Social Equality

Political equality — equality before the law — is an essential first step towards a just society, but on its own it is often not enough. It needs to be supplemented by equality of opportunity. Removing the legal barriers that exclude people from having a voice in government is necessary, but the pursuit of real equality also requires that people belonging to different groups and communities get a genuinely fair and equal chance to compete for the social goods that are available. That, in turn, requires minimising the effects of existing social and economic inequality, and guaranteeing every member of society some basic minimum conditions of life — adequate healthcare, the opportunity for a good education, adequate nourishment, and a minimum wage, among other things. Without these basic conditions in place, it becomes exceedingly difficult for everyone to compete on genuinely equal terms — and wherever equality of opportunity does not really exist, a society ends up wasting a large pool of potential talent.

In India, the barrier to equal opportunity is not only a shortage of facilities; it also comes from social customs that persist in different parts of the country and among different communities. Women, for example, may not enjoy equal rights of inheritance in some communities, may face social restrictions on the activities they can take part in, or may even be actively discouraged from pursuing higher education. A related, well-documented gap can be seen in higher education itself. A National Sample Survey (55th round, 1999–2000) of urban India recorded the number of graduates per thousand persons across different castes and communities:

The pattern here is striking: communities that have historically been placed low in the caste hierarchy — Scheduled Castes, Muslims, Hindu-OBCs, Scheduled Tribes — all sit well below the all-India average, while historically privileged communities sit comfortably above it. A gap this consistent, tracking long-standing social hierarchy so closely, is very unlikely to be the result of chance. …