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英国留学生essay
从印度历史上来说，像下层种姓和下层部落这样的群体已经被排除在主流社会之外，相比于其他社会群体，他们被放在了一个不利的位置上。鉴于此背景下，尽管杜绝许多政策和方案相同，本文仍在试图找出为何贫穷仍然是这些社会群体之间的集中。
印度社会本质上是一种基于身份划分的社会。一个人的身份来自于他们的种姓，民族，宗教物品等。印度社会的种姓制度是高度不平等的待遇，包括经济和社会权利。历史悠久的排斥和歧视以及剥夺权利导致了这种不平等的待遇，某些种姓特别是下层种姓和部落定的条款。这个严重的歧视和排斥导致了普遍的贫困，贫困的下层种姓和部落历来被放置在种姓阶层的最底层。
排除可以通过社会、经济、政治等多种类型的被定义为遗漏的故意行为。
Is Poverty Becoming Exclusive Economics Essay
Historically social groups like scheduled caste and scheduled tribe were excluded from the mainstream of the society which has put them at a disadvantage compared to other groups. Given this background the present paper tries to find out how poverty is still concentrating among these social groups despite many policies and programmes to eradicate the same.
Introduction:
Indian society is basically an identity-based society. The identity of an individual comes from caste, ethnic, religious belongings, amongst others. The caste system of Hindu society is based on highly unequal entitlements to economic and social rights. This inequality is characterized by historic exclusion and discrimination, in terms of denial of rights, of certain castes particularly the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe. This gross discrimination and exclusion has resulted in widespread deprivation and poverty for the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe who have traditionally been placed at the bottom rung of the caste hierarchy.
Exclusion may be defined as a deliberate act of omission. Exclusion can be of many types via social, economic, political etc. In India, exclusion or inclusion in the economic activities such as production, distribution or any gainful job to a particular person depends by his caste. Haan (1999) defines social exclusion as “the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live”. Economic exclusion means lack of participation of some individual in markets as a consequence of a gather of disabilities or a low endowment of human capital.
The caste system as an economic organization is characterized by the division of persons in social groups (castes) with fixed and unequal economic rights. Compulsory and unequal assignment of occupations and property rights implies exclusion of each caste from the occupation of other castes. It is low caste untouchables who suffer most as they are excluded from having any property rights except service to other castes. And this exclusion of the low castes untouchables has lead to a high degree of economic deprivation and poverty. Exclusion and discrimination also adversely affects economic growth due to less than optimum use of labor and other resources.
The concept of poverty is a complex dynamic and multi-dimensional phenomenon. Poverty is defined as the inability to obtain minimum income to meet the basic needs of life such as food, clothing, shelter, health care and education. It is expressed through the poverty line and this poverty line is different in different nations. In India 35.97% people have been estimated to live below the poverty line.
Poverty is a social phenomenon which denotes that a section of the society is not able to fulfill even its basic necessities of life. When a substantial segment of the society is deprived of the minimum level of living and continues at a bare subsistence level, that society is said to be plagued with mass poverty. The incidence of poverty in India is high among the historically marginalized groups like SC, ST and OBC.
The incidence of poverty is still concentrated in the rural area as indicated and the head count poverty ratio is 41.8% in the year 2004-05. The more troubling fact regarding the rural poverty is it is highly concentrating among Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) population. The caste system has created, sustained and perpetuated an unequal opportunity structure and put some sections of the society in the hands of poverty. The presences of such disparity and discrimination in the incidence of poverty and widespread discrimination against scheduled groups have long histories in India.
The most oppressed among all are 'untouchables' or Scheduled Castes. Once they born as barbers, agricultural workers or manual scavengers will remain in those employments all through their lives. They are not even given sufficient wages to support their lives. So many Scheduled caste families suffer from extreme poverty. Although there has been some improvement and possibility for social change for Dalits, they continue to be exploited, discriminated and treated as sub-human. The various studies in this area find that the attitudes are slowly changing, but caste bias still remains as a social stigma. It is the social stigma attached to them which has put them at a disadvantage.
The Scheduled Tribes (ST) is another group which has been socially and economically marginalized. They are not part of the caste system. Unlike the SC, Scheduled tribes were never part of mainstream society. They have been geographically and physically away from the mainstream. Nature of deprivation and social exclusion they have been going through are quite different from that of SC. Since they were out of the caste system, they have never faced social stigma associated with 'untouchability'. This does not mean their social and economic situation was in any way better than that of the SC. The findings of previous studies indicate that they are facing problems like chronic poverty, less access to markets, remoteness, exclusion, malnutrition and lack of education. As per census of 2001, SC and ST community’s account for 16% and 8% of Indian population respectively and their numbers have been increasing since independence.
