Scheduled Caste- Meaning and Problems faced by the Scheduled Caste
# Meaning of Scheduled Caste Scheduled caste are those caste/races in the country that suffer from extreme social, educational and economic backwardness arising out of age old practice of untouchability and certain others on account of lack of infrastructure facilities and geographical isolation, and who need special consideration for safeguarding their interests and for their accelerated socio-economic development. Scheduled castes are those castes which were placed at the bottom in the traditional caste system. Usually, they used to perform unclean occupations. So they were treated as polluted and impure. The concept of polluted and impure made them untouchables. Various names appears for them in literature dealing with scheduled caste. E.g., Shudras, das, chaandal, malechha, untouchables and harijans. In modern literature, the scheduled castes are sometimes referred to as Dalit, meaning ‘broken’ or ‘dispersed’. This term has been popularized by B.R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar preferred the