growth practise ghunghat report having a say in more decisions related
(Elborgh-Woytek et al 2013). Further, considering India’s de- to their own lives than Hindu women who do. In fact, women
mographic transition from a society in which families have who do not practise ghunghat are 12 percentage points more
many children to one in which they have fewer children, the likely to report having at least some say in all six of the
costs of women working are going down. decisions for which the IHDS collects data.7
Although there are perhaps many reasons why women in Table 2 shows the percentage of Hindu women in different
India (who are more educated and having fewer children than age groups who report these practices and compares the SARI
in prior decades) are joining the labour force in small and de- 2016 results to those from the IHDS 2011 (Desai and Vanneman
clining numbers, we share Stephan Klasen’s (2017) view that 2015).8 We analyse the data from Hindu respondents only
the social stigma attached to working outside the home, espe- Table 2: Percentage of Hindu Women Who Say They Practise Ghunghat
cially for women who could afford not to work, is an important SARI (2016) IHDS (2011)
Age Range 18–25 26–40 41–60 18–25 26–40 41–60
explanatory factor. It is against this backdrop that we asked
Rural Rajasthan 98 99 98 99 99 99
SARI respondents the following question: “In your opinion,
Urban Rajasthan 90 89 84 96 86 87
should a married woman, whose husband earns a good living, Rural Uttar Pradesh 91 94 93 94 93 80
work outside the home or not?” Urban Uttar Pradesh 90 63 39 90 74 65
Figure 1 shows the percentage of men and women in each of Delhi 75 63 44  81 79 66
the five places—Delhi, Mumbai, urban Rajasthan, rural Rajasthan, Source: SARI (2016) and IHDS (2011).

48 JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

 SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 2: Percentage of Women Who Say That They Eat after Men Figure 3: Women in Households Where Men Eat First Are More Likely
to be Underweight
rural Uttar
Rural Uttar Pradesh
Pradesh 30
SARI 2016

Percent of women underweight

rural Rajasthan
Rural Rajasthan
IHDS 2011 20
Men do not eat first Men eat first
urban Rajasthan
Urban Rajasthan

urban Uttar
Urban Uttar Pradesh
Pradesh 10

Delhi
Delhi
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
0 10 20 30 40 50
Source: SARI (2016) and IHDS (2011). Annual expenditure per capita in 1,000s of Rupees
SARI 2016 IHDS 2011 Data: IHDS (2011).
because the social scientific literature on women’s status finds
that ghunghat has a different social meaning than purdah, the There was no discernible improvement in the prevalence of
practice of women’s seclusion common in Muslim households this practice between the two surveys, done five years apart.
(Desai and Temsah 2014). The reason that we break up the results In fact, in Delhi, SARI found a higher percentage of women
by age group is that research suggests that some indicators of reporting eating last than was found in the IHDS in 2011. We do
women’s status improve as women age (Das Gupta 1995). not think that the percentage of women in Delhi experiencing
Table 2 shows that the practice of ghunghat is very high this discriminatory practice has actually gone up; rather we
in each of the places we study. Although urban areas show suspect that respondents may have been more comfortable
some age gradient in the practice, rural areas show little, and ­admitting to this practice on the phone rather than in person.
overall the age gradient is less steep than what we expected. This is, however, just a hypothesis; it would be useful for future
This may be because ghunghat can be practised more or less research to explore differences in reporting prejudice and
intensely. For instance, a younger woman might practise ghun- discrimination across survey modes.10
ghat by covering her whole face, while an older woman covers We do not include Mumbai in Figure 2 because in Mumbai,
only her hair. Our data does not capture these differences. only men were surveyed. Yet, it is interesting to note that
There is also less of a difference in the percentage of women compared to the other places that SARI surveyed, men in
who practise ghunghat between rural and urban areas than Mumbai were less likely than either men or women in other
we expected, though again, we have not measured the places to say that women in their households eat last. Twenty-
intensity of the practice. eight percent of men in Mumbai said that women in their
We note that the SARI results are very similar to the IHDS households eat last (95% CI: 26%–31%).
results, which we think helps verify SARI’s data quality. The It is important to document the extent of this practise
fact that the SARI figures are slightly lower could reflect a because it is probably implicated in India’s high rates of under-
number of possible causes, such as social progress on this indi- nutrition among women, which are higher than rates of under-
cator in the five years between 2011, when the IHDS was col- nutrition among men (Coffey and Hathi 2016). The National
lected, and 2016, when SARI was collected; the fact that IHDS Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015–16 finds that 23% of women
interviews were face to face (so interviewers might have in India are underweight, meaning that they have body mass
observed women’s behaviour, leading to less social desirability index scores of less the 18.5 kg/sq m.11 Underweight people
bias in the answer); or that SARI may have interviewed less have less energy and are more likely to be sick than people
conservative women, on average, than the IHDS. who are not. If a woman is underweight before pregnancy, her
child is more likely to be born small and to die in the first
2.3 Men Eat First month of life.12
Qualitative research has documented that in some families, Figure 3 uses IHDS 2011 national data to show that, even
women eat their meals after men (Palriwala 1993; Jeffery et al holding constant annual household expenditure per capita,
1989). This is an important discriminatory behaviour both women who live in households where men eat first are more
because it emphasises women’s unequal social position and likely to be underweight than women who live in households
because of its health consequences. In 2011, the IHDS first where men do not.
quantified this behaviour by asking women: “When your fam-
ily eats lunch or dinner, do the women usually eat with the 3 Prejudice against Dalits
men? Or do the women usually eat first? Or do the men usually We document two forms of explicit prejudice against Dalits.
eat first?” SARI asked respondents the same question in 2016. First, we document that a very high percentage of non-Dalit
­Figure 2 shows the percentage of women in each survey who Hindus say that they or someone in their household practises
­report that the men in their households eat first.9 The results untouchability. Second, we find that many non-Dalits believe
range from almost 60% of women in rural Uttar Pradesh to that there should be laws against intermarriage between lower
about a third of women in Delhi. and higher caste people. These findings are surprising and
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 49
SPECIAL ARTICLE

