Equality

INTRODUCTION-
We invoke the concept of equality when we want to be counted as an equal, to be treated—and
aspiring or claiming to be treated—as an equal, to be equally entitled to social goods.

But what does it mean to be treated as an equal is that we are clearly not referring to anatomical
similarities, save the difference between men and women, and the common facts of our social
existence that we, as humans, possess: to wit, the use of language, ability to reproduce, living in
societies, and so on. But we are alike in more fundamental respects. Our capacity to feel pain or to
suffer, capacity to experience affection for others and to be able to bear relevant consequences of
the same are capacities that have a moral resonance.

As Bernard Williams (1962) highlights, these are moral capacities that are universal to humanity.
However, there are other characteristics as well that we possess and these connect us to other
humans in important ways. One of these would be a ‘desire for self-respect’, which helps us unravel
our own goals without being instruments of others’ will.

In short, there is something common in our collective experience that forms the core of our
egalitarian beliefs. This makes certain causes worthy of pursuit and helps realize the significance of
some of our struggles against unequal relationships and social order. Along with other political
values such as justice or liberty, equality offers us a moral framework that we draw upon to make
political judgements, and explain, prescribe or criticize certain political views and forms of political
action.

The concept of equality lies at the heart of normative political theory.

Equality is a relationship between two or more persons or groups regarding some aspect of their
lives. The idea of equality is not, however, a simple one and hence it is not always easy to speak with
accuracy what that relationship ought to be and in respect of what.

The concept of equality can yield various conceptions depending on how we unpack the building-
blocks—relationships, persons, relevant attributes—and propose an appropriate relationship
between them.

EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

Starting from the ancient Greek civilization till the 20th century, notable for its many egalitarian
experiments, the idea of equality has evoked some of the strongest human passions. The content of
the concept has undergone momentous transformations across centuries shaping, and being shaped
by, the millions of people that have been inspired to fight various political battles sometimes against
an autocrat, at other times against unjust social conditions, and on other occasions against
undemocratic regimes or policies.

Tracing the history of an idea is fraught with difficulties, one of which is the problem of recovery of
an interpretive exercise.

Quite a lot has already been said on how we should go about interpreting texts and events, the focus
of disagreement being on whether or not we can successfully employ contemporary lenses to judge
contributions of past authors. Some say we can, and others claim this is impossible. Those who deny
the possibility suggest that in order for interpretation to be authentic, it needs to be contextual, not
textual.

The one further issue that remains, however, is that either the recovery of an idea can promise
progressive revelation culminating in some contemporary set of ideals or it may very well be an
account of degeneration concluding in a set of dangerous trends visible in contemporary times. The
project of recovery, in other words, is laden with either hope or despair.

Most exercises of recovering the history of normative concepts in political theory aim at a
progressive revival, noting in the process how ideas widen and deepen in scope. This is usually helped
by drawing on the role that other ideas or values have also played in enriching the one under study.
Thus, an account of the idea of equality cannot be separated from parallel accounts of liberty,
justice, rights, popular sovereignty or democracy from which it feeds and is inspired by.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the author of the classic Democracy in America, writes that there is something
irresistible and inevitable about the spread and progress of equality in the history of humankind. The
main features of this progress, he claims, are its universality and permanence and the fact that the
ideal ‘is daily passing beyond human control, and every human and every man helps it along’

Aristotle
Aristotle’s Athenian Constitution contains many references of egalitarian reforms initiated in Athens
that prepared the passage for testing the democratic ideal. At the heart of the reforms were
attempts that sought to reduce inequalities in many spheres of social life including, most
importantly, the ending of aristocratic stranglehold over land, power and honour.

Practices of equality established by law were a sine qua non of democratic rule. A word that
competed in common usage with demokratia in ancient Athens was isonomia, meaning equality
before and within the law, a form of political equality that secured the equal participation of ‘the
many’ who were poor in the regime.

Yet, ancient Athens also had other classes of people who were excluded from the domain of
citizenship: metics (foreigners), slaves and women.

He gave the first classic statement of formal equality, reiterating the dominant conception of legal
equality of treating like cases alike, and unlike cases unlike.

Note that in Aristotle’s view, nature, which does nothing in vain, divides people into the ruling and
the ruled, where, to belong to the ruling category one must have rational, deliberative and
authoritative capacities (true for some men, but not all). This inequality between the ruling and the
ruled—the unequals—is just.

