EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Toward Understanding the Nature of Inequality in India in Terms of Changing Perceptions on Its Sources and Solutions

D. Narasimha Reddy ()
Additional contact information
D. Narasimha Reddy: University of Hyderabad

A chapter in Development Challenges of India After Twenty Five Years of Economic Reforms, 2020, pp 79-99 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This paper enquires about changing perceptions of inequality in terms of its sources, consequences, and the solutions that have been thrown up by the emerging research findings on the issue. The conception of inequality is a dynamic one and has seen many transitions. This paper surveys this transition starting from Aristotle to Piketty and shows that the shift to multidimensionality of inequality, besides locating the issue in historical context in terms of social, political, and economic dimensions also calls for differentiation of types of inequality. The conventional wisdom that inequality is the result of the differences in skills and talents is questioned and other sources of inequality, mainly policies and politics, are brought into debate. The relationship of inequality with growth, poverty, and labor market outcomes is analyzed and it is shown that inequality is a constraint on growth and poverty reduction. If one were to simplify the problem of inequality into two dimensions, viz., inequality of opportunities and inequality of outcomes, perhaps there is no other country in the world other than India which faces the inequality of opportunities as deep, because of its centuries of history, and as wide because of its universal nature across all regions of the country. India is one of the very few countries which do not collect information on income through household surveys. This paper uses many alternative data sources for India and shows that there is a clear phenomenon of ‘hollowing out’ of the middle class. Fiscal policy, especially taxation, has an important role in reducing inequality. But, reliance on fiscal policy only may not be sufficient and there is a need for radical policy and political mobilization.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-15-8265-3_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9789811582653

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-15-8265-3_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in India Studies in Business and Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-04-01
Handle: RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-15-8265-3_5