Patterns of Social Inequality Class 12 NCERT Solutions

Concept used. Social inequality is the patterned, unequal access of whole groups of people to valued social resources such as money, property, education, health and power. It is different from the inequality of individuals, which comes from innate or personal differences like one person's special talent, intelligence or effort. The key idea is that social inequality is produced by society, not by nature, and it attaches to a group, not to a lone person.

1. Individual inequality is personal. Some differences between people do come from innate ability or effort. One person may be unusually intelligent or talented, or may simply have worked very hard to gain wealth and status. This is the inequality of individuals.
2. Social inequality is about groups, not persons. By and large, the differences that matter are non-individual or group differences. People do not get a smaller share of resources because of who they are as individuals, but because of the group they belong to, their caste, class, gender, religion, ethnicity or ability.
3. It is produced by society, not by nature. Social inequality is not the outcome of natural differences between people. It is created and kept going by the way society is organised, so it would not exist if society were arranged differently.
4. It is systematic and structured. There is a definite pattern to social inequality. The same groups tend to be advantaged or disadvantaged across generations, which is why hard work alone rarely lets a poor worker rise. This regular, society-wide pattern is what makes the inequality social.

Individual inequality flows from a person's own innate ability or effort and is personal. Social inequality is the patterned, group-based inequality (by caste, class, gender, religion or ability) that society itself produces and passes on across generations.

Concept used. Social stratification is the term sociologists use for a system by which categories of people in a society are ranked in a hierarchy. This hierarchy shapes people's identity, their relations with others and their access to resources and opportunities. The text gives three key principles, or features, that explain how stratification works.

1. It is a characteristic of society, not just of individual differences. Stratification is a society-wide system that distributes social resources unequally among categories of people. In technologically simple societies, like hunting and gathering groups, little was produced, so only rudimentary stratification existed. In advanced societies that produce a surplus, resources are distributed unequally to social categories regardless of people's innate abilities.
2. It persists over generations. Stratification is closely tied to the family and to the inheritance of social resources from one generation to the next. A person's social position is ascribed, that is, children take on the social position of their parents. In the caste system, birth itself dictates occupational opportunity.
3. It is reinforced by endogamy. The ascribed nature of stratification is strengthened by endogamy, marriage restricted to members of the same group, usually the same caste. Endogamy rules out inter-caste marriage and so prevents the blurring of caste lines.
4. It is supported by belief, or ideology. No system of stratification lasts across generations unless it is widely seen as fair or inevitable. The caste system, for example, is justified by the opposition of purity and pollution. Typically those with the greatest privileges support the system most strongly, while those at the bottom are most likely to challenge it.

Social stratification has four key features: it is a feature of society rather than of individuals; it persists over generations through the family and ascribed status; it is reinforced by endogamy; and it is supported by patterns of belief or ideology, such as purity and pollution, that make it look fair or inevitable.

Concept used. Prejudice refers to pre-conceived opinions or attitudes held by members of one group towards another. The word literally means pre-judgement, an opinion formed in advance, before any familiarity with the subject and before considering the available evidence. What sets prejudice apart from an ordinary opinion or belief is not the content but the way it is formed and held: in advance, on hearsay, and resistant to change.

1. Prejudice is formed in advance. An ordinary opinion can be formed after looking at a person or situation. A prejudice is a pre-judgement, made before any familiarity and before weighing any evidence at all.
2. Prejudice rests on hearsay, not direct evidence. A prejudiced person's preconceived views are based on what they have heard rather than on direct experience. A reasoned belief, by contrast, can be traced to evidence the holder has actually examined.
3. Prejudice resists change. Even when new information arrives, the prejudiced view does not shift. An ordinary opinion is open to revision when the facts change; a prejudice is stubborn in the face of new evidence.
4. Prejudice can be positive or negative. Although the word is usually used for negative pre-judgements, it also covers favourable ones. A person may be prejudiced in favour of their own caste or group, believing without any evidence that they are superior to others.
5. Prejudice is often grounded in stereotypes. Prejudices rest on stereotypes, fixed and inflexible characterisations of a whole group. A stereotype freezes an entire community into one category and refuses to recognise variation across individuals, contexts or time.

Prejudice differs from an ordinary opinion or belief in how it is formed and held: it is a pre-judgement made in advance of any evidence, based on hearsay, resistant to change even when facts contradict it, can be positive or negative, and is usually grounded in fixed stereotypes about a whole group.

Concept used. Social exclusion refers to the ways in which individuals may become cut off from full involvement in the wider society. It points to a broad range of factors that prevent individuals or groups from having the opportunities open to the majority of the population. The crucial point is that exclusion is not accidental but systematic, the result of structural features of society.