Hobbes
If Aristotle defends natural inequality and then proposes a corresponding political equality between
some humans (usually male citizens), Hobbes, who quarrels with Aristotle the most, defends a view
of the natural equality between all humans in the state of nature.

As to the strength of the body, Hobbes proclaims that even the weakest has enough strength to kill
the strongest either by secret plot or by conspiring with others.
What Hobbes proposes is the equal ability of individuals in the state of nature which gives rise to an
equality of hope to achieve our ends. What drives individuals is an equal ability to work as well as an
equal and irresistible passion for power.

From this condition of equality, beset however by the passions of self-glorification and competition
for more power, emerges the fi rst threat to equality when men try to dominate and subjugate
others.

In this quest for more power, men forgo the need for security and live in a state of depravity. Unless
men agree to cede (surrender) a part of their power to the political authority and accept to lead a
civilized but equal existence under the domination of authority, they can never be fully secure.

In the Hobbesian vocation, it is important to acknowledge the achievement of natural equality

among men freed from all non-political sources of authority, including the religious.

Rousseau on Inequality
He delves deep into the issue of human inequality, describing its various types that exist among
human beings and determining which kind of inequality are ‘natural’ and which ones are ‘unnatural’.
Rousseau presents his analysis of society and the origins of inequality as a historical narrative.

For Rousseau, man in his state of nature is essentially an animal like any other, driven by two key
motivating principles: pity and self-preservation. In the state of nature, which is more a hypothetical
idea man neither is a rational creature nor possesses the concept of good and evil, has few needs,
and is essentially happy.

The only thing that separates him from the beasts is some sense of unrealized perfectibility. This
notion of perfectibility is what allows human beings to change with time, and according to Rousseau,
it becomes important the moment an isolated human being is forced to adapt to his environment
and allows himself to be shaped by it.

When natural disasters force people to move from one place to another, make contact with other
people, and form small groups or elementary societies, new needs are created, and men begin to
move out of the state of nature towards something very different. Rousseau writes that as
individuals have more contact with one another and small groups begin to form, the human mind
develops language, which, in turn, contributes to the development of reason. Life in the collective
state also precipitates the development of a new, negative motivating principle for human actions.
Rousseau calls this principle amour propre, and it drives men to compare themselves to others. This
drive towards comparison with others is not only rooted in the desire to preserve the self and pity
others, but it also drives men to seek domination over their fellow human beings as a way of
augmenting their own happiness.

Rousseau states that with the development of amour propre and more complex human societies,
private property is invented, and the labour necessary for human survival is divided among different
individuals to provide for the whole. This division of labour and the beginning of private property
allow the property owners and all those who live off the labour of others to dominate and exploit
the poor. Rousseau observes that the poor resent this state of affairs and will naturally seek war
against the rich to end their unfair domination.

In Rousseau’s history, when the rich recognize this, they deceive the poor into joining a political
society that claims to grant them the equality they seek. The universal consent of humanity is
needed to justify the institution of private property. Instead of granting equality, however, the rich
sanctify their oppression and make an unnatural moral inequality a permanent feature of civil
society.

Rousseau notes how the changing nature of institutionalized inequality transforms the dynamic of
social relations. If the right to property and the establishment of law was the fi rst stage, it
authorized the status of rich and poor. The institution of magistracy was the second stage and it
established the relations between the powerful and the weak. The last stage effected the
transformation of legitimate power into arbitrary power (which we just discussed above) that
authorized the existence of masters and slaves.

Rousseau’s claims that when no more inequality is possible and things have been stretched to their
limits, ‘new revolutions dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to its legitimate
institution’.

The only natural inequality among men is that which results from differences in physical strength, for
this is the only sort of inequality that exists in the state of nature. As he explains, however, in modern
societies the creation of laws and property has corrupted natural men and created new forms of
inequality that are not in accordance with natural law. Rousseau calls these unjustifi able,
unacceptable forms of inequality. It is, in other words, moral inequality, and he concludes by making
clear that this sort of inequality must be contested.

Marx
At one level, Marx’s views on equality can best be described as a critique of liberal equality. In his
polemic against the prevalent socialist conception of equality, Marx derided his contemporaries for
their inability to account for the materialistic conception of history. It was necessary for Marx to
correct popular misconceptions surrounding the ideal whose uses were more in the interest of the
bourgeois.

