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Inequalities in India

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Yash baghel 19 GGB 259
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65 views21 pages

Inequalities in India

Uploaded by

Yash baghel 19 GGB 259
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Inequality in India

• Inequality
• The United Nations describes inequality as “the state of not being
equal, especially in status, rights and opportunities”.
• Inequality can be broadly classified in to:
– Economic inequality: Economic inequality is the unequal distribution
of income and opportunity between individuals or different groups in
society.
– Social inequality: It occurs when resources in a given society are
distributed unevenly based on norms of a society that creates specific
patterns along lines of socially defined categories e.g. religion, kinship,
prestige, race, caste, ethnicity, gender etc. have different access to
resources of power, prestige and wealth depending on the norms of a
society.
• Both these categories are deeply intertwined and inequality of
one type affects the inequality in another e.g. Social Inequality
due to gender have large impact on income of women. In
patriarchal societies large gender wage gap tends to exist.
Inequality in India
• Dimensions of Inequality in India
• In India, following are distinctive forms of social inequality:
• Gender
• The Global Gender Gap Report, 2018, ranks India at 142 among 149 countries.
• Four parameters for measuring gender inequality are economic participation and
opportunity, health and survival, educational attainment and political
empowerment.
• Gender wage gap is highest in India according International Labor Organization
women are paid 34% less than men.
• Women comprise over 42 per cent of the agricultural labour force in the country,
yet they own less than 2 percent of its farm land according to the India Human
Development Survey (IHDS).
• Caste
• Caste is significant factor for determining access to resources like education,
income, health valued by individuals.
• India’s upper caste households earned nearly 47% more than the national average
annual household income, the top 10% within these castes owned 60% of the
wealth within the group in 2012, as per the World Inequality Database.
Inequality in India
• Religion

• Religious identities are significant for an individual’s ability to mobilize


resources.
• Religious identities can cause prejudices which may lead to economic
exclusion and other forms of discrimination which can impact jobs and
livelihood opportunities.
• While minorities such as Christians, Parsis and Jains have a larger share of
income/consumption than their population share, Muslim and Buddhist
populations have significantly lower access to economic resources.
• Ethnicity
• Tribal communities in India have been identified as ethnic group on the
basis of their unique culture, language, dialect, geographical location,
customs etc.
• The National Family Health Survey 2015-16 (NFHS-4) showed that 45.9% of
ST population were in the lowest wealth bracket as compared to 26.6% of
SC population, 18.3% of OBCs, 9.7% of other castes.
Inequality in India
• Economic Inequality
• The 2019 report by Oxfam, titled "Public good or
Private Wealth?" showed that India’s top 10% holds
77.4% of the total national wealth, while the top 1%
holds 51.53% of the wealth.
• The bottom 60% population holds only 4.8% of the
national wealth.
• 13.6 crore Indians, who make up the poorest 10% of
the country, have continued to remain in debt for the
past 15 years.
• The Gini coefficient of wealth in India in 2017 is at 0.83,
which puts India among the countries with highest
inequality countries.
Inequality in India
Consequences of Inequalities
• Inequalities tend to produce social conflict among the social groups e.g.
caste groups like Jaats, Maratha, Patels are demanding reservations but this
demand is opposed by caste groups already claiming the benefits of
reservations, such clash of interest due to perceived inequality tend to
produce violent conflicts between opposing caste groups.
• Inequalities among ethnic groups have led to various ethnic
movements demanding separate states or autonomous regions or even
outright secession from India. North East has been rocked by numerous
such ethnic movement e.g. by Nagas for greater Nagalim etc.
• Religious inequality tends to generate feeling of exclusion among religious
minority groups. This reduces their participation in mainstream, in India
religious minorities have large population their economic exclusion
compromises the GDP growth of nation as whole.
• Poor development indicators like IMR, MMR, low per capita income, lower
education and learning outcomes at schools, high rate of population growth
can be traced to existing socio-economic inequalities.
• High economic inequality is detrimental to public healthcare and
education. Upper and Middle classes do not have vested interest in well
functioning public healthcare and education as they have means to access
private healthcare and education.
Inequality in India
Measures to Deal with Inequalities
• Constitutional Provision
– Enforcement of Constitutional Guarantee of equality as enshrined
in fundamental rights. Articles 14, 15 and 16 form part of a
scheme of the Constitutional Right to Equality. Article 15 and 16
are incidents of guarantees of Equality, and gives effect to Article
14.
• Promoting Civil Society
– Provide a greater voice to traditionally oppressed and suppressed
groups, including by enabling civil society groups like unions and
association with in these groups.
– Scheduled castes and Scheduled tribes should be motivated to
become entrepreneurs, schemes like Stand up India need to be
expanded to widen its reach by increasing funding.
•
Inequality in India
• Women Empowerment
– For gender equality policies like affirmative action by
reserving seats in legislatures, increasing reservation at Local
self government both at Urban and village level to 50% in all
states, strict implementation of The Equal Remuneration
act,1976 to remove wage gap, making education curriculum
gender sensitive, raising awareness about women right,
changing social norms through schemes like Beti Bachao Beti
Padhao etc.
• Inclusion of Religious Minorities
– Religious minority groups need special attention through
representation in government jobs, provision of institutional
credit, improvement of their education access, protection of
their human rights by empowering National commission for
Minority, strengthening rule of law etc.
Inequality in India
• Progressive Taxes
– Additional public resources for public services by progressive
taxes on wealthy more and by increasing the effective taxation on
corporations, more importantly broadening the tax base through
better monitoring of financial transactions.
• Economic Policies
– By ensuring universal access to public funded high quality services
like Public health and education, social security benefits,
employment guarantee schemes; inequality can be reduced to
great extent.
• Employment Generation
– The failure to grow manufacturing sectors like Textile, Clothing,
automobiles, consumer goods etc. is the important reason of
rising inequalities.
– The Labor-intensive manufacturing has the potential to absorb
millions of people who are leaving farming while service sector
tend to benefit majorly urban middle class.
NSS 73rd Round Survey (2015-16) on MSMES

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