For the beginning, I would like to define the notion of economic and social inequality, before we move to the main idea of this research. Economic inequality has two meanings: it can either refer to income distribution or wealth distribution among countries. Income distribution and wealth distribution refer to the national income divided among citizens of a country. According to McCarthy (2018), 'social inequality is traditionally defined as the existence of unequal opportunities for different social positions or statuses for various individuals within a group or society'. Now that we know the meaning of economic and social inequality we can move forward to the main idea of this research, we are going to analyze some countries to see how things have changed during the years and what would be useful in order to prevent inequality or to alleviate it.
One of the first countries we are going to analyze is India. As we know India is the 2nd largest country in the world after China, with a population of 1.3 billion after estimates from United Nations (2019). A little bit of history: we go back to 1980s because in that period 'domestic reforms started in what is now one of the most attractive markets for global investors' (Sintia, 2018). Also, Sintia (2018) notes that India was slowly easing restrictions and eliminating ineffective policies that had slowed social and economic progress decades after the country obtained its independence from the British Empire and in the early 2000s witnessed India entering the fastest period of economic growth in its history, averaging more than 8% increase a year from 2004 to 2014, but three years later, the country's gross domestic product reached $2.597 trillion, which surpassed France's GDP of $2.582 trillion. Despite their fast economic growth India is still considered one of the countries with a big gap between social classes. People are living in poverty and that’s not all, after a report made by Global Hunger Index in 2018 it came out that India is ranked 103rd from 119th countries on the hunger issue. These are worrying news for the Indian population. However, the situation has slightly changed over the years from 2000s. As it stands now, the GHI score for India is decreasing from year to year, the current GHI score is 31.1%, which means that the level of hunger is really serious. But, India’s top 1% owns more than 50% of the country’s wealth and it is the world’s second largest food producer and yet is also home to the second-highest population of undernourished people in the world (FAO 2015).
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This hunger issue comes from the negative effects of economic and social inequality, if there would be a better distribution of money and a wage increase for the lower classes, poverty wouldn’t affect that much the population as it is nowadays. As GHI (2016) mentions that 'the poorest people in India are those who belong to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – traditionally oppressed classes for whom the Indian constitution provides special affirmative provisions to promote and protect their social, educational and economic interests'. As a consequence, 'Dalits and Adivasis are over-proportionally affected by poverty, with 104 million people belonging to nearly 700 distinct ethnic groups, India has the second-largest tribal population in the world' (Government of India 2011). This means that '47% of the rural tribal population lives below the national poverty line, compared to the national average for rural areas of 28%' (Rao 2012).
According to Oxfam (2018), in the period between 2006 and 2015, ordinary workers saw their incomes rise by an average of just 2% a year while billionaire wealth rose almost six times faster. The CEO of Oxfam India, Nisha Agrawal (2016) mentions that: 'The Indian government’s efforts at reducing inequality and combating poverty faster are woefully inadequate. It needs to stop the super-rich and the corporates from continuing to rob India of its wealth, but also needs to invest more in agriculture, and implementing fully the social protection schemes (such as rural job scheme and the Food Security Act) that already exist'. Although, this is not the only problem in India, 'malnutrition undermined people’s health, often leading to the needless grief of a child’s preventable death or the catastrophic loss of a mother in childbirth' (David, 2016). The death rate while giving birth is decreasing. In 10 years it has decrea
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