sobering for several reasons, not the least of which are that, on Figure 4: Percentage of Non-Dalit/White Adults Who Support a Legal Ban
on Inter-group Marriage
paper, the Indian government promotes inter-caste marriage
1970
1970 1975
1975 1980
1980 1985
1985 1990
1990 1995
1995 2000
2000
and criminalises the practice of untouchability. 100
100

3.1 Practising Untouchability 80

80
GSS 1972–2002 SARI 2016
The Indian law prohibits untouchability, a diverse set of dis- (US) (India)
criminatory practices which reinforce the low social and eco- 60
60
nomic status of Dalits. Despite legal prohibitions, however,
untouchability is still practised in both urban and rural India 40
40

(Shah 2000; Jodhka 2002; Shah et al 2006; Singh 2014). Stud-

ying untouchability is important both for documenting how 20
20

discriminatory practices change over time and for correcting

0
the misconception that exists in some circles that untouchability rural UP
Rural UP ruralRural
Rajasthan urban
UrbanUP urbanUrban
Rajasthan Delhi
Delhi
is no longer a problem in modern India. Further, untouchability Rajasthan Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan
SARI 2016 (India) GSS 1972-2002 (USA)
is linked to rural India’s high rates of open defecation, one of the Source: SARI (2016) and GSS 1972–2002.