1. It cuts people off from full social life. To live a full and active life, a person must not only feed, clothe and house themselves, but also reach essential goods and services like education, health, transport, insurance, social security, banking, and even the police and judiciary. Exclusion blocks access to these.
2. It is broader than poverty alone. We often discuss exclusion as if it were only about differential economic resources, but this is only partly true. People also face exclusion because of their gender, religion, ethnicity, language, caste and disability. A privileged woman may face harassment in public; a minority professional may be denied a flat in a city colony.
3. It is systematic, not accidental. Social exclusion is not a chance event. It is systematic and follows from structural features of society, so the same groups are excluded again and again rather than at random.
4. It is enforced and so hard to escape. The excluded cannot simply opt back in, because the exclusion is built into how institutions work. Dalits, for instance, were historically barred from shared water sources and collective worship, an exclusion forced on them, not chosen.

Social exclusion is the set of ways in which individuals or groups are cut off from full involvement in the wider society and denied access to the opportunities, goods and services open to the majority. It runs deeper than poverty, works through gender, religion, ethnicity, caste and disability, and is systematic, the result of structural features of society, not accidental.

Concept used. Historically, the caste system linked caste status tightly to economic status: high castes were almost always of high economic status and low castes of low economic status. The question asks how far that link, the caste-class correlation, still holds today. The answer has two layers: at the everyday level the link has loosened, but at the macro level it remains remarkably stable.

1. In strict scripture, status and wealth were separate. In strict scriptural terms, social and economic status were meant to be sharply separated. The ritually highest caste, the Brahmins, were not supposed to amass wealth and were subordinate to the secular power of Kshatriya kings, while the king in turn was subordinate to the Brahmin in the ritual sphere.
2. In practice the two coincided. In actual history, economic and social status tended to go together. There was a close correlation between caste status and economic status, with high castes of high economic status and low castes of low economic status.
3. The link has weakened at the individual level. Since the nineteenth century the tie between caste and occupation has become much less rigid. Ritual prohibitions on changing occupation are not easily imposed today, and rich and poor people are now found in every caste.
4. But it is stable at the macro level. This is the key point: the caste-class correlation is still remarkably stable at the macro level. The privileged, high-economic-status sections remain overwhelmingly upper caste, while the disadvantaged, low-status sections are dominated by the lower castes. The share of population in poverty or affluence differs greatly across caste groups.
5. Caste still shapes life chances. Despite a century of social movements, changed modes of production and state efforts to suppress caste's public role, caste continues to affect the life chances of Indians in the twenty-first century.

Today the caste-economic link has loosened at the individual level, rich and poor are found in every caste, and ritual bars on changing occupation have faded. But at the macro level the correlation is remarkably stable: the privileged are overwhelmingly upper caste and the disadvantaged are dominated by the lower castes, so caste still shapes the life chances of Indians.

Concept used. Untouchability is an extreme and particularly vicious aspect of the caste system that prescribes stringent social sanctions against members of castes located at the bottom of the purity-pollution scale. Strictly speaking, the untouchable castes are placed outside the caste hierarchy, considered so impure that their mere touch, and even their presence or shadow in some regions, is thought to pollute members of all other castes. Its three main dimensions are exclusion, humiliation-subordination and exploitation.

1. It is rooted in extreme pollution. The untouchable castes are seen as so impure that their touch severely pollutes others, bringing terrible punishment for them and forcing others into elaborate purification rituals. In many regions, especially the south, even the presence or shadow of an untouchable person was held to pollute (distance pollution).
2. Exclusion. Untouchability means more than avoiding physical contact. It involves a much broader set of social sanctions. Dalits faced forms of exclusion unique to them, such as being barred from shared drinking-water sources and from collective religious worship, social ceremonies and festivals.
3. Humiliation and subordination. Untouchability subjects Dalits to degradation and a forced lower position. While other low castes also face some subordination, they do not suffer the extreme exclusion reserved for untouchables.
4. Exploitation. Untouchability is almost always tied to economic exploitation, most commonly through forced, unpaid or under-paid labour, or the confiscation of property.
5. It is a pan-Indian phenomenon. Untouchability is found across India, although its specific forms and intensity vary considerably across regions and socio-historical contexts.

Untouchability is the extreme and vicious aspect of caste that places the lowest castes outside the hierarchy as so impure that their touch (and even shadow, in some regions) is held to pollute others. It works through three linked dimensions, exclusion, humiliation-subordination and exploitation, and is a pan-Indian phenomenon with regionally varying forms.

Concept used. The policies designed to address caste inequality fall into two broad kinds: reservation (setting aside seats and posts for disadvantaged castes) and a body of anti-discrimination laws that prohibit and punish caste discrimination, especially untouchability. The Indian state has run special programmes for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes since even before Independence, beginning with the Schedules drawn up in 1935.

