Social Exclusion and Social Wellbeing: A Study into the Indian Data

Abstract

‘Dalits’ are considered to be the marginalized section in India. In the social milieu of this country, they are excluded from the variants of life. This chapter is a modest attempt to construct an aggregative picture of social exclusion of Dalit Groups at district level in India. It is generally claimed that social exclusion is captured in brackets of non-attainment, particularly in the spheres of livelihood, education and health. However, a true index of exclusion should include of not only non-attainment but the pangs of injustice meted out to them. Such injustice may take various forms (such as crime against Dalits, non-caring of the girl child and so on). Such injustice eats into the gains of social attainment. The speciality of our index is that it includes these variables of social injustice together with the traditional indicator of non-attainment. For the construction of this index, the study has used the standard techniques of principal component analysis (PCA) with negative weights for the attributes of injustice. In order to arrive at a comparable figure, standardization of the variables is encapsulated. In explaining the differences of index value, it has taken recourse to a large fallacy of robustness that is to arrive at the conclusion. Fiducial methods have been used to arrive at a more commendable figure. The analysis shows a close relationship between Dalit Exclusion Index (DEI) and a number of variables. General impression is that as the general wellbeing of people rises, there is a fall in the Dalit exclusion. Also, it is shown that public policy have strong effect on redresser of Dalit exclusion.

Citation

Sengupta, A. and Mukherjee, S. (2023), "Social Exclusion and Social Wellbeing: A Study into the Indian Data", Das, R.C. (Ed.) Inclusive Developments Through Socio-economic Indicators: New Theoretical and Empirical Insights, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 281-292. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80455-554-520231023