most important threats to children’s health and human capital data in column (1) suggest this fraction has not improved in five
(Thorat and Spears forthcoming; Coffey and Spears 2017). years. Results across the surveys are similar for all of the places
To complement prior social scientific efforts to study un- we study except Delhi, where reporting of untouchability among
touchability with population-level quantitative data, SARI asked SARI respondents is roughly double of what it was in the IHDS.
non-Dalit Hindu respondents whether any of their family mem- Comparing the individual-level SARI data in columns (5)
bers practise untouchability, and if so, whether they them- and (6), and the household-level data in (1) and (2), we find
selves do so. SARI’s questions are similar to those asked by the that women are more likely to report practising untouchability
IHDS 2011, described by Thorat and Joshi (2015). than men. We hope that future research will explore the ex-
Table 3 presents results for several ways of measuring the tent to which this reflects real differences in behaviour and the
prevalence of untouchability.13 The note below the table pro- extent to which it reflects differences is awareness about the
vides the survey questions that correspond to each column of socially desirable response.
estimates. The light grey section of Table 3 details which survey, Although there is still much to learn about measuring un-
respondent sex, and reference group, the estimates use. We touchability with survey questions, and although the results in
highlight columns (1) and (4) in dark grey because, although all columns likely underestimate untouchability because of
not directly comparable, these are the estimates that are most social desirability bias, these results nevertheless suggest that
closely matched across surveys. untouchability is widely practised and that mindsets of power,
The results in Table 3 are unsettling. The 2011 IHDS results in purity, and pollution persist. This problem is sorely in need of
column (4) show that in Rajasthan and in rural Uttar Pradesh— greater recognition and public response.
together home to over 200 million people—more than half the
non-Dalit Hindu households had members who practised un- 3.2 Support for Laws against Intermarriage
touchability. Reported untouchability was lower, but still high, Many researchers have remarked that prejudice against Dalits
for metros like Delhi and Mumbai. Roughly comparable SARI has been changing in recent decades and that some forms of
Table 3: Percent of Non-Dalit Hindus Who Say They Practise Untouchability discrimination are improving, albeit slowly and unevenly
Data Source SARI SARI IHDS IHDS SARI SARI (Shah et al 2006; Kumar 2017). One domain in which higher
Respondent’s Sex Female Male Predominately Predominately Female Male
Female Female* castes have consistently and unapologetically discriminated
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) against Dalits is in arranging marriages for their children.
Untouchability Practised by Family or Family or Family or Family or Self Self
Self Self Self Self Data shows that rates of inter-caste marriage are very low (Ray
Rural Rajasthan 66 50 50 68 54 34 et al 2017), despite the fact that the central and many state gov-
Rural Uttar Pradesh 64 43 46 56 48 28 ernments have schemes to promote inter-caste marriages.
Urban Rajasthan 50 33 44 47 31 15 Because within-caste marriage is so important for preserving
Urban Uttar Pradesh 48 42 40 51 35 18 caste distinctions, and because inter-group marriage is seen as
Delhi 39 27 12 20 21 12 threatening to dominant groups in many societies worldwide,
Mumbai NA 21 5 5 NA 10 SARI asked non-Dalits the question: “In your opinion, should
The estimates in columns (1–3) use the question: “In your household, do some members
practise untouchability?” In column (4), a household is counted as practising untouchability there be a law preventing high caste and low caste people from
if the respondent answers “yes” to that question or to the question: “Would there be a
problem if someone who is from a Scheduled Caste entered your kitchen or used your
marrying each other?”
utensils?” In columns (1–2), if a respondent did not understand the question, the surveyor Figure 4 shows that the proportion of non-Dalit adults who
explained: “There are many meanings of ‘untouchability,’ one meaning is that some people
think that it is not good to sit down and eat with Dalit/Harijan people.” SARI respondents support such a law ranges from 60% in rural Rajasthan to
who answered, “yes” to the question of whether some members of their household about 40% in Delhi. This range is small considering that the
practice untouchability were additionally asked: “Do you yourself practise untouchability?”
Columns (5) and (6) record answers to that question. average Delhi respondent had five more years of education
* Almost 90% of the primary respondents to the IHDS household questionnaire, where
answers to untouchability questions were recorded, were adult women.
than the average respondent in rural Rajasthan, and that edu-
Sources: SARI (2016) and IHDS (2011). cation is typically considered a liberalising force. Data for Mumbai
50 JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

Figure 5: Percentage of Respondents Who Support Reservations for Women Figure 6: Percentage of Respondents Who Support Caste-based
Reservations (India) or Affirmative Action for Blacks (US)
SARI 2016 SARI 2016 1990
1990 1995
1995 2000
2000 2005
2005 2010
2010 2015
2015 2020
2020
100
100 women men 100
100
Uttar Pradesh
Rajasthan
8080 80
80 Delhi
Mumbai

