A study on stereotyping and discrimination has found Delhi and its suburbs suffer from racial prejudices that are discriminatory in nature.
The survey done by "Reachout Anti-Discrimination Project" released on Saturday said that 54% people from the Northeast have experienced racism and discrimination and a whopping 74% feel that the situation in Delhi about discrimination is most worrying because Northeast people are looked upon with suspicion leading to trust deficit between them and other 'Indian people'. The report was released chairperson of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Justice K G Balakrishnan on Saturday.
Though the findings do not come as a new revelation, given the recent attacks on the people of Northeast in Delhi and other Metros, they do point out to larger issues and tell how deep rooted racial discrimination is, for example, the survey reveal that even 57% of government employees from Northeast face discrimination at work place. In the private sector, 58% feel that are being discriminated on the basis of race and among students 54% felt the same.
A sizeable 60% of the individuals surveyed who reported that they had been discriminated against were between the ages of 22 and 30. The majority of those surveyed were students who had relocated to Delhi to pursue a university education. The worrying statistics is only 4% of the victims (both men and women) of discrimination reported it to the police. About 19% victims told the family and friends and 21% told only friends, while 11% chose not to mention it to anybody.
The study blames prejudice and lack of understanding as the biggest reason for discrimination. The survey was conducted across 30 locations in Delhi with about 1,000 respondents from eight states of Northeast during September to October.
"I was really amazed by the finding that the respondents felt they were being looked upon with suspicion. That to me is a huge negative since so far we have heard that people are told they look different not suspicious," said Kishalay Bhattacharjee of the Reachout Foundation who designed and analysed the survey along with Ashish Ranjan from the Centre for Policy Research. The survey found that the major cause for discrimination that emerged was prejudice and lack of awareness about people from the Northeast. "The majority of the respondents were educated, so we found that they were rationalising the reason for the discrimination.
The most positive response, Bhattacharjee pointed out, is that at least 47% respondents hope the city can be free from discrimination in the future, while 30 per cent have negative feelings regarding this and they think that it cannot be free from this attitude.
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