Patterns of Social Inequality and Exclusion

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Sociology Class XII (Indian Society), Chapter 5.

Does hard work alone decide where you end up?

Walk through any Indian city and you will see people doing back breaking work: breaking stones, pulling carts, carrying loads, cleaning, cooking. Few people work harder. Yet how often does a construction labourer become even a small contractor? We tend to explain such facts by saying the poor are where they are because they lack ability or effort. A proverb quoted in the chapter makes the point sharply: if hard labour were really such a good thing, the rich would keep it all for themselves. Hard work and talent do matter. But if all other things were equal, personal effort and luck would explain all differences between individuals, and all other things are not equal. Group differences, not individual ones, explain social inequality and exclusion.

The family, caste, tribe and the market were studied in the last two chapters as things that form communities and sustain society. This chapter looks at their other face: how they create and sustain patterns of inequality and exclusion.

What is "social" about social inequality?

The chapter gives three answers.

Three forms of capital

Every society has people with a greater share of valued resources such as money, property, education, health and power. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1986) grouped these social resources as three forms of capital.

The three overlap and can be converted into one another. A family's economic capital buys education (cultural capital), and contacts (social capital) may help someone find a well paid job.

Social stratification: three principles

Most social inequality is not due to innate differences between people. It is produced by the society they live in. Sociologists use the term social stratification for a system by which categories of people in a society are ranked in a hierarchy. Three principles help explain it.

The last principle has a social twist. People with the greatest privileges tend to support such a system most strongly, and those who have experienced exploitation and humiliation at the bottom are most likely to challenge it.

Two views. For the exam: social inequality is a product of social structure, and not of innate differences between individuals. Another reading: the functionalist argument, put forward by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore in 1945, holds that unequal rewards are needed to motivate talented people to fill the most important positions. Critics reply that this ignores inherited advantage, which is exactly what the chapter stresses. Know the exam position first, but recognise that sociologists have argued both ways.

Pause and predict: two students score equally in an exam, but one has a private tutor, a quiet room and family contacts in a university, and the other has none. Which forms of capital are at work?

Check your answer: economic capital (paying for tutoring and a quiet space), cultural capital (educational background in the family) and social capital (contacts). Together they show how "equal effort" does not mean "equal chances".

Prejudice, stereotype, discrimination and exclusion

These four words are easily mixed up. Separate them by asking whether each is an attitude, a belief about a whole group, a behaviour, or a structural condition.

For example, a person refused a job because of their caste may be told the selection was done purely on merit. That is why discrimination is hard to prove.

Cause → effect: a group is stereotyped → prejudice forms against it → discrimination follows in jobs, housing and services → the group is excluded from resources → inequality is reproduced across generations.

The chapter also notes that protest movements against caste, gender and religious discrimination have arisen at different times in history, yet prejudices remain and new ones emerge. Legislation alone cannot transform society or produce lasting change. A constant social campaign to change awareness and sensitivity is needed.

The chapter focuses on four groups that have suffered serious inequality and exclusion: Dalits (the ex-untouchable castes), adivasis (communities referred to as tribal), women and the differently abled. It also notes that transgender and third gender persons form two more groups in this category, and that third gender persons now have legal recognition, including the right to stand for elections.

Caste as a discriminatory system

The caste system is a distinct Indian institution that legitimises and enforces discrimination against people born into particular castes. Historically it classified people by occupation and status: those born into a caste were also "born into" its occupation, and each caste had a place in a status hierarchy.

So distinctions between castes of broadly similar status have weakened, but distinctions between different socio-economic groupings continue. The share of people living in poverty or affluence differs greatly across caste groups. For instance, in 2011–12 the percentage of rural people below the poverty line was 45.3 for Scheduled Tribes and 31.5 for Scheduled Castes against 25.4 for all groups. Caste still affects life chances in the twenty first century.

Race and caste: a comparison. The chapter compares caste with the system of apartheid in South Africa, in which a minority classified every individual by race and held the dominant share of power and wealth. Apartheid became law in 1948 and was used to deny the majority citizenship, land ownership and a formal voice in government, and mixed marriages were prohibited. The struggle, led by the African National Congress and Nelson Mandela, ended with the majority forming the government in 1994. The comparison shows that a hierarchy based on birth can take different forms in different places.

Untouchability

Untouchability is an extreme and particularly vicious aspect of the caste system, prescribing strict social sanctions against those at the bottom of the purity and pollution scale. It is not just about avoiding physical contact. It covers a broad set of social sanctions, and in some regions even the presence or shadow of a person was held to be polluting (distance pollution).

All three dimensions are equally important. Other low castes also face subordination and exploitation to some degree, but do not suffer the extreme forms of exclusion reserved for "untouchables". Untouchability is a pan Indian phenomenon, though forms and intensity vary by region.

The names. The ex-untouchable groups have been called by many names over the centuries, and all the traditional ones are derogatory. Their use as abuse is now a criminal offence. In the 1930s Mahatma Gandhi popularised the term Harijan (children of God) to counter the pejorative charge. The communities themselves and their leaders coined Dalit, meaning "downtrodden", which is now the generally accepted term. It was neither coined by Dr. Ambedkar nor frequently used by him, but it resonates with his philosophy and received wide currency in the early 1970s in western India.

State and non state initiatives

Reservations. The best known state initiative is reservation: setting aside seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in legislatures (state assemblies, Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha), in government jobs including public sector companies, and in educational institutions. For SCs and STs the proportion of reserved seats equals their share in the total population. For OBCs the proportion is decided differently. The same principle extends to developmental programmes.