The parallel between Rousseau and Marx here is pretty evident. As Rousseau laments how the poor
get duped by the promises made by the rich to secure the consent of the former to institute
‘legitimate’ power, Marx also shows how the ruling class produces a legitimating ideology to
perpetuate the system of economic exploitation. Towards that end, the division of labour in the
ruling class of a capitalist society will ensure a division between mental and material labour, and
correspondingly the division between the ‘the thinkers of the class’ and the capital owners will
emerge.

What Marx envisions for the final stage of history—the communist, classless society— becomes
clear only when we understand the impossibility of human emancipation under conditions of
exploitative social relations. The question of human emancipation is linked to freedom from
economic inequalities. The capitalist system intensifies and heightens economic inequality. In the
transitional socialist stage, emancipation is not complete but equal access to the means of
production is ensured. In this transitional stage many capitalist practices, including the necessity of
labour and material incentives, do not vanish. The distributive principle in operation during the stage
is guided by the principle of ‘to each according to his work’

‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’. Under communism, man will no
longer be regarded simply as a producer but as a person with needs and desires, which, rather than
his contribution of labour, will be the basis for the distribution of goods. The distribution of goods,
properly understood, is the consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production. Scarcity
and conflict of economic interests are contingent aspects of class societies. These will disappear with
the inauguration of communist society.

Tocqueville
The central thrust of Tocqueville’s work was to study equality as a tendency of modern history. His
study of the American democratic revolution was designed to understand the historical transition
from feudalism to democracy in the Western society as a whole. His study was not meant to just
identify the transition, but to account for it as well.

The project involved explaining the gradual and progressive development of social equality. Equality
as an ideal appeals to people who wish to escape conditions of servitude and dependence. It makes
democratic life possible.

In comparing aristocracy with democracy, Tocqueville notes: ‘Aristocracy links everybody, from
peasant to king, in one long chain. Democracy breaks the chain and frees each link’. In democracies,
men prefer equality to liberty, and hold on to it tenaciously. ‘The charms of equality are felt the
whole time and are within the reach of all; the noblest spirits appreciate them, and the commonest
minds exult in them. The passion generated by equality is therefore both strong and general’

However, Tocqueville warns us of the dangers of excessive equality. There are times when the
passions for equality may turn into a delirium. Tocqueville is equivocal about the consequences of
social equality on political life. Although passions for equality may be found to exist very strongly in
democracies, it is vital, in his view that a single-minded pursuit of equality at the expense of liberty
may prove detrimental to the political health of democracies.

WHY EQUALIZE?
Equality is valuable for fulfilling four different ends to which it has an intrinsic connection-

First, equality is sometimes required in order to be fair. If there are benefits or burdens to distribute,
then, other things being equal, it is unfair to distribute them unequally. It is unfair, say, to award
unequal marks or grades to two talented students who have performed identically in their
examinations. In the absence of good moral reasons for an unequal distribution, fairness requires
equality.

Second, equality is desirable because some measure of equality is necessary for self-respect . People
may belong to different positions in society but that should not reflect on how they perceive each
other. When a person feels that in spite of the status differences that she shares with others she is
as good as none, her self-respect is in danger. A fundamental way of understanding the need for
self-respect is to acknowledge that the gap between a person’s self-image and how others who are
better off perceive that person is not too huge. Often, this calls for correcting unjust external
conditions—by way of, for example, ensuring a minimally just material condition—that have a
bearing on a person’s self-image.

Third, equality enjoins a duty to show respect to others. The ability to possess self-respect is not the
only thing that matters, but how one treats others. Showing equal respect implies recognizing that
all people have capacities to deliberate for themselves and to engage in activities and relationships
that are considered intrinsically valuable.

Finally, equality is necessary to foster fraternity. Conditions of equality induce some measure of
solidarity among the inhabitants of a society by way of removing systematic barriers to social
intercourse. Most commuters in buses and on trains do not worry about the caste or religious
affiliation of their fellow passenger. Across caste and communal divide, people join hands to fight
various forms of injustice. This is possible because we believe in the ideal of equality. Inequalities are
objectionable in part because they place barriers to friendship, community and love.