Besides the SC and ST communities, the Indian constitution also recognizes one more social group called Other Backward Class (OBC). OBC as a social group came to prominence after the report by the second backward class commission also referred to as Mandal Commission. Communities under OBC category were identified based on certain social, educational and economic criteria and not just caste. The commission submitted its report in 1990 and this report forms the basis of who belongs to OBC. It is important to note that communities under OBC category need not be from caste hierarchy alone. As the name suggest these communities are financially backward and lacking in social status, education, employment potential etc.
Literature review:
Thorat (2010) states that Poverty, therefore, is more likely to be a visible symptom of the invisible infliction of social division, exclusion and discrimination on the basis of social identity, caste, religion, ethnicity, region and gender to which either one may be linked to and ignored or denied on the basis of normal social settings.
A global picture of the extent of poverty in India and how it evolves over time is given by Ravallion (2008) who argues that a common standard needs to be used for all countries in measuring absolute poverty and estimates that India’s poverty (assuming a poverty line of 1.25 $ per day) dropped from 60% in 1980 to 42% in 2005 and from 42% in 1980 to 24% in 2005 (assuming a poverty line of 1 $ per day3). He also notes that the number of people living below 1.25 $ increased from 421 to 456 million in the period while those below 1 $ fell from 296 to 267 million and thereby shows that the reduction in the number of people below a poverty line of 1 $ is not a laudable achievement as they (about 17% of India’s total population) can fall back below the line due to even minor shocks. The paper notes India’s overall rate of poverty reduction to be lower than the average for the developing world. He calls for a ‘distribution - neutral’ growth process and goes on to say that the regional and sectoral pattern of India’s growth has not been pro – poor since high inequalities ensure that poor people lack the capability to take advantage of economic opportunities.
Virmani (2008) argues that the inter - state differences in poverty rates are explained by the differences in p.c. GDP, agricultural growth and the share of the bottom 40% of the population in consumption and therefore policies should aim at accelerating growth especially in agriculture in the poorer states and target alleviation programmes and subsidies at the poorest 40%.
Given the poverty line in India was at an MPCE of Rs. 359.89 in the rural areas and 523.18 in the urban areas in 2004 – 05, he notes that over the 11-year period from 1993-94 to 2004-05, the proportion of poor below the poverty line and the absolute number of poor have declined. The poverty ratio has declined from 36 per cent of population to 27.5 per cent while the number of poor has declined by 5.8 per cent to 301.7 million from 320.4 million. The other notable feature is the convergence of rural and urban poverty rates from a gap of 4.9 per cent points in 1999-00 to 2.6 percent points in 2004-05 which can be traced to the faster decline in the number of poor in the rural areas (by a level of 23.1 million) while the same for the urban areas increased (though marginally) from 76.3 million to 80.8 million. This gives a very brief profile of the Indian poor as in 2004 – 05. The measures used are all level measures and the only characterization considered is regional (that is, rural and urban). But this profiling falls short of providing the policy maker with a well defined outline to target the sub groups, as does Ravallion (2008), since the two accounts provide level measures of the extent of poverty but not measures of regional or socio - economic variations in poverty.#p#分页标题#e#
Meenakshi, Ray & Gupta (2009) states that Caste and poverty status seem to go hand in hand: an outcome of a history of discrimination that extends to the economic sphere. The caste system existed in India has a significant bearing in excluding certain groups from the social and economic sphere by means of identities. The social group identity has become a dimension of poverty through various social processes associated with it. There are some empirical validation of practice of caste based exclusion and denial of opportunities focusing on capital assets such as agricultural land, employment, education, and other social needs.
In India, exclusion revolves around social processes and institutions that exclude, discriminate, isolate and deprive some groups on the basis of caste and ethnic identity. These include former untouchables or Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), nomadic, semi-nomadic and de-notified tribes (or ex-criminal tribes) etc. These groups together constitute more than 250 million in 2001 (about 167 million SCs, 86 million STs and other small minorities).These groups have historically suffered from exclusion in multiple spheres, which has led to their severe deprivation (Thorat and Deshpande 1999).
