Literacy and Health Status of Scheduled Castes in India

There is much discussion on the issue of reservation and its impact on the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. It is essential to know how far the socially marginalized group of Scheduled Castes lag behind the other sections of the Indian population with respect to human development. The present article has made an attempt to assess the different human development factors like literacy and health status of the Scheduled Caste population in India. For this purpose, secondary data have been collected. The population- and literacy-related information has been obtained from the Census 2011 Report and health-related information has been collected from the National Family Health Survey-2015–2016 (NFHS - 2015–2016). This study depicts the SCs population’s literacy status, sex ratio, child sex ratio and other health-related aspects. Also, the study compares the Scheduled Caste population status with that of other population categories.