Equality in Democratic India

The Constitution of India, in it's preamble, resolves to secure to all it's citizens, equality of status and opportunity and since these terms have got a wide meaning, the concept of equality is not as simple as it appears.


In India, the concept of equality is mainly referred to in the context of disparities created by the caste system. The social inequality is manifested in a number of ways - the rich and the poor, landowners and landless labourers, capitalists and workers, educated and uneducated, employed and unemployed, men and women and modern and backward. In addition to this, there is internal inequality among the rich, workers of different strata and so on.

According to the author of the book 'Caste in a different mould', OBCs account for 41% of the population and their share of graduates in the total number of technical, managerial and other professions (White collar jobs) is similarly placed at 36%. This doesn't suggest a tremendous degree of deprivation in the access to education or job opportunities in the country. So this brings us to the important issue that groups of people can have real or imaginary notions of deprivation and inequality. The Supreme court has rightly judged that there is a 'creamy layer' among the OBCs in India.

Equality is an ideal accepted by all the enlightened and progressive societies and individuals but it's not a social reality.

The political development of this concept has been going on for the part 250 years. The two epoch making events, the American War of Independence (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) transferred the concept of equality from the religious and metaphysic level to politics. After the Industrial Revolution, the inequality in Europe acquired giant proportions and is a reaction to it, the philosophy of political - social - cultural equality started getting a modern shape. The concept of equality which had grown on the experiences of Europe and America, developed in India on the canvas of 'caste ridden' social reality that existed here. 
The equality envisaged by Gandhiji was based on compassion and was closer to the teachings of Jesus Christ.


The concept of equality accepted by our Constitution is mainly Western, i.e. based on what happened there. This transplant intended to eradicate the stringency of the caste system, its inequality and injustice doesn't appear to have taken root here. As a result, everyone has his/her own version of 'removal of inequality' to suit his/her own convenience.


The Marxist interpretation of 'true equality' will be established when the working class comes to power and exterminates the capitalist class. As we all know, Mao-Tse-Tung's cultural revolution to prove that no job is inferior or superior to the other, failed to bring about social equality. On the contrary, it brought about total anarchy.

The policy of reservation was put forward with a view of eliminating the caste-based inequalities in our society but 61 years of independence has proved that the poor are the poor, caste no bar, and poverty still remains colour blind. This seems to suggest that fixing the problem of educational backwardness among the disadvantaged is more important than resolving problems of income backwardness.

The struggle for equality is indeed very long and it isn't as easy as it appears to be. If the 'progressive Brahmins',  'the Dalit rebels', 'the communist revolutionaries' and others come to realise the tendency to make political capital of inequalities, then things will be much better. 

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Source: Various websites and the Hindu newspaper.