The fact that laws on this subject have been passed repeatedly shows that law alone cannot end a social practice, and cases of discrimination and atrocities continue to be reported. The chapter adds a vital point: no social group, however oppressed, is only a victim. Dalits have been active on political, agitational and cultural fronts, from pre-Independence movements to present day organisations, and have made significant contributions to literature in several Indian languages.

Pause and predict: the Constitution abolished untouchability in 1950 and a strengthening Act was passed in 1989. Does this mean untouchability ended?

Check your answer: no. The chapter argues that repeated legislation is proof that law alone cannot end a social practice. Untouchability is sustained by attitudes, prejudice and power, so it takes social change in awareness as well as law.

The Other Backward Classes

Untouchability was the most visible form of discrimination, but a large group of castes of low status also faced discrimination short of untouchability. The Constitution recognises that groups other than SCs and STs may suffer social disadvantage and calls them "socially and educationally backward classes", the constitutional basis of the term OBC. Like "tribe", the category is defined negatively: OBCs are neither the "forward" castes at the upper end of the status scale nor the Dalits at the lower end. Because caste has entered all the major Indian religions, there are also members of other religions who belong to backward castes with similar socio-economic status.

Recent surveys cited in the chapter suggest OBCs are about 41 per cent of the national population. The OBC category is far more diverse than the Dalits or adivasis. The chapter notes large differences between the upper OBCs, who are largely landed and dominant in rural society in many regions, and the lower OBCs, who are very poor and often not very different from Dalits. That diversity makes it a difficult political category to work with. In urban areas, OBCs are described as being closer to the Scheduled Castes and Tribes than to the upper castes.

Adivasi struggles

Scheduled Tribes are, like Scheduled Castes, duly recognised by the Constitution. Tribal people were believed to be "people of the forest", but ecological isolation was never absolute, and the boundaries between tribe and caste are quite porous. Except in the North Eastern states, no region is inhabited exclusively by tribal people: there are only areas of tribal concentration.

Cause → effect: from the late nineteenth century, the colonial government reserved most forest tracts for its own use → adivasis lost the right to gather forest produce and practise shifting cultivation → they either used the forests illegally (and were prosecuted as "encroachers") or migrated for wage labour. After 1947 the government's control over forests continued, and capital intensive industrialisation needed minerals and power, which were concentrated in adivasi areas → land was rapidly acquired for mines and dams → millions were displaced without adequate compensation or rehabilitation. The chapter calls this a form of internal colonialism and notes that it has intensified since the economic liberalisation of the 1990s.

The word Adivasi, meaning "original inhabitants", was coined in the 1930s as part of the struggle against intrusion by the colonial government, outside settlers and moneylenders, and, like "Dalit", it connotes political awareness and the assertion of rights. Outsiders are called dikus. The most significant achievements of adivasi movements in independent India include statehood for Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

The struggle for women's equality

Because of the obvious biological differences between men and women, gender inequality is often treated as natural. The chapter argues that it is social. There is no biological reason why so few women hold public power or why women generally receive a smaller share in family property. The strongest argument comes from societies that differ from the usual pattern: matrilineal societies have worked for centuries (as in Kerala in the past and in Meghalaya today), and women have been successful farmers and traders in many African societies.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: nineteenth century reform movements are called "middle class reform movements", led by the newly emerging Western educated middle class. In reality: the chapter itself warns against two common assumptions: that women's rights were fought for only by male reformers, and that ideas of women's equality were alien imports. Works like Stree Purush Tulana and Sultana's Dream show that women wrote and argued for equality themselves, and many reformers drew on Indian texts as well as Western ideas.

Timeline of the women's question:

The struggles of the differently abled

The differently abled are not "disabled" only because they are physically or mentally impaired, but because society is built in a way that does not cater to their needs. The rights of the disabled have been recognised only recently, compared with Dalit, adivasi or women's rights. Anita Ghai, a leading scholar and activist, compares this invisibility to that of the Invisible Man in Ralph Ellison's novel on racism in the United States.

The common public view of disability (all over the world) assumes that disability is a biological given, that problems arise from the person's impairment, that the disabled person is a victim, that it is linked to the person's self perception, and that they are in need of help. In India this is reinforced by a cultural view that sees an impaired body as the result of fate or past actions, and by labels used as insults.

There is also a close link between disability and poverty. Malnutrition, mothers weakened by frequent childbirth, inadequate immunisation and accidents in overcrowded homes increase disability among the poor, and disability in turn creates and worsens poverty by increasing isolation and economic strain. Census 2011 collected information on eight types of disability, as against five in Census 2001.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: the disabled are disabled by society as much as by impairment. In reality: this is the heart of what scholars call the social model of disability, which contrasts with the older medical model that locates the problem in the individual's body. The quotation used in the chapter, that disablement lies in the construction of society, not in the physical condition of the individual, is a statement of the social model.

Efforts to address the situation have come from the disabled themselves. Education still marginalises the issue by maintaining two separate streams, one for disabled students and one for everyone else. The chapter ends by noting that categories like caste, tribe and gender now get attention, but groups marginalised by religion or by combinations of categories (such as caste and gender, or religion and gender) need attention too.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: The Market as a Social Institution shows how economic exchange and social groups work together, which this chapter turns to inequality.
• Earlier: Social Institutions: Continuity and Change gives the background of caste, tribe and family used throughout.
• Next: The Challenges of Cultural Diversity takes up communal, regional and caste conflict in the context of unity in diversity.
• Class XII link: The Constitution and Social Change and Social Movements explain how laws and movements work against inequality.