The shift to export-oriented market in the liberalized economy of post-1990 India has been marked by a sharp class divide that is interwoven with the legacy of the caste system. While the economy has grown over the last decades and India has secured a place among the top ten largest economies of the world, class inequality has increased with the richest one percent holding more than half of the total wealth. With the continuous growth in the economy, regional disparities in poverty and unemployment still remain. As the share of wealth for the rich in India has steadily increased, the gap between the rich and poor has become wider.
Economic growth in India has been positively associated with poverty reduction. As recent data show, the poverty rate for marginalized groups such as the Scheduled Castes is declining to slowly converge with the national average. These trends, however, are uneven across states and social groups. Additionally, structural changes with substantial reduction in agricultural sector jobs and limited opportunities in non-farm employment have hit rural women in India hard and adversely affected their labor force participation. Such gender-based inequalities in access to economic and non-economic resources are further compounded by linkages across other forms of structural inequalities including caste and class across regions.
The goal of this paper is twofold. First, I explore the connections between caste, socioeconomic positions, and gender within the context of rural poverty in India. Second, I examine how anti-poverty policies are addressing the shifts in structural changes, rural poverty, and unemployment at the intersection of class, caste, and gender. I do so by looking at the current data from a nationally representative sample survey and the anti-poverty programs of the Government of India.
