Basic amenities non-existent for most dalits

About 53%houses are constructed with cement wall and are tiled. However, these houses are constructed and distributed to them under various government schemes and of very poor quality.

Only 5% of the families have RCC houses. In Kolar, the percentage of RCC houses owned by dalit families is about 17.3%, but in the villages of other district the number if very less.

In the study area, about 11.7% families are living in one-room houses. Nearly 34.8% of the houses there are kitchens and a single room. Close to 40.6% families have two-room houses and 12.9% families have three-room houses.

Availability of electricity connection to dalit families in villages is mainly through government schemes and 79.5% dalit families have electricity connection. The power connection is for lighting purpose only and the quality of lighting is very low with minimum switches or bulbs. Very few dalit families have better lighting, more bulbs and tube lights. Nearly 20.5% of the families do not have any electricity and are using kerosene fuel for lighting purpose. About 74.8% of dalit families do not have bathrooms and only close to 8.7% families have bathrooms attached to their houses. Only 9.3% of dalit families in rural areas are having this bathing facility inside their houses. Another 7.2% of families are having this facilities outside the house or separately. Most of the houses are single room or a room with kitchen and space for bathing is not available inside the house.

The latrine facility is very important as it plays an important role in hygiene condition and on health of household members in the rural area. More than 92.6% of dalit families do not have latrine facilities. The public tap provided by village panchayat is the main source, but this public tap is normally only one tap for all dalit families in most villages as the survey observations.

CSEIP carried out this study under a three-year programme sponsored by ICSSR.