1. The Schedules and their extension. The Schedules listing the castes and tribes recognised as deserving special treatment were drawn up in 1935 by the British Indian government. After Independence these policies continued, and from the early 1990s special programmes were extended to the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
2. Reservations. The most important initiative is reservation, the setting aside of seats for Scheduled Castes and Tribes in public life: reservation of seats in the State and Central legislatures, of jobs in government service and public-sector companies, and of seats in educational institutions. For SCs and STs the proportion of reserved seats equals their share in the total population; for OBCs it is decided differently.
3. Early anti-discrimination laws. Several laws were passed to end, prohibit and punish caste discrimination. One of the earliest was the Caste Disabilities Removal Act of 1850, which barred the curtailment of citizens' rights solely because of a change of religion or caste, and was used to allow Dalits entry into government schools.
4. The Constitution and the Atrocities Act. The Constitution of India (1950) abolished untouchability under Article 17 and introduced the reservation provisions. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989 revised and strengthened the provisions punishing acts of violence or humiliation against Dalits and adivasis.
5. Recent measures. The most recent such law was the Constitution (Ninety-Third Amendment) Act of 2005, in force from January 2006, which introduced reservation for the OBCs in institutions of higher education.

The policies against caste inequality run on two tracks. Reservation sets aside seats in legislatures, government jobs and education for Scheduled Castes and Tribes (proportional to population) and, since the 1990s, for OBCs. Anti-discrimination laws, from the Caste Disabilities Removal Act 1850 through Article 17 of the Constitution, the 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act and the 93rd Amendment of 2005, prohibit and punish caste discrimination, especially untouchability.

Concept used. The Dalits or Scheduled Castes are the ex-untouchable castes who suffered the most visible and comprehensive form of social discrimination, untouchability. The Other Backward Classes (OBCs) are a different category: castes of low status who faced discrimination short of untouchability. The two differ in the kind of discrimination they faced, how the category is defined, its internal diversity, and its religious spread.

1. Different degree of discrimination. Untouchability was the most visible and comprehensive form of discrimination, suffered by the Dalits. The OBCs were a large group of castes of low status subjected to varying levels of discrimination short of untouchability. They were chiefly the service and artisanal castes occupying the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy.
2. Defined negatively, by what they are not. The Constitution recognised that groups other than SCs and STs may suffer social disadvantage, calling them the socially and educationally backward classes, the constitutional basis of the term OBC. Like the category tribe, OBCs are defined negatively: they are neither the forward castes at the top nor the Dalits at the bottom.
3. More internally diverse. The OBCs are a far more diverse group than the Dalits or adivasis. There is a large gap between the upper OBCs, who are largely landed castes dominant in rural society, and the lower OBCs, who are very poor and often not very different from Dalits in socio-economic terms.
4. Cut across religions. Because caste has entered all the major Indian religions and is not confined to Hinduism, there are members of other religions among the backward castes who share the same occupational identity and similar or worse socio-economic status.
5. Different political history. The OBC issue grew first as a regional, state-level affair (especially in the southern states with their long history of backward-caste agitation), returned to the centre with the Mandal Commission, and became a major national issue only in 1990. Recent surveys put OBCs at about 41% of the national population.

The Dalits (Scheduled Castes) are the ex-untouchables who suffered the most extreme and comprehensive discrimination, untouchability. The OBCs are the service and artisanal castes who faced discrimination short of untouchability; they are defined negatively (neither forward castes nor Dalits), are far more internally diverse (landed upper OBCs versus very poor lower OBCs), cut across religions, and make up about 41% of the population.

Concept used. Adivasis are the Scheduled Tribes, communities believed to be the original inhabitants, the people of the forest, whose habitat in hill and forest areas shaped their economy, society and politics. The major issues of concern to them today flow from a long history of resource extraction, displacement and what the text calls internal colonialism, the subjugation of adivasis and the alienation of the resources they depend on.

1. Loss of forests and forest rights. From the late nineteenth century the colonial government reserved most forest tracts for its own use, cutting the rights adivasis had long held to gather forest produce and practise shifting cultivation. With forests protected for timber, the mainstay of their livelihood was taken away, leaving them poorer and insecure, and often prosecuted as encroachers.
2. Displacement by development projects. After 1947 the state's monopoly over forests continued, and capital-intensive industrialisation needed the minerals and power concentrated in adivasi areas. Adivasi lands were rapidly taken for mines and dams, and millions were displaced without proper compensation or rehabilitation. Projects like the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada and the Polavaram dam on the Godavari displaced hundreds of thousands.
3. Liberalisation deepening the threat. These processes have grown stronger since the 1990s, when economic liberalisation made it easier for corporate firms to acquire large areas of land by displacing adivasis.
4. In-migration of non-tribals. Since the mid-nineteenth century non-tribals have moved into the tribal districts of central India, while tribal people have migrated out to plantations, mines and factories. In areas of tribal concentration, adivasi economic and social conditions are usually much worse than those of non-tribals.
5. Assertion of identity and statehood. Like the term Dalit, the term Adivasi connotes political awareness and the assertion of rights. Many groups have waged struggles against outsiders (dikus) and the state. The most significant achievements include statehood for Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, a path open to adivasis because, unlike Dalits, they are concentrated in contiguous areas.

