Page 34 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 2: Basic Concepts Relating to Stratification

prestige more than their castes and communities. “Increasingly, caste is becoming a Notes
desideratum, a state of mind, a plastic and malleable institution. No more hypersymbolisation
is manifest to express caste differences and typifications on a continuing basis.”
• The basis of caste system is the principle of inclusion and exclusion or pure and impure to
define superior and inferior positions and access to power and privilege. Since “exclusion”
implies social relations, we may like to use the concept as “social exclusion” rather than
mere exclusion.
• The concept of “social exclusion” is often used in the studies relating to electoral participation,
access to societal resources and opportunities, unemployment, poverty, education, health
care, etc. It is widening today. Whether social exclusion is, for example, a cause of poverty or
poverty causes social exclusion - is a vexed issue.
• Social exclusion is a negative state of process - in resource allocation mechanisms, including
power relations, agency, culture and social identity.
• The poor are excluded everywhere from access to life chances and dignity. They are
dehumanized in all walks of life. Thus, the concept of social exclusion overlaps with poverty
and marginalization, and it also embraces the relational as well as distributive aspects of
poverty.
• The state is responsible for exclusion of the people from participation in its economic, political
and social activities. Veiled rationalizations of persistence of inequality could be seen in the
Constitution of India and also in the institutional structures and practices.
• Thus, social exclusion is an evocative, ambiguous, multidimensional and expansive concept.
It explains who are denigrated, alienated, isolated, “outsiders” in a given society. Since
society is not a static entity, not only the concept of social exclusion needs to be amended
corresponding to structural and cultural changes, the nature of social exclusion and inclusion
also undergoes a change.
• Caste, ethnicity and race may be found as pronounced hurdles in some given societies,
whereas lack of economic opportunities and resources and persisting economic and political
inequalities may be found as stumbling blocks in other societies. The fact is that the poor are
denied access to opportunities for their betterment or because the people are poor, they
remain incapable to compete with those who are not poor and are capable to have successful
access to opportunities and resources.
• The Constitution of India, in the Directive Principles of State Policy “states : “The State shall
strive to promote ... a social order in which justice social, economic, and political, shall
inform all the institutions, and in particular, shall secure “that the citizens, men and women
equally have right to an adequate means of livelihood”, and “that the operation of the
economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to
the common detriments.”
• The poverty line was defined as that expenditure level where the households, on an average,
met the requirement of 2,250 calories per capita per day.
• According to Sen, the capability perspective enhances the understanding of the nature and
causes of poverty and deprivation by shifting primary attention away from means to ends,
and to the freedoms to satisfy these ends.
• Marginal peasants and landless agricultural and manual workers suffered a lot in the past.
However, due to several employment schemes and enhanced daily wages, there is perceptible
improvement in the magnitude of alleviation of poverty. Migration to towns and cities has
also reduced the incidence of poverty.

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