New Delhi, Oct. 26, 2007:

"No one sat near me. I sat right at the back of the class alone. Jat children sat on the durrie. We could not sit on the durrie. One day I sat on the durrie and they snatched the durrie from me. The other children started laughing. I wanted to sit on the durrie."

These are the words spoken by a dalit boy who dropped out of school after studying in his village school upto Class 5. The words are part of a study, which was done by Geetha B. Nambissan of the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies at the capital's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

And they speak eloquently of the discrimination that the country's dalits continue to face in all walks of life. Be it at school, at the work place and in the broader social sphere. This, despite the Constitution promising equality to all citizens.

Prof. Nambissan's study titled "Exclusion, Inclusion and Education: Perspectives and Experiences of Dalit Children" is one of the papers which will be presented at the on-going national conference on "Social Exclusion and Inclusive Politics" in the capital. The study covered a village in Jaipur district and a settlement within Jaipur to "study dalit children's perceptions and experiences in education" in the state of Rajasthan. And the study's findings can be said to be a microcosm of the kind of discrimination dalit school children face in many parts of the country. Something that is more than manifest when it comes to their access to drinking water. Prof. Nambissan's study notes, "Water is still a site for caste-based discrimination in schools." It says that while the availability of piped-water and hand-pumps has increased access to water for dalit children, in instances where the water is stored in matkas (earthen pots), jars or served in glasses, "Dalit children and among those who are harijans continue to face caste prejudice and discriminatory practice." The study suggests that teachers and school administrators be made responsible for ensuring that dalit children have "equal access" to water and not allow any discrimination. There is discrimination even in the seating arrangements, says the study.

"Dalit children are more likely to sit in the back rows of the class because they lack social and numerical dominance and fail to meet the teacher's expectations of what it takes to be intelligent."