Promoting caste equality

Even with access to quality education and high social capital, income disparity between upper- and lower-caste individuals remains high ILLUSTRATION:BINAY SINHA

Inequality in an economy is often a product of differences in what individuals have inherited. The I ferences inequality is wealth. However, the inheritance of social status can also be a source of inequality if it becomes a dimension of relevance in the economic order.

In India, the social impact of caste status on an individual's economic prospects is well-recognised, and reflected in affirmative actions for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC), collectively referred to as lower castes. However, some argue that we should focus on poorer individuals in those eligible for affirmative action and even extend affirmative action to individuals who are poor but do not belong to a lower caste. But there are also others who advocate for a caste census with the aim of assessing the adequacy of affirmative action and strengthening it.

The central issue in deciding between these two divergent approaches is to assess with data whether, all other things being equal, a lower caste person has a lower income or poorer access to economic opportunities than the average.

Two recent studies based on the panel data from Indian Human Development Survey indicate rather clearly that caste plays an important role in determining income level. The first study regresses income on a variety of determining factors and finds that the annual income of lower-caste individuals is 21.1 per cent lower than that of the rest of the population. On a more disaggregated basis, the model shows that Adivasis' income is, on average, 28.7 per cent lower than that of upper caste groups, while the income of Dalits, Muslims, and OBCs, are 27.74 per cent, 20.17 per cent, and 19 per cent lower, respectively.