The major issues for adivasis today are the loss of forests and forest rights, displacement by mines and dams (Sardar Sarovar, Polavaram) without proper rehabilitation, the deepening of this threat under post-1990 liberalisation, the in-migration of non-tribals that worsens their relative position, and the assertion of adivasi identity and demands for self-rule, won as statehood for Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Concept used. The women's movement in India runs from the nineteenth-century social reform movements, through women's own writing and their part in the national movement, to the re-emergence of women's issues in the 1970s and the new challenges of the twenty-first century. The issues it took up changed over time, from the worst abuses of tradition to modern questions of representation, law and the girl child.

1. Nineteenth-century reform: the worst abuses of tradition. The women's question arose with the middle-class social reform movements. Reformers attacked the most glaring evils: Raja Rammohun Roy led the anti-sati campaign in Bengal, Ranade led the widow-remarriage movement in the Bombay Presidency, Jyotiba Phule attacked caste and gender oppression together, and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan worked for reform, including girls' education, within Muslim society.
2. Women's own voices. The movement was not fought by male reformers alone. Women wrote too: Tarabai Shinde's Stree Purush Tulana (1882) protested the double standards of a male-dominated society, and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Sultana's Dream (1905) imagined a Ladyland with gender roles reversed.
3. The national movement. Women's rights became part of the nationalist vision. The 1931 Karachi Session of the Congress declared all citizens equal before the law irrespective of sex and committed to women's right to vote, to representation and to hold public office.
4. Re-emergence in the 1970s: modern issues. Two decades after Independence, women's issues returned. Where the nineteenth century had focused on backward aspects of tradition (sati, child marriage, ill-treatment of widows), the 1970s turned to modern issues: the representation of women in popular media and the gendered consequences of unequal development.
5. Law and new challenges. The 1980s and after made law a major site of reform, since many laws of concern to women had not changed since the nineteenth century. Newer issues include the sharp fall in the child sex ratio and the social bias against the girl child, one of the new challenges of gender inequality.

Over its history the women's movement moved through stages: the nineteenth-century reformers fought sati, widow remarriage and the ill-treatment of widows; women's own writing and the national movement pressed for equality and the vote; the 1970s revival took up media representation and the gendered effects of unequal development; the 1980s made law a key battleground; and newer struggles address the falling child sex ratio and bias against the girl child.

Concept used. The social model of disability argues that the differently abled are disabled not only because they are physically or mentally impaired, but also because society is built in a way that does not cater to their needs. So disability has two sides: a physical impairment in the body, and a social disablement created by how society is organised, in its buildings, its attitudes and its cultural beliefs. The text's claim is that the second side, the social, is decisive.

1. Society does the disabling. People are rendered disabled not because they are biologically disabled but because society renders them so. As Brisenden put it, we are disabled by buildings not designed to admit us, and this in turn limits our education, employment and social life. The disablement lies in the construction of society, not in the physical condition of the individual.
2. The common perception is socially constructed. The dominant view treats disability as a biological given, sees the disabled person as a helpless victim in need of help, and traces every problem to the impairment. In India, labels like disability, handicap, crippled, blind and deaf are used as insults; in a culture that prizes bodily perfection, all deviations are read as defect and abnormality.
3. Culture frames it as fate. Indian cultural conceptions often view an impaired body as the result of fate or as retribution for past karma, so the disabled person is cast as a victim with no reprieve. Mythology portrays the disabled in an extremely negative fashion. These are social and cultural attitudes, not physical facts.
4. Disability and poverty reinforce each other. There is a close link between disability and poverty. Malnutrition, mothers weakened by frequent childbirth, poor immunisation and accidents in overcrowded homes raise disability among the poor, and disability in turn deepens poverty through isolation and economic strain. This social and economic loop has nothing to do with the impairment itself.
5. Language can challenge it. Changing the very terms (mentally challenged, visually impaired, physically impaired in place of retarded, crippled, lame) shows the perception can be questioned. The term disabled itself draws attention to the need to question public perception, an act of social, not physical, change.

Disability is as much social as physical because, beyond the bodily impairment, it is society that disables people: buildings, schools and workplaces not designed for them, attitudes that brand them victims, and cultural beliefs that read impairment as fate or karma. Poverty and disability also reinforce each other socially. The disablement lies in the construction of society, so the social side is at least as real as the physical.