6060 60
60

4040 40
40

Not available
20
2020 20

00
00 SC
SC OBC
OBC Forward castes
Forward Brahmin
Brahmin
Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan Delhi Mumbai
Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan Delhi Mumbai The GSS data are restricted to White respondents.
Source: SARI (2016). Uttar Pradesh
Source: SARI (2016) and GSS 1994–2016 Rajasthan Delhi
SARI 2016 women SARI 2016 men Mumbai GSS 1994 - 2016 (USA)
is not shown in Figure 4 because estimates in Figure 4 pool Introduction of reservation for the Other Backward Classes
men and women and only men were interviewed in Mumbai. (OBCs) in 1998 opened up a debate over the need and duration
We found that 27% of men in Mumbai support laws against of implementation of reservations. Recently, new groups, such
intermarriage (95% CI: 25%–30%). This is statistically signifi- as Patidars in Gujarat, Marathas in Maharashtra and Jats in
cantly lower than the estimate for men in Delhi, which was Haryana have also made demands for reservation, which have
35% (95% CI: 52%–63%). been turned down by the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that
In addition to showing the level of support for laws against these groups are neither economically disadvantaged nor have
intermarriage in the places that SARI studied, Figure 4 also they faced social discrimination.
shows responses to a similar question asked of White adults in SARI asked respondents: “Do you support or oppose reserva-
the US between 1972 and 2002: “Do you think there should be tions for women?” It also asked: “Do you support or oppose
laws against marriages between Blacks and Whites?” The caste-based reservations?” Figures 5, 6 show support for
comparison is striking. In each place in India, support for laws ­women’s and for caste-based reservations respectively. There
against intermarriage is higher than it was in the US 45 years is clearly higher support for women’s reservations than there is
ago. However, support for laws against intermarriage in the US for caste-based reservations.
was nevertheless quite high until recently: only 30 years ago Figure 5 shows that nearly all female respondents in Uttar
did support for laws banning interracial marriage fall to less Pradesh and Rajasthan support women’s reservations and that
than one-fifth of the White population. nearly 90% of women in Delhi do as well.14 Male respondents
Considering that, in principle, India is a liberal democracy, the also largely support women’s reservation. The fact that wom-
level of support that SARI documents for a legal ban on i­ nter-caste en’s reservations are limited to panchayati raj institutions may
marriage is sobering. These data shed light on why rates of inter- be one reason for high levels of support. It is also possible that,
caste marriage are so low and on why khap panchayats and unlike for caste reservations, higher caste men can benefit
others who violently enforce social norms against intermarriage from women’s reservations through the female members of
often go uncontested (Kumar 2012). It is interesting to note, their household.
however, that inter-caste marriage was explicitly legalised soon Figure 6 shows very high support for reservations among
after India’s independence by the Special Marriage Act of 1954. Dalits and OBCs. We do not show results for Adivasis because
In the US, in contrast, laws prohibiting marriage between Blacks there were very few Adivasis in our samples. Among forward
and Whites remained in effect in many southern states until castes and Brahmins, support for reservations is lower,
1967, when the Supreme Court d ­ eclared them unconstitutional. although still relatively high. Support is lowest among for-
ward castes and Brahmins in the two major cities of Delhi and
4 Reservation Policies Mumbai. We hypothesise that this may be because people
The results in Sections 2 and 3 reveal high levels of prejudice from non-­reserved castes in the cities are more likely to pursue
and discrimination against women and Dalits. In the next sec- government jobs and university enrolments than people from
tion of the paper, we examine public opinion on reservations, non-reserved castes in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, and
perhaps the most debated of the government’s tools for ad- therefore to see themselves as competing with people in
dressing these problems. reserved categories for these positions. This hypothesis is
­
Reservations for women are quite limited. Since the early supported by the fact that the most educated among the
­
1990s, one-third of seats in panchayati raj institutions have ­forward castes and Brahmins are most likely to oppose reser-
been reserved for women, but there are no reservations for vations in our data.
women in jobs, in universities, or in Parliament. Figure 6 also plots White respondents’ answers to the GSS
For Dalits and Adivasis, reservations in government jobs and question in the US: “Some people say that because of past dis-
university enrolments have been in place since independence. crimination, Blacks should be given preference in hiring and
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 51
SPECIAL ARTICLE

