District Level Inequality Analysis

Beteille (1983) made a useful distinction between two aspects of inequality – the relational and the distributional aspects. The sociologist is mostly concerned with the first kind, whereas the economist is with the second. In the first case, inequalities are seen as built into the social structure in the form of relations of superordination and subordination, i.e. the patterns of rights and obligations. The economist, on the other hand, sees inequality in the distribution of wealth or income, or, following Sen, in the distribution of certain ‘outcome indicator’ like health or educational status. Why has the economist been rather less concerned about inequality across racial, ethnic or caste groups? The answer probably lies in the methodological

As we have argued, at the conceptual level inequality refers to achievement variation among people or between groups of people. The geographical or administrative units such as the districts is brought into the analysis of inequality on the assumption that groups of people are delimited in such a way that people will be able to identify themselves as belonging to this or that district. This does not seem to be a very reasonable assumption. While it is true that the locality one belongs to may form one of the dimensions in one’s identity, it is not clear whether the district is the relevant unit. It would perhaps be more reasonable to treat inequality as the variation among socio-demographic groups rather than over the administrative units. In this context, the two different purposes that we distinguished above may be recalled. Even though from planning or resource allocation point of view, focus on districts can be justified, it serves very little purpose when it comes to social research. To tie the description of inequality or variation in achievements to a recognised social structure will make the description more pertinent to the political discussion. Rural-urban disparity, gender disparity, or disparity between scheduled castes (SC), scheduled tribes (ST) and non SC/STs are examples of more meaningful groupings from analytical point of view. The need for inter-district analysis, however, cannot be ignored either. Such analysis is necessary to address the issue of spatial variation in development outcomes, which in turn is a valuable input to resource allocation decisions by the government. What we are questioning is the tendency to give overwhelming importance to planning or administrative purposes while dealing with social