NCERT solutions for सोशियोलॉजी इंडियन सोसाइटी [अंग्रेजी] कक्षा १२ chapter 5 - Patterns of Social Inequality and Exclus [Latest edition]

Identify some of the richest and some of the poorest people in your neighbourhood, people that you or your family are acquainted with. (For instance, a rickshaw puller or a porter or a domestic worker and a cinema hall owner or a construction contractor or hotel owner, or doctor… It could be something else in your context). Try to talk to one person from each group to find out about their daily routines. For each person, organise the information in the form of an imaginary diary detailing the activities of the person from the time they get up to the time they go to sleep on a typical (or average) working day. Based on these diaries, try to answer the following questions and discuss them with your classmates.

• How many hours a day do each of these persons spend at work? What kind of work do they do – in what ways is their work tiring, stressful, pleasant or unpleasant? What kinds of relationship does it involve with other people – do they have to take orders, give orders, seek cooperation, enforce discipline….? Are they treated with respect by the people they have to deal with in their work, or do they themselves have to show respect for others?

It may be that the poorest, and in some cases even the richest, person you know actually has no real ‘job’ or is currently ‘not working’. If this is so, do go ahead and find out about their daily routine anyway. But in addition, try to answer the following questions.

• Why is the person ‘unemployed’? Has he/she been looking for work? How is he/she supporting herself/himself? In what ways are they affected by the fact of not having any work? Is their lifestyle any different from when they were working?

• Collect examples of prejudiced behaviour from films or novels.
• Discuss the examples you and your classmates have gathered. How are prejudices reflected in the manner a social group is depicted? How do we decide whether a certain kind of portrayal is prejudiced or not?
• Can you distinguish between instances of prejudice that were intentional – i.e., the filmmaker or writer wanted to show it as prejudiced– and unintentional or unconscious prejudice?

Table 1: PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION LIVING BELOW THE POVERTY LINE, 2011-12

Note: OBC = Other Backward Classes; UC = ‘Upper Castes’, i.e., not SC/ST/OBC

Table 2: PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION THAT IS AFFLUENT, 1999-2000

Note: OBC = Other Backward Classes

Table 1 shows the percentage of the population of each caste/ community that lives below the official ‘Poverty Line’ for 2011–2012. There are separate columns for rural and urban India.

Table 2 is organised in exactly the same way except that it shows the percentage of population living in affluence rather than in poverty. ‘Affluence’ is here defined as a monthly per-person expenditure of Rs.1000 for rural India and Rs.2000 for urban India. This is equivalent to a family of five spending Rs.5000 per month in rural India and Rs.10,000 per month in urban India. Please take some time to study the tables carefully before you answer the questions below.

1. What is the percentage of the Indian population that was living below the poverty line in (a) Rural India and (b) Urban India?
2. Which caste/community group has the highest proportion of its members living in extreme poverty in a) rural and b) urban India? Which caste/community has the lowest percentage of population living in poverty?
3. Approximately how many times higher than the national average is the poverty percentage for each of the lower castes (ST, SC, OBC)? Is there a significant rural-urban difference?
4. Which caste/community has the lowest percentage of population living in affluence in rural and urban India respectively? How does this compare with the national average?
5. The affluent population of ‘Upper’ caste Hindus is roughly how many times larger than the percentage for the ‘lower’ castes (ST, SC, OBC)?
6. What do these tables tell you about the relative position of the OBCs? Is there a significant rural-urban difference?

Obtain a copy of the Constitution of India. You can get it from your school library, from a bookshop, or from the Internet (web address: http:// indiacode.nic.in/). Find and list all the articles and sections (laws) that deal with the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, or with caste-related problems like Untouchability. You can make a chart of the most important laws and put them up in your class.

• Find out about a social reformer in your part of the country. Collect information about her/him.
• Read an autobiography/biography of any social reformer.
• Can you see any of the ideas they fought for existing today in our everyday lives or in our constitutional provisions?

• Make a list of professions in which women are involved today.
• Can you think of any educational field where women are barred today? Perhaps the discussion on women in the Indian armed forces may throw some light on this.

• Find out the names of a few women’s organisations that emerged both at the national level and in your part of the country.
• Find out about any woman who was part of a tribal or peasant movement, a trade union or one of the many strands of the freedom movement.
• Identify a novel, a short story or play in your region which depicted the struggle of women against discrimination.

Divide your class into groups. Each group can choose a topic relating to women’s rights on which they must collect information from newspapers, radio, television news or other sources. Discuss your findings with your classmates. Possible examples of topics could be:

• 33 per cent reservation for women in elected bodies
• Domestic violence
• Right to employment… there are many other topics of interest; choose the ones which interest you.

• Find out how different traditional or mythical stories depict the disabled. You can draw from any of the innumerable regional sources of folklore, mythology, and traditional storytelling in India, or from any other part of the world.
• Make a list of examples that show positive achievements of the disabled in different fields like music, art, etc.

Have you seen the film, Iqbal? If you have not, do try and see it. It is an exemplary story of the grit and determination of a young boy who cannot hear and speak but has a passion for cricket, and finally, excels as a bowler. The film brings alive not just Iqbal’s struggles but also the many possible concrete meanings of the phrase ‘differently abled’.

Read the quote above and discuss the different ways in which the problems of the disabled are socially constituted.

How is social inequality different from the inequality of individuals?

What are some of the features of social stratification?

How would you distinguish prejudice from other kinds of opinion or belief?

What is social exclusion?

What is the relationship between caste and economic inequality today?

What is untouchability?

Describe some of the policies designed to address caste inequality.

How are the Other Backward Castes different from the Dalits (or Scheduled Castes)?

What are the major issues of concern to Adivasis today?

What are the major issues taken up by the women’s movement over its history?

In what sense can one say that ‘disability’ is as much a social as a physical thing?