The argument to be fair on grounds of distributive justice focuses on the equal satisfaction of basic
needs. The argument from the perspective of self-respect makes a case for equality of status by
requiring that material inequalities should not be glaring. The case for equal respect demands
prerequisites of equal opportunities for self-development. Finally, the argument from the
perspective of fraternity makes a case for social equality.

EQUALITY OF WHAT?
We are chiefly talking here about distributional equality. Scholars generally identify three metrics of
equality: welfare, resources and capabilities. Besides the above, there is an alternative conception of
equality that is less a competitor to distributional equality and more of a complement.

Equality of Welfare
Utilitarians generally argue that the project of distributional equality amounts to the distribution of
welfare.

‘Welfare’ here is primarily understood in two ways. According to the classical utilitarian thinking, as
espoused by Jeremy Bentham, welfare refers to the happiness which is understood as the net
balance of pleasure over pain that the individual experiences. According to this view, in assessing
how well-off someone is in life, we should look at how happy he or she is, that is, at the net balance
of pleasure over pain in his/her life. In more recent writings, however, welfare is identified with
desire or preference-satisfaction; people have more or less welfare, and so have better or worse
lives in a fundamental sense, depending on how far they satisfy their desires or their preferences. In
deciding which preferences matter most to a person, the person must be able to form his/her own
judgements independently and with full information without any scope for errors of reasoning.

A society that believes in distributing welfare equally will not worry much about how much
resources individuals get, but whether or not these resources are instrumental in securing for each
individual a level of satisfaction or happiness (whether in terms of pleasure or preference-fulfilment)
equal to everyone else. Under such a scheme, it is imperative that we fulfil everyone’s welfare
equally irrespective of the inequality entailed in the distribution of resources. Someone who has a
taste for an expensive car or jewellery is to be treated at par with someone who is happy riding a
bicycle or owning a lantern. There is a moral issue here, however, that is bound to engage our
intuitive (inherent) notions of fairness.

Demands to treat preferences equally can at times be morally worrisome and unsustainable. The
ideal of equality of welfare, let us be clear, certainly does not promote the cause of fairness, self-
respect, or fraternity. In many ways, the ideal is considered morally objectionable by most liberals
and is held to be unattractive as a yardstick for social policy.

Equality of welfare (ma’am ki ppt se liya matter)

 Utilitarians argue that distributional equality implies distribution of welfare.
 Welfare exists in utilitarian sense of the term implying net pleasure or happiness of
individuals.
  In assessing how well off a person is in life, look at how happy he or she is, that is net
balance of pleasure over pain.
 A society that believes in distributing welfare equally will not worry much about how much
resources each individual shall get, but whether or not these resources are instrumental in
securing level of satisfaction/happiness.

Equality of Resources
The resourcist view of equality or ‘resource egalitarianism’ is most expressly identified with the
views of John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and Eric Rakowski.

Equality of resources: Ronald Dworkin (ma’am ke ppt se liya matter)

 Equality of resources, according to Dworkin, holds that a distributional scheme treats people
as equal when it distributes or transfers so that no further transfer would leave their shares
of the total resources more equal.
 Dworkin suggests a two stage process: Ambition sensitive auction and insurance scheme.
 Dworkin explains the concept using philosopher fiction or a story.
 Imagine a group of people land up on a deserted island with abundant resources and no
native population. One person is responsible to distribute resources equally. Such division
will follow the auction procedure. Depending on goals of each individual, choice shall be
exercised by individuals regarding choosing resources.
 Everyone gets 100 clamshells (equivalent to money) to bid for available resources that are
up for sale in an auction in a perfect competition. Each individual will spend clamshells
depending on their preferences. Someone who wants to engage in farming will spend
clamshells to acquire agri land etc.
 In this manner, each one will bid for different resources in accordance to one's
ambitions/preferences and each will end up with a unique bundle of resources which they
don't want to exchange with someone else's. Such a division would meet the envy test, that
is, each individual is happy with their own bundle of resources and they don't want to
exchange it with others. This implies that people have been given equal consideration and
any differences between them owing to different bundle of resources is a reflection of their
different and unique ambition and preferences.
 Thus, the ambition sensitive scheme meets the requirement of choice in the resource
egalitarian conception. However, the real world is different.
 In a real world, not everyone is similarly endowed in natural assets. Some are physically
disadvantaged and some are born with natural handicaps. In an ambition sensitive scheme,
no two persons with different natural endowments will be under equal circumstances.
 A person who has physical handicap will have special needs and resources purchased using
100 clamshells will leave her less well off. She shares the burden of unequal circumstances.
Where the fortunate ones are able to make meaningful choices with resources, a
disproportionate amount will be spent meeting special needs. This is not fair given that her
natural disadvantage is sheer outcome of bad luck. How to meet envy test?

