NGOs absorbed educated Dalits as public-sector jobs vanished after neoliberal reforms.

Evidence

221 For a critical piece on the NGO–Dalit movement interface that traces it to the history of colonial and missionary activity in India, see Teltumbde (2010b), where he argues: “Unsurprisingly, most Dalits in Indian NGOs are active at the field level. Dalit boys and girls appear to be doing social services for their communities, which is what Ambedkar expected educated Dalits to do, and Dalit communities therefore perceive such workers quite favourably—more favourably, certainly, than Dalit politicians, who are often seen as engaged in mere rhetoric. The NGO sector has thus become a significant employer for many Dalits studying for their humanities degree, typically capped with a postgraduate degree in social work. Further, as the prospects of public-sector jobs have decreased since the government’s neoliberal reforms of the mid-1980s and later, the promise of NGOs as employers assumed great importance.” — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 562

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the structural-cooption argument in the Frankfurt School chapters about ideology serving as a safety valve. Also relevant to current caste-reservation and job-poverty debates.