IIDS organized an international seminar titled, ‘Civil Society Approaches to Dalit Empowerment’ from the 24-25 September 2004 at Hotel Hill View, Surajkund.

The participants included important government functionaries, international and national civil society representatives, academicians and Dalit activists. About 30 NGO organizations participated in this seminar. The seminar focused on the problems of Dalits and the approaches to Dalit empowerment used by NGOs.

IIDS shared its study ‘Approaches to Dalit Empowerment‘ with participants in this seminar.

IIDS also released its first book titled, ‘Caste, Race and Discrimination: Discourses in International Context’ in this seminar.

IIDS organized a digital video conference on ‘Affirmative Action in the United States’ on the 9th February 2005 at the American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi. The speakers included Distinguished Professor William A Darity Jr., Professor of Economics and adjunct faculty in Sociology, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill and Director, Institute of African American Research and Prof. Sukhadeo Thorat, Director IIDS.

The participants included government functionaries, academicians, researchers, Dalit activists and representatives of NGO organizations. The video-conference was organized with a view to develop an understanding of affirmative action in USA and India. It also led to a very insightful and detailed discussion on the issue of affirmative action in the private sector in India.

IIDS organized a national workshop titled, ‘Dalit Empowerment – Liberalization, Human Development and Civil Society’ from 29-31 March 2005 at the Hotel West End Inn, Mahipalpur.

The seminar was organized on the central themes of globalization, liberalization, their consequences on the Dalits, the present day status of the Dalits in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, social justice philanthropy i.e., the perspective of the third sector on issues of discrimination and deprivation.

IIDS provided the participants with handouts of the papers presented and also shared for the first time its findings regarding the Dalit Human Development Report and the Social Justice Philanthropy Report.

IIDS provided with research inputs in the conference titled, ‘Millennium Development Goals’ on the November 4-5, 2004, held at the Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. The conference was organized by Action Aid, India and National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights.

IIDS prepared a research paper titled ‘Caste and Food Security’ for the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights and Combat Law to sensitize them on this important issue and distributed papers on the behalf of National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights.

The same paper was also put on the website for food security by the noted academician Jean Dreze.

The core findings of the study were shared in a conference titled, ‘Right to Food Campaign’ in October 2004, held at Lucknow and organized by the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights.

IIDS provided theoretical and empirical inputs for a ‘Report on the Status of the Dalit Human Rights in India’ for the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights, New Delhi. The Report was submitted to the Special Rapporteur on Caste appointed for looking into caste-based discrimination in India.

IIDS is developing a training manual on caste-based discrimination for Christian Aid (India). The manual will be disseminated to the partner organizations of Christian Aid (India) for empowering the Dalit communities, building leadership capabilities among them and aiding social, political, economic and related changes among them.

The Faculty of IIDS helped One World South Asia, New Delhi to develop a perspective on the marginalized social groups on their Consultation on the Big Dams (The Narmada Dam) in India. The full-consolidated report is available at http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/131800/1/