promotion. Others say that such preference in hiring and pro- who said they had not heard of “arakshan or reservations”
motion of Blacks is wrong because it discriminates against were actually familiar with some form of reservation, but
Whites. What about your opinion—are you for or against pref- not with all of the details of reservation policies. They had
erential hiring and promotion of Blacks?” This question was answered “no” because they were not familiar with the
asked between 1994 and 2016. terms we used.
Although responses to this question are not directly compa- Among those phone survey respondents who had heard of
rable to responses to SARI’s question about support for caste- reservations before the interview, we asked their reasons for
based reservations, which encompasses political and education- supporting or opposing caste-based reservations. Interviewers
al reservations as well as reservations in jobs, the comparison listened to the responses and coded them into one of the rea-
is nevertheless interesting. We find that between 1994 and sons listed in Table 4.
2016, support for preferential hiring and promotion of Blacks The reasons for supporting caste-based reservations relate
among white Americans was low, and relatively unchanging: to the policies’ potential to correct past injustices suffered by
despite the legacy of slavery and clearly documented labour people from oppressed groups. Groups that have reservations
market discrimination against Blacks (Pager 2008), only today have historically been denied access to education, land,
about one in five White Americans supports preferential h­ iring assets, and business ownership, among other things. They
of Blacks. have also experienced exclusion and discrimination in the eco-
Why do some people support caste-based reservations while nomic and social spheres, as well as caste-based humiliation,
others oppose them? Our experiences while collecting the ostracism and violence. As a result, these groups have been
SARI data taught us that, often, people are not well-informed educationally, economically, and socially deprived. A recent
enough about reservation policies to articulate why they sup- study based on IHDS data shows that while overall poverty
port or oppose them. Indeed, after asking a respondent whether rates have fallen over time, 20% of Dalits fell into poverty
he/she supports or opposes reservation, we then ask whether between 2005 and 2011 (Thorat et al 2017). Yet, reservation
he/she had heard of it before it was mentioned in the inter- helps those who avail it to rise economically and socially (Borooah
view. The fraction of respondents, who said that they had et al 2007) and the effect is intergenerational.
heard of reservations before, ranged from about half in Delhi Among the main reasons for opposing reservations are that
and urban Rajasthan to about a quarter in rural Uttar Pradesh. seats should be assigned based on merit; that reservations
About half of men in Mumbai had heard of reservations. Ana- should be given to everyone; and that reservations should be
lysing the Delhi, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh data, we found given based on income, rather than caste. These reasons paint
that women are about 23% less likely to say that they have reservation as a form of unjustified redistribution, as opposed
heard of reservations than men. to a policy mechanism for ensuring representation of people
We note that this finding may depend on the wording of our from the lower castes in government and state services.15
survey question. In the phone survey, we asked people if they As long as prejudice and discrimination continue to block
had heard of “arakshan or reservations.” When we did face- people from the lower castes from entering government ser-
to-face surveys with a small, non-random set of respondents vice and higher education, enforcing reservation will continue
to better understand our results, we found that some people to be the primary way that the government can safeguard
Table 4: Percentage of Respondents Giving Listed Reason for Supporting or their representation.
Opposing Caste-based Reservations
Uttar Pradesh Rajasthan Delhi Mumbai 5 Discussion
Reasons for supporting caste-based reservations
There are many ways to study discrimination and prejudice.
For the development of those castes 32 43 40 37
To help the poor 27 39 39 41
Researchers and writers have documented and described dis-
To reduce discrimination 17 21 24 24 crimination and its effects using statistical analysis of observa-
To open opportunities in jobs/studies 10 30 22 13 tional data (Deshpande 2017; Desai and Kulkarni 2008), audit
Other reasons 5 5 2 11 studies and experiments (Hanna and Linden 2012; Thorat and
Did not give any reason 31 24 16 22 Attewell 2007), and personal accounts (Valmiki 2003; Faustina
Reasons for opposing caste-based reservations 2014). Our results measure discrimination in a new way:
Seats should be based on merit 59 47 43 50 we ask people to report explicit prejudice against women and
Reservations should be given to everyone 40 47 42 40
Dalits using a low-cost phone survey.
People should have to work for what they get 27 23 32 12
We hope that by showing that it is possible to achieve repre-
Reservations should be based on income 22 24 36 20
sentative samples using phone survey methods that were pre-
Other reasons 8 10 11 4
Only wealthy SCs/OBCs benefit
viously used only in developed countries, and by showing that
from reservations 6 10 4 13 many people are willing to admit to prejudiced attitudes and
Reservations are no longer needed 5 11 8 15 behaviours, other researchers will be encouraged to adopt
Reservations cause conflict 3 13 5 11 these techniques. It would allow further, urgently-needed doc-
Did not give any reason 3 11 5 9 umentation about the nature of prejudices against women,
The percentages do not add to 100% because respondents were able to give more than
one answer.
Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, sexual minorities, the handicapped,
Source: SARI (2016). and the poor that exist in India. We expect that such a research
52 JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

agenda could improve on the methods and results of our initial Developing the body of scientific evidence on prejudice and
investigation. discrimination in India is important for many reasons. Preju-
In presenting our results on social attitudes in India, we dice and discrimination importantly diminish the well-being
have included comparisons to the General Social Survey from and life chances of the people who experience them. Through-
the US. This long-running survey provides time-series data that out the presentation of our results, we have also discussed the
are useful for understanding social change. Declining levels of ways in which prejudice and discrimination hurt everyone.
explicit prejudice against women and Blacks over the last 45 Social disapproval for women’s work means a slower-growing
years capture a form of a social progress, even if current events economy for everyone; when pregnant women eat last, the
in the US suggest that social progress is not always linear or next generation of Indians grows up shorter and with fewer
uniform. We hope that time-series data on social attitudes in cognitive resources; where people practise untouchability,
India will be collected in the coming years. they are less likely to adopt latrines that keep everyone’s
Of course, the decline of explicit prejudice, as reported in children safe from disease. There are certainly many more
surveys, does not mean that discrimination is a solved problem such examples.
in the US, nor that discrimination will be a solved problem in Yet, despite the many costs of prejudice and discrimination,
India when people no longer openly admit to prejudiced atti- there is often little recognition of these problems in public dis-
tudes. Indeed, even people who do not express explicit prejudice course. We are not the first to notice that discussions of dis-
nevertheless often behave in ways that reveal their implicit crimination are all but absent in polite society. Even those who
­biases, which have important consequences for oppressed groups recognise the damage done by prejudice and discrimination
(Bonilla-Silva 2003; Dovidio and Gaertner 2004). It will be are often too optimistic about the promise of economic progress
useful, therefore, to track both social attitudes and to develop for speeding social progress. Our research suggests that a far
ways of measuring implicit bias in the Indian context. more searching and active approach is necessary.