Best way forward

 One way can be to have a common pool of resources before starting auction process.
 It’s important to design a distributional pattern that offsets her brute luck before giving her a
fair go at the auction. Thus, both endowment insensitive and ambition sensitive is needed.
  This is another way of acknowledging that people's fate in a distributional scheme is as much
determined by their choices as by their circumstances. Securing insurance to offset their
brute luck is a moral requirement.

We need to strike a balance somewhere between being fair to people’s choices and taking moral
responsibility for their disadvantages. An ambition-sensitive auction needs to be balanced by an
insurance scheme that takes care of natural, undeserved inequalities. Before the auction can take
place, all of us may be required to put aside, say, 25 or 30 clamshells to meet the obligations
towards the disadvantaged and then bid for the available resources.

A rough parallel of the insurance scheme in the real world is the practice of progressive taxation.
Taxing the rich proportionately more than the poor enables the state to secure welfare for the
disadvantaged. A resourcist conception of equality lays emphasis on the centrality of state
responsibility towards remedying unequal circumstances among people.

Equality of Capabilities
The economist Amartya Sen pioneers the idea that distributional equality should concern itself with
equalizing people’s capabilities, instead of emphasizing on resources or incomes.

Sen argues, focus on the real freedoms that people enjoy such as being able to read, being healthy,
having self-respect, being politically active, being able to take part in the life of the community, and
so on.

The proper focus should be on what people are able to be and do, that is on their functions, and not
on how much resource is allocated to them. Resources only secure for us what makes us happy, lead
valuable lives, and are therefore, to be considered as means of well-being.

In contrast to the resource approach, Sen proposes the notion of well-being understood in terms of
function. Reading is a function vital to leading a valuable life.

Social policy, according to Sen, should instead focus on capabilities. A capability is the ability to
achieve a certain sort of function. For example, literacy is a capability, while reading is a function. In
a society where people are illiterate, a state should actively promote people’s ability to read, i.e.
literacy. Whereas a resource egalitarian may insist that resources such as books and educational
services may be provided for in regions that are deficient in literacy, the capability advocate would
argue that more than a provision of external means what matters is the capability— an internal
ability—of the target population to read and write.

The novelty of the capability approach is further brought home by Sen’s observation that a proper
analysis of inequality needs to go hand-in-hand with facts of human diversity.

Sen argues, ‘deeply diverse in our internal characteristics (such as age, gender, general abilities,
particular talents, proneness to illnesses and so on) as well as in external circumstances (such as
ownership of assets, social backgrounds, environmental predicaments, and so on).

FOR EXAMPLE- One example of an internal characteristic (gender) made worse in the presence of
some adverse external factors (discrimination and patriarchal institutions), Sen points to the
mortality differential between males and females (that also accounts for the phenomenon of
‘missing women’ in countries such as China and India), especially among rural families in Asia and
Africa. If other social characteristics such as identity and social disadvantage are factored in, our
understanding of inequality deepens. Hence, it will be plausible to maintain, for instance, that
beyond the simplistic account of gender inequality, most Dalit women are worse off than other
women in terms of high mortality

We need to be sensitive to such differences and not be misled by appearances. Since many
characteristics can impinge on people’s functioning, it is essential that policy makers amass as much
information as possible before they design suitable policies to equalize people’s capabilities. Social
policy must be attuned to facts of human diversity. A simple minded approach (for example, of
equalizing incomes) towards correcting complex modes of inequality will simply not do.

Complex Equality
Michael Walzer gives currency to the idea of complex equality.

Often, in our quest to distribute goods, we harp more on the principles of distribution and less on
what meaning we attribute to goods. Walzer argues that people conceive of and create goods, which
they then distribute among themselves. It is important that we shift our attention from distribution
to the conception and creation of goods.

We give meanings to goods, which determines their social value. The same goods have different
meanings in different societies. There is no single set of basic goods which could be universally
conceived of and given the same value.

