Caste Maters: An Empirical Study on Asset Structure of Dalit Woman Labour Households

The primary data were collected from 927 Dalit woman labour households belonging to all the three geographical regions of Punjab (India) to analyse the asset structure of these households. The study revealed that a Dalit woman labour household had assets worth ₹128,750.98. Out of the total value of assets, 90.81% were durable assets and the remaining 9.19% were livestock assets. All the respondent households were found landless. The ratio of debt to household assets was found to be 0.41 which indicates that 41% of the household assets would be needed to pay off their current debt. More than 70% of the total value of durable assets was swallowed only by the dwelling house. Most of the durable items in these households were found useless, old and broken. Actually, the relatively rich households of the village used to give them these already used items in order to seek their cheap or free labour.