Thorat (2010) states that caste, religion and regional origins all still affect income outcomes and therefore poverty outcomes in India since the economic features of ownership of assets, access to endowments like land, education etc are blocked through the operational characteristics of social and ethnic origin. He notes that the impact of the social origin of an individual, separately and in conjecture with the religious and ethnic features of an individual, will restrict the access to all types of private and public endowments, employment etc., and therefore the resultant income and poverty outcomes.
Mutatkar (2005) argues that the social group disparities are a result of the historically rooted social disadvantages by way of social and physical exclusion which, as evidence suggests, still operate in the Indian economy. Das and Dutta (2007) finds that social hierarchy (in the form of the caste system) translates into low endowments in human and physical capital and in turn into poorer labour market outcomes (like occupational segregation and wage discrimination especially among regular workers) and thereby into poverty outcomes. The literacy rate stands at 46% for Scheduled Caste individuals (SCs) as against 75% for General individuals but only 4% of SC individuals have completed higher secondary education as against 16% from the General category (in 2004 – 05) and they attribute it to the historical institutional setup by which the SCs were not entitled to own property or attain education. As can be seen, the difference in the lower levels of educational attainment is very low across the social groups but it starts diverging by educational attainment in terms of ‘after completion of primary education and above’.
While Radhakrishna et. al (2007) finds that among the social groups in both rural and urban areas, the scheduled caste constitute the core chronic poverty groups ( even above the Scheduled Tribes) and the casual labour households stand a greater risk of chronic poverty. That is, among the occupational categories, the core chronic poverty groups are made up of agricultural labour in rural regions and casual labour and self-employed in urban areas and we notice overlap between the social and occupational groups. They also notice that as we move from the poorest group to the highest income group, the occupational composition of the households tend to shift from agricultural labour to self employed in agriculture in the rural areas and from casual labourers to regular wage / salary earners in the urban areas.
Arjun, Hann (1997) defining two characteristics of exclusion are particularly relevant namely; the deprivation caused through exclusion (or denial of equal opportunity) in multiplies spheres showing its multidimensionality. Second feature is that, it is embedded in the society relations, and societal relations, and societal institutions the process through which individual or groups is wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society in which they live.
De Haan (1999) the concept of “exclusion and economic discrimination” in modern economic literature has been developed with respect to race, ethnicity and gender. At a general level social exclusion is considered as a “process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live in this sense social exclusion is opposite to social integration”.
Sen (2000) also draw distinction between the situation where some people are being kept out (at least left out) and where some people are being included may even be forced to be included in deeply unfavorable terms and described two situation as (unfavorable) exclusion and unfavorable inclusion. The “unfavorable inclusion” particularly those with unequal treatment or unacceptable arrangement may carry the same adverse effects as the unfavorable exclusion does. This concept is quite close to concept of “economic discrimination” developed separately in recent economic literature related to race and gender, which recognized participation or access but with unequal treatment in the labour and other markets.
Though the situation has changed substantially over time, strong undercurrents remain and caste/ethnicity is seen to be difficult to dislodge in of poverty are higher among the SCs, STs on the whole, and among other group minorities such as the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and the SCs and STs within the Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh and Christian communities in India (Borooah 2010; Desai, Adams and Dubey 2010).
In a country like India, poverty is often measured and portrayed in regional terms; but it is something that has a strong social group orientation as we found in our earlier all-India exercise. Further enquiry into selected indicators of human deprivation such as the availability of a private toilet facility, housing condition and malnutrition among women also revealed the dominance of the social divide over the regional divide (Kannan 2009).
Poverty and Social Group in India:
As the concept of poverty, covers many dimensions such as health and education, vulnerability and risk; and marginalization and exclusion beyond the dominant domain of income and consumption, it indeed a multi-dimensional concept. In India, concentration of poverty along regional and caste lines are noticed with few regions and social groups like SC’s and ST’s being more disadvantaged. In India, Bihar and Orissa poverty is high among Scheduled Tribes. As far as occupation is concerned, agricultural labor households fare badly compared to other occupational groups. As per the latest estimates NSSO, poverty in India in 2004-05 was around 37 per cent (GOI 2009a). In other words, more than 400 million people are still below poverty line in India.