One would have difficulty agreeing with Rawls in giving a Universalist account of justice that would
apply across time and space. ‘All distributions are just and unjust relative to the social meanings of
goods at stake’.

These meanings change across time and space. For instance, the idea that childcare is solely a family
responsibility no longer holds true in some societies unlike in others. Every society will give value to
goods in a particular way, and will be sustained by a shared understanding among members.

It is typical to the understanding of how goods ought to be distributed is that when meanings given
to goods are distinct, distributions must be autonomous. Every set of goods constitutes a distinct
distributive sphere within which only certain criteria of distribution are appropriate. Economists may
be right to impute a certain measure of rationality and acquisitiveness to the behaviour of people in
the markets. However, the same does not hold true in all social domains. Fathers and mothers are
supposed to be loving, trusting, caring and altruistic. Citizens are supposed to be equal, impartial,
and motivated by views of the collective good. Resources within families are not distributed as
wages; political offices in a democracy ought not to be distributed among relatives. Walzer maintains
that there is no reason to expect that the same distributive standards must prevail in different
‘spheres’ of social life. Thus, the spheres of the market and political power, to take two examples,
are distinct and separate. The norms for distributing goods within each are internal to each and
ideally should not spill over.

CRITICISM-Critics, however, may reason that this is easier said than done. Of course, inequalities
from economic life do spill over into political life and vice versa. Wealth can buy votes, and elected
representatives can misuse their offices to further the interests of business. This, Walzer would be
quick to point out, is highly undesirable. Nations do indeed erect barriers, with limited success, to
restrict the extent to which wealth leads to political power.

Within each sphere, there might well be inequalities and there is nothing wrong with that. If the
distributional norm in the economic domain lays emphasis on effort and because of which
inequalities emerge between those who work hard and those who do not, the indolent or the lazy
cannot expect to be similarly rewarded as the diligent. This inequality is acceptable with the caveat
that hard work at times goes unrewarded in some societies. What is not acceptable, however, is
when people who enjoy a certain pre-eminence in other spheres are disproportionately rewarded in
the economic sphere. A case in point could well be to ask whether reward for work should be
related to religious affi liation. In Walzer’s scheme, it is clear it cannot be. But, what if it does? That
would lead to tyranny. Tyranny is the disregard for the distinctness of spheres and the principles
internal to them and in ways in which it multiplies inequalities. Some groups can monopolize a
particular category of goods and then use their monopoly to achieve unequal distribution of other
goods. That would lead to dominance. Our effort should be on the reduction of dominance. Equality
requires a diversity of distributive criteria that mirrors the diversity of social goods.

MAIN IMP-Complex equality is the opposite of tyranny. ‘It establishes a set of relationships such that
domination is impossible. In formal terms, complex equality means that no citizen’s standing in one
sphere or with regard to one social good can be undercut by his standing in some other sphere, with
regard to some other good’. The idea of complex equality is a refreshingly different perspective than
those struggling over the metrics of equality-welfare, resources or capability. Walzer’s approach
focuses attention on the social meanings of goods and the plurality of the spheres of justice.

IN CONCLUSION: THE POLITICS OF EQUALITY

The politics of egalitarianism in the 20th century was instrumental in justifying the idea of a welfare
state, among other things. That idea, successful in its heyday, has declined over the past two
decades.

REASONS FOR THIS IS-. Many democratic societies today are witnessing the rise of right-wing
politics. This trend started in the 1980s when governments headed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher unleashed a backlash against the welfare state. The legitimacy of the welfare state was
called into question and it was largely discredited for having given short shrift to individual
responsibility, creativity and economic efficiency. Right-wing politics in recent times is sustained by
citizens who wish to pay less tax and consequently vote to power parties (usually right-wing) who
promise less tax. In the global political landscape, moreover, one notices a decisive ideological shift
toward the right. The politics of globalization has further caused a setback to the practice of
redistribution and the idea of welfare-state policies.

Yet another distinct political phenomenon is also visible: the political struggles of identity groups.
The ‘equality of what?’ debate is being replaced by ‘equality of whom?. Egalitarians are increasingly
shedding their individualist bias and are keener to engage in concerns surrounding inequality
between groups that owe more to non-material factors. The struggles for greater equality by
women, minorities, Dalits, linguistic groups and others are a pointer to the continuing relevance of
the bases of social equality and a corresponding search for new paradigms of group sensitive
equality.