Brief note on social and economic inequality that exists in medieval India
Answers
Answer:
Inequality:
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.
Explanation:
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.
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.
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.
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