INEQUALITY AS CHALLENGE FOR HUMAN DIGNITY
India is the largest democracy in world and for a country to hover as being democratic in true sense, the most important prerequisite remains the Equality for its citizens. This means that every single citizen irrespective of race, religion, gender, caste, class or birth is equal in the eyes of law. However, on ground such kind of ideal situation does not exist and even today many forms of inequalities are still prevalent in society.
The distinctive feature of inequality in India since centuries, the caste system, is still prevalent in major part of the country and unfortunately, with every decade of growth and progress there has been an insurgence of newer forms of inequalities like wealth inequality, treatment and responsibility inequality, political inequality, life inequality and membership inequality. All these inequalities are multidimensional in nature and the interrelationship between these inequalities is such that lack of one kind leads to inaccessibility and unaffordability of services in other sectors. The annexation of these newer intersectional forms of inequalities to an already existing ones has created a wide gap in society and a new type of divide too.
The much hyped perception of society that inequality of any kind is primarily related to the lack of equality of outcome is farce as in reality it is actually the lack of equality of access to opportunity that is the root cause of inequality. Even the United Nations endorses this fact and describes inequality as “the state of not being equal, especially in status, rights and opportunities”, thereby proving the fact that if right opportunity is provided to right person at right time, there will be a marked decrease in this gap of inequality.
Inequality in India has increased sharply since last three decades and this trend is in contrast with the dynamics globally. In fact, the score has markedly been low in almost all social progress categories for nourishment, education, healthcare, income and gender equality. As far as equal access to quality education and healthcare is concerned, out of 163 countries India ranks at 135th and 145th spot respectively. Similarly, as far as equal access to income and wealth is concerned, the top 10 percent earn approximately equal to the bottom 64 percent and top 10 account for one-third of the income earned. The income profiles have also highlighted a vast pay gap between men and women, calling attention to gender-based inequalities as well.
Both the economic variables like income and labour and socio-economic variables like health, education, and household conditions are closely correlated with each other and are necessary to enhance the standard of living. An unequal distribution of any of these variables is going to alter the growth and progress of other variables as well. Since wealth and income forms the core of these variables, the lower incomes or loss of income leads to inaccessibility and unaffordability of services in the sectors of health and education. Therefore, to narrow down the inequality in all social progress categories, the primary focus needs to be upon the economic variable like wealth and income. The time has come to adopt the bottom 50 percent of people, who has 13 percent of national income and only 3 percent of national wealth, work for their welfare and take all corrective measures to lift them out of poverty.
Many scholars are of the opinion that rising inequality could be dismissed as a temporary by-product of rapid growth as inequality rises with rapid growth before it gets eventually subsided. However, there is no guarantee of this and even if it is so the time has come to reset the existing economic policies. The first set of economic policies that were implemented in 1990’s to create the conditions for faster growth need to be replaced by the second set of economic policies with a clear aim to create the ways and redistribute wealth equally and equitably so that the bottom 50 percent also get an equal opportunity to avail services. Until and unless such policies are not being put forth, the unequal economic divide is going to continue and gap between rich and poor is going to widen further ultimately leading to political inequality and social strife in the long run.
Dr. Pawan Suri
email: psuricardio@gmail.com
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