Notes pardah or burkha?” SARI also asked men people in Allahabad. They found that the Press
1 Research suggests that discrimination also whether their wives practised ghunghat/ Club, the Bar Association, trade unions, non-
leads to economic inefficiencies (Akerlof 1976). pardah (depending on if they were Hindu or governmental organisations, and media houses
Muslim). The fraction of men in each age group were all dominated by a small group of higher
2 In the 1970s, Santok Singh Anant (1975, 1978)
who said their wives practised was very similar castes—Brahmins and Kayasthas in particular.
studied “intercaste attitudes” in Uttar Pradesh.
More recently, the Mind of the Youth Survey to the fraction of married women who reported
(Lokniti 2017) and the India Human Develop- practising it.
9 The IHDS asked this question only of women; References
ment Survey (Desai and Vanneman 2015)
asked questions about caste and gender atti- SARI asked both women and men. In four out Afridi, F, T Dinkelman and K Mahajan (2016):
tudes. The National Family Health Survey in- of five regions (Delhi, urban UP, rural Rajasthan, “Why Are Fewer Married Women Joining the
vestigates the social acceptability of violence urban Rajasthan), men’s responses were not Work Force in India? A Decomposition Analysis
against women (Kishor and Gupta 2009). statistically significantly different than women’s. over Two Decades,” IZA Discussion Paper No
3 If the person owns a mobile phone, we ran- However, in rural Uttar Pradesh, men were sig- 9722.
domise among him/her and any adult house- nificantly more likely to report that men eat Aggarwal, A, J Drèze and A Gupta (2015): “Caste
hold members of the same sex who do not own first: 69% (95% CI: 64%–75%) v 57% (95% CI: and the Power Elite in Allahabad,” Economic &
a mobile phone. If the person does not own a 52%–63%). Political Weekly, Vol 50, No 6, pp 45–51.
mobile phone, we randomise among him/her 10 Holbrook et al (2003) find that people exhibit Akerlof, G (1976): “The Economics of Caste and of
and other eligible household members. more social desirability bias in phone interviews the Rat Race and Other Woeful Tales,” Quar-
4 Abstracting away from possible biases due to than in face-to-face interviews. However, terly Journal of Economics, Vol 90, No 4,
non-sampling error (such as social desirability many other studies find that providing the re- pp 599–617.
bias), the estimates we produce will be biased spondent anonymity reduces social desirability Ambedkar, B R and V Moon (1979): “The House
only if, conditional on the intersection of edu- bias. that Hindus Have Built,” Dr Babasaheb Ambed-
cation, age, sex, and place of residence, people 11 For example, a woman who is 5’3” tall would be kar: Writings and Speeches, Education Depart-
in households in which someone owns a mobile considered underweight if she weighed 47 kg ment, Government of Maharashtra.
phone would give different answers to our or less. Anant, S (1975): “The Changing Intercaste Atti-
questions than people in households in which 12 Coffey (2015) analysed NFHS 2005 data and tudes in North India: A Follow-up after Four
no one owns a mobile phone. found that 41% of women were underweight at Years,” European Journal of Social Psychology,
5 These data include countries and other large the beginning of their pregnancy. Coffey et al Vol 5, No 1, pp 49–59.
economies for which the International Labour (2017) find that the low status of women has — (1978): “Caste Attitudes of College Students in
Organization assembles data. consequences for their nutrition during preg- India,” European Journal of Social Psychology,
6 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nancy, and therefore for the survival and phys- Vol 8, pp 193–202.
female labour force participation rate in the US ical growth of their children. Baru, R, A Acharya, S Acharya, A Kumar and K Na-
in 1972 was about 60%. That fraction has re- 13 This choice is not meant to imply that Muslims, jaraj (2010): “Inequities in Access to Health
mained relatively stable in the past several dec- Scheduled Castes (SCs), and Scheduled Tribes Services in India: Caste, Class and Region,”
ades while disapproval for women working has (STs) do not practice untouchability; many do. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 45, No 38,
declined considerably. However, SARI focuses on discrimination pp 49–58.
7 These decisions are: what to cook on a daily ba- against these groups, so people from these Bonilla-Silva, E (2003): Racism without Racists:
sis, whether to buy an expensive household groups were instead asked questions about Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial
item, how many children to have, what to do if their experiences of discrimination. Inequality in America, Lanham, Maryland:
the woman falls sick, whether to buy land or 14 We do not make any comparison to the US data Rowman and Littlefield.
property, and how much money to spend on here because there is no similar programme in Borooah, V, A Dubey and S Iyer (2007): “The Effec-
social functions. the US to reserve elected offices for women. tiveness of Jobs Reservation: Caste, Religion
8 The IHDS asked all women the following ques- 15 In domains of public life where there is no SC/ and Economic Status in India,” Development
tion, “Do you practice ghungat/burkha/pardah/ ST reservation, there is often little representation and Change, Vol 38, No 3, pp 423–45.
pallu (all synonyms for veil)?” SARI asked Hindu of people from these groups. Aggarwal et al Chatterjee, U, R Murgai and M Rama (2015): “Job
women, “Do you practice ghunghat or pallu?“ (2015) investigate the representation of lower Opportunities along the Rural–Urban Grada-
and asked Muslim women, “Do you practice castes among policymakers and prominent tion and Female Labor Force Participation in

Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 53

SPECIAL ARTICLE
India,” World Bank Policy Research Working Economy: Macroeconomic Gains from Gender Pager, D (2008): Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding
Paper, No 7412. Equity, International Monetary Fund, https:// Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration, Chicago:
Chowdhry, P (1993): “Persistence of a Custom: Cul- www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2013/ University of Chicago Press.
tural Centrality of Ghunghat,” Social Scientist, sdn1310.pdf. Palriwala, R (1993): “Economics and Patriliny:
Vol 21, Nos 9–11, pp 91–112. Faustina, Bama (2014): Karukku, Oxford India Consumption and Authority within the House-
CNN (2012): “CNN Poll: Support for Working Women Paperbacks. hold,” Social Scientist, Nos 244–46, pp 47–73.
Almost Unanimous,” http://politicalticker.blogs. GSS (2017): General Social Survey, NORC at the Ramalingaswami, V, U Jonsson and J Rohde
cnn.com/2012/04/16/poll-support-for-work- University of Chicago, http://gss.norc.org/. (1996): “Malnutrition: A South Asian Enigma,”
ing-women-almost-unanimous/. The Progress of Nations, UNICEF.
Hanna, R N and L L Linden (2012): “Discrimination
Coffey, D (2015): “Prepregnancy Body Mass and in Grading,” American Economic Journal: Ray, T, A Chaudhuri and K Sahai (2017): “Whose
Weight Gain during Pregnancy in India and Economic Policy, Vol 4, No 4, pp 146–68. Education Matters? An Analysis of Intercaste
Sub-Saharan Africa,” Proceedings of the National Marriage in India,” Working Paper.
Academy of Sciences, Vol 112, No 11, pp 3302–07. Holbrook, A, M Green and J Krosnik (2003): “Tele-
phone versus Face-to-Face Interviewing of SARI (2016): “SARI Data Set Documentation,”
­— (2017): “Cohort Ageing and the Evolution of So-
National Probability Samples with Long Ques- Research Institute for Compassionate Econo­
cial Attitudes in India and the United States,”
tionnaires: Comparisons of Respondent Satis- mics, http://riceinstitute.org/data/sari-data-
University of Texas, Austin working paper.
ficing and Social Desirability Response Bias,” set-documentation/.
Coffey, D and D Spears (2017): Where India Goes:
Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol 67, No 1, pp 79–125. Shah, G (2000): “Hope and Despair: A Study of Un-
Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development, and
the Costs of Caste, Noida: Harper Collins. Jeffery, P, R Jeffery and A Lyon (1989): Labour touchability and Atrocities in Gujarat,” Journal
Pains and Labour Power: Women and Child­ of Indian School of Political Economy, Vol 12,
Coffey, D and P Hathi (2016): “Underweight and
Pregnant: Designing Universal Maternity Enti- bearing in India, London: Zed Books. No 3, pp 459–72.
tlements to Improve Health,” Indian Journal of Jodhka, S (2002): “Caste and Untouchability in Shah, G, H Mander, S Thorat, S Deshpande and
Human Development, Vol 10, No 2, pp 176–90. Rural Punjab,” Economic & Political Weekly, A Baviskar (2006): Untouchability in Rural
Coffey, D, R Khera and D Spears (2017): “Intergen- Vol 37, No 19, pp 1813–23. India, New Delhi: Sage.
erational Effects of Women’s Status: Evidence Kishor, S and K Gupta (2009): Gender Equality and Singh, B (2014): Unseen: The Truth about India’s
from Joint Indian Households,” r i c e working Women’s Empowerment in India, National Fam- Manual Scavengers, New Delhi: Penguin.
paper, http://riceinstitute.org/research/wom- ily Health Survey (NFHS-3), India 2005–06. Thorat, A (2010): “Ethnicity, Caste, and Religion:
ens-status-and-childrens-height-in-india-evi- Klasen, S (2017): “Low, Stagnating Female Labour- Implications for Poverty Outcomes,” Economic
dence-from-joint-rural-households/. force Participation in India,” Ideas for India, & Political Weekly, Vol 45, No 51, pp 47–53.
Das Gupta, M (1995): “Life Course Perspectives on http://www.ideasforindia.in/paper.aspx? Thorat, A and D Spears (forthcoming): “The Puzzle