Social Exclusion in terms of Caste:
In India, caste still defines social and economic disparities. The historically disadvantage groups like SC’s and ST’s still remains vulnerable. Social exclusion is defined as “the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live(Haan, 1999).Indian population consists of 16.23% SCs and 8.2 % STs; 91.7% of them live in rural areas and 8.3% in urban areas. The basic reasons for the high incidence of poverty SC’s is that are often faced with low incomes. This is due to lack of assets and high incidence of wage labour associated with high rate of underemployment and low wages. Data from Planning Commission reveals that about 36.8% of SCs below poverty line as compared to only 28.3% for others (non-SC/ST) in 2004-05. Differentials in St and Non-ST poverty are high. The incidence of poverty among STs remains high at 47.3% in rural areas as compared to 28.3% for all population in 2004-05.
Source: Thorat 2010
In Table 5 we can look at poverty level in socio-religious communities according to their sources of livelihood. As rural India is predominantly dependent on agriculture, the ability to own land for cultivation and to run nonfarm businesses, and the opportunities to find farm and nonfarm work decide the regularity and level of household income, and therefore poverty outcomes. It can be seen that incomes and poverty outcomes become significantly dependent on these socio-religious affiliations. As per NSSO, rural households are of five catagories namely, self-employed in agriculture (SEA) and in non-agriculture (SENA), agriculture labour (AL), other labour (OL) and other (see Table 5).
From the literature it is evident that the educational attainment and socio economic wellbeing are highly correlated. Once the individual gets higher level of education he will be able to have a better access to livelihood provisions and this will in turn lead to a higher level of socio economic status. As return to education rises with the levels of educational attainment, the differences between social groups will translate into further gaps in labour market earnings for members of these groups (Dutta, 2002). So, in order to examine the deprivation among social groups it is worth to have a look at the levels of educational attainment and its impact on the livelihood enjoyed by them. The income inequality is strongly correlated with test-score inequality. The individuals among different social groups performing at similar levels throughout schooling do not succeed at similar rate and extract same benefits from their educational experiences (Freeman, 2004)#p#分页标题#e#
In India primary education is a fundamental right for all children aged between 6 and 14 on the basis of Right to Education Act. The government had taken many other affirmative actions to promote disadvantaged groups participation in education all over the country. Despite all these actions social bias still exists in the country. The deprivation among disadvantaged social groups can be attributed from the figure: 2.
Figure: 1. per thousand distribution persons of age 5 to 29 by current attendance status for each social groups
The above illustration gives the distribution of persons of age 5 to 29 based on current attendance status [1] . The distributions are made per thousand for each social group, so that we can get a trend in the levels of education attainment for that specific group. From the graph it is evident that for the deprived groups ST, SC and OBC individuals are highly concentrated in the lower levels of education attainment (54.5%, 58.6% and 53.6% respectively in the primary level and 3.6%, 1.8% and 4.3% in the level degree/ diploma and above). This is highly disproportional to the group ‘others’ (46.1% in primary level and 6.8% in the level degree diploma and above).
Poverty Rates by Social and Religious Groups across Household Occupation Groups
We can see (table 5) that the STs are largely owner-cultivators (40%). A near equal share of their population (36%) work as agricultural laborers. Thus, 76% of the tribal’s depended on manual labor and earn a living from it by either working their own or someone else’s land. We can see that SC’s are agricultural laborers mostly and 22% are now owner-cultivators. OBC’s are largely owner cultivators (44%), and the second largest share of their population (22%) is employed as agricultural laborers.
CONCLUSION
The main identity of Indian society is caste system. In India, this caste system has made social groups like scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and other back ward class at a great disadvantage vis-à-vis other groups. These social groups are socially and economically marginalized. The analysis has shown that poverty is reducing but it is mainly concentrated in social groups like scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The social characteristic of an individual transforms their operational capabilities and economic characteristics which affects their likelihood and vulnerability to poverty is evident from the socio economic characteristics presented in the paper. The interplay of caste and occupation decides the likelihood that a household or an individual would be poor in India, even as recently as in 2004 – 05, across all the Indian states
It can be clearly seen that the majority of India’s poor belong to SC, ST or OBC categories, with differences according to religious groups as well; Hindu SCs and STs are the poorest, while Muslim and OBCs are also poorer in comparison to other groups, and hence excluded in terms of education and occupation as well. Social exclusion leading to economic exclusion in India is hence caste-based and religion-based. It is also seen that in the poorer states the concentration of poverty among SCs and ST’s are higher.
Though changing the roots of the society will prove to be a difficult task if not impossible, the target should be to reduce the extent of the differentials causing exclusion by enforcing property rights for all groups, and equality in opportunity along with it.
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