We describe “India as a country in transition.” By definition, transition is about change-from one situation to the other, often, for better. If India is changing, so must be its society? What does that change in particular post [1990] Economic Reforms mean to Dalits and India’s Caste Order? Not much was known as no major study focused on the nature of changes India might be undergoing.

The Center for the Advanced Study of India [CASI], University of Pennsylvania, launched a marathon exercise to capture changes India has undergone since 1990. Two administrative blocks of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, were selected for the study. The two blocks – Bilariaganj falling in the district of Azamgarh in the eastern part of the state, and Khurja in the district of Bulandshahar in the western part – taken for the study are separated by five hundred miles.

The CASI study chose all Dalit households – some 20,000 – of the two blocks. Launched on January 1, 2008, me and my scholar colleagues D Shyam Babu and Dr Rajesh Paswan, led a team of eighteen young Dalit researchers to find the truth. Armed with a questionnaire – eighty questions for each household – we stormed the two blocks and completed the study within eight months. Calling it a census may be better.

So extensive the study was that we used cars to reach far away villages, and jeeps to negotiate the bumpy countryside. We rode bikes where no road existed, and rode bicycles as well. On occasions, we just walked from one village to the other. We often ate with villagers, some times spending night with them.

Led by the Principal Investigator, Dr. Devesh Kapur, a noted political scientist and Director of the CASI, the study has produced 1.6 million data entries on “Food Habit, Occupation and Life Style Changes” amongst Dalits in the two blocks. We are putting together our findings in a book form.