Click to play videoJaunpur (Eastern UP): Eastern Uttar Pradesh is the crucible of caste politics. But even in this viral fever of caste, there are signs of a slow fall in temperature.
A hospital, owned by a Dalit surgeon, would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But today, 38- year-old Lal Bahadur Siddharth is a Dalit doctor and surgeon in Jaunpur.
And he is a cure for the disease of casteism. "I had to struggle a lot to get here. First, there was a struggle against caste," says a Dalit doctor and surgeon, Dr Lal Bahadur Siddharth.
When an untouchable doctor reads the blood pressure of a Brahmin, society's health is definitely improving. Touch, that great taboo of brahmanical society, becomes irrelevant in illness.
"The people of the upper castes thought that come a lower caste and thus, would never be equal to them. I faced all this and yet, studied as hard to become as good as them," says Dr Siddharth.
Caste is equally irrelevant for another Dalit, who is the owner of a gas agency in Kerakat. Usha Kiran is one of the many Dalits in the area who now own their own gas agencies and petrol pumps.
"Only when Dalits get educated and enter business and the service sector will they become economically independent and the walls of society will then break," says 37-years-old Usha.
Usha comes for a walk every day by Ambedkar's statue. And as eastern UP's landscape is slowly transformed, perhaps Ambedkar has reason to smile.
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