Q.Some people argue that inequality is natural while others maintain that it is equality which is natural and the inequalities which we notice around us are created by society. Which view do you support? Give reasons.

Political theory draws a distinction between natural inequalities (real differences in talent and ability) and social inequalities (created and enforced by society).

Political theory poses this as a genuine debate: are the inequalities we notice around us natural and therefore unavoidable, or are they created by society and therefore capable of being changed? Taking a position requires weighing the evidence on both sides.

The claim that inequality is natural does have some real basis — people genuinely differ in innate talent, ability and effort, and a society built on equal opportunity will still see some individuals succeed more than others as a result. This part of inequality is not, by itself, unjust.

But the SCALE and PATTERN of the inequality we actually observe in the world — inequality tracking caste, gender, race and class — is very hard to explain through natural differences in ability alone. If inequality were simply a matter of nature, we would expect it to be scattered randomly across every group in society. Instead, it tracks categories assigned to people at birth, generation after generation, in ways that closely mirror historical patterns of power and exclusion.

History also shows how often claims of "natural" inequality turn out, on closer look, to be excuses invented to protect an existing social arrangement. Women were long described as "the weaker sex," supposedly naturally less capable, which was used to justify denying them equal political and legal rights. Colonial rulers described Black Africans as naturally less intelligent, which was used to justify slavery. Both of these claims are now recognised as products of an unequal distribution of power between groups, not genuine facts of nature — and both were used, at the time, to make deeply unjust treatment look like an unavoidable fact of life.

Even the boundary of what counts as a "natural," unchangeable limitation keeps shifting — physical disabilities once seen as permanent barriers are now manageable through assistive technology, showing that what looks fixed by nature is often, in reality, fixed by a society's choice not to remove a barrier.

Taken together, this supports the view that equality — not inequality — is the better starting assumption about human beings, and that most of the visible inequality around us is a social product that can, in principle, be reduced or removed, even though real natural differences in talent and effort will always remain part of the picture.