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Today's lead stories:
Scavenging Generations: A Look at India's Caste System
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Scavenging Generations: A Look at India's Caste System
In India, people are divided and known according to the
castes they belong to. Caste is ancient system of social stratification
followed by Hindus for centuries and still intact in its premitive
form. From admission to schools and colleges to employment
or electionioneering everything depends on castes. The lowest
strata in the caste system are outcastes – means they
don’t belong to any caste- and primarily lives to do
jobs that nobody else would touch. One of the jobs they are
assigned for centuries is scavenging. However educated you
are, as seen here in the state of Gujarat, you are destined
to clean up roads and public toilets generations after generations.
Identified under different names, the members of this particular
community is more than one million in India. They are part
of the untouchables. They cannot enter temples, homes, restaurants
and so much so that utensils for them are destroyed after
they use it once for the fear of not contracting the lower
caste phobia. In this documentary, FSRN’s Binu Alex
traveled across western Indian state of Gujarat to see their
condition and reports why they cannot come out this stigma.
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