Women’s Autonomy and Health Outcomes,” paper=What-explains-the-low-and-stagnat- of Open Defecation in Rural India: Evidence
American Anthropologist, Vol 97, No 3, pp 481–91. ing-female-labour-force-participation-in-India?. from a Novel Measure of Caste Attitudes in a
Desai, S and G Temsah (2014): “Muslim and Hindu Kohut, A, S Keeter, C Doherty, M Dimock and Nationally Representative Survey,” Economic
Women’s Public and Private Behaviors: Gen- L Christian (2012): Assessing the Representa- Development and Cultural Change.
der, Family and Communalized Politics in tiveness of Public Opinion Surveys, Washington Thorat, S and P Attewell (2007): “The Legacy of
India,” Demography, Vol 51, No 6, pp 2307–32. DC: Pew Research Center. Social Exclusion: A Correspondence Study of
Desai, S and R Vanneman (2015): India Human De- Kumar, A (2012): “Khap Panchayats: A Socio-­ Job Discrimination in India,” Economic & Politi-
velopment Survey-II (IHDS-II), 2011–12, ICP- cal Weekly, pp 4141–45.
historical Overview,” Economic & Political
SR36151-v2, Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university
Weekly, Vol 47, No 4, pp 59–64. Thorat A and S Desai (2012): “Social Inequalities
Consortium for Political and Social Research
Kumar, S (2017): “After Silent Revolution: Most in Education,” India Infrastructure Report,
[distributor], pp 7–31.
Marginalized Dalits and Local Democracy in pp 44–52.
Desai, S and V Kulkarni (2008): “Changing Educa-
tional Inequalities in India in the Context of Uttar Pradesh, North India,” Studies in Indian Thorat, A and O Joshi (2015): “The Continuing Prac-
Affirmative Action,” Demography, Vol 45, No 2, Politics, Vol 5, No 1, pp 18–31. tice of Untouchability in India: Patterns and
pp 245–70. Lokniti (2017): “Key Highlights from the CSDS– Mitigating Influences,” IHDS Working Paper
Deshpande, A (2017): The Grammar of Caste: Eco- KAS Report “Attitudes, Anxieties and Aspira- No 2015–03.
nomic Discrimination in Contemporary India, tions of India’s Youth: Changing Patterns,” Thorat, A, R Vanneman, S Desai and A Dubey (2017):
New Delhi: Oxford University Press. http://www.lokniti.org/CSDS-KAS-Youth-Study- “Escaping and Falling into Poverty in India To-
Dovidio, J F and S L Gaertner (2004): “Aversive 2016-17.php. day,” World Development, Vol 93, pp 413–26.
Racism,” Advances in Experimental Social Psy- NFHS (2015): “India Fact Sheet,” National Family Valmiki, O (2003): Joothan: A Dalit’s Life, New
chology, Vol 36, pp 1–52. Health Survey, Ministry of Health and Family York: Columbia University Press.
Elborgh-Woytek, K, M Newiak, K Kochhar, S Fab- Welfare and International Institute for Popula- World Bank (2017): World Development Indicators,
rizio, K Kpodar, P Wingender, B Clements and tion Studies, http://rchiips.org/NFHS/pdf/ 1960–2016, https://data.worldbank.org/data-
G Schwartz (2013): Women, Work, and the NFHS4/India.pdf. catalog/world-development-indicators.

Regional Political Economy

November 18, 2017
Possibilities of Seeing the ‘Region’ Differently —Arjun Jayadev, Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Constructing Regions Inside the Nation: Economic and Social Structure of Space in Agrarian and Cultural Regions —Barbara Harriss-White
Three Planes of Space: Examining Regions Theoretically in India —Sudipta Kaviraj
Delhi’s ‘Regional’ Capitalism —Rana Dasgupta
The Agrarian Question amidst Populist Welfare: Interpreting Tamil Nadu’s Emerging Rural Economy —M Vijayabaskar
First Nature and the State: Non-emergence of Regional Capital in Mandya —Narendar Pani
Regional Economies and Small Farmers in Karnataka —Seema Purushothaman, Sheetal Patil
Space and Time through an Urban-Industrial Hinterland —Atreyee Majumder
For copies write to: Circulation Manager,
Economic and Political Weekly,
320–322, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: [email protected]

54 JANUARY 6, 2018 vol liII no 1 EPW Economic & Political Weekly