Challenging Inequalities: a Indo-European perspective

The proposed research aims at appraising the inequalities in human condition that continue to blossom in our fast growing and increasingly globalized world, with a special focus on India and Europe. Europe and India are, in effect, two interesting environments in which to perform such an appraisal. Both are indeed major players in the globalized world to the production of which they contribute about 25%. Europe is made of mature economies with virtually zero extreme poverty (as defined by the income threshold of 1.7 US dollar a day in purchasing power parity) that exhibits modest yearly per capita growth and slow structural changes. India is by contrast a fast-growing developing country that concentrates one third of the world's extremely poor population and that is changing its social organization at an unprecedented pace. In so far as income and wealth inequality are concerned, the European countries are facing the challenge of sharing a mildly growing per capita GDP. By contrast, India faces the challenge of sharing the spectacular growth among the various segment of its population, including the extremely poor. But inequalities in income, consumption or wealth are by no means the only dimension by which individuals differ. Inequalities in variables such as health, education or access to decent housing are also extremely important in this perspective. So are the more subtle inequalities in social status, or the inequalities of opportunities that individuals coming from various groups are facing. Europe and India are interesting laboratories to analyze all these inequalities also because of the different attitude that their population seem to have with respect to these inequalities. The ethical acceptability of the different inequalities is an extremely important factor that seem to differ somewhat between India and Europe and, for that matter, even between European countries themselves. For example, there is a widespread view in European countries of protestant culture that income inequalities which result purely from a different exertion of effort are not ethically objectionable. This view seems to be less prevalent in countries of catholic culture. Similarly, India, with its still prevailing caste system, is often perceived as being more tolerant to inequalities in social status than Europe. The proposed research will make several contributions to our understanding of the inequalities in Europe in India. The first one will be to provide new tools for appraising some of these inequalities that are both easy to apply and based on clear ethical premises. Some of these tools concern inequalities in variables such as social status, education or access to a decent housing that can not be easily measured on a cardinal scale. For such variables, the conventional tools for measuring income or wealth inequalities can not be meaningfully applied. The research will also contribute to the design of tools for appraising inequalities in a multidimensional perspective that takes due account of the correlation that may exist between, say, income and health inequalities. As a last methodological contribution, the research will develop new criteria for appraising the inequality of opportunities between social groups. A second broad expected contribution of the research is to gather information about the individuals' attitudes to inequalities and to the policies used to reduce the adverse impact of these inequalities. This information will be collected by either questionnaire surveys or by experimental methods in which subjects are asked to take carefully designed decisions that reflect their attitude to inequalities. A third contribution of the research will be to evaluate some of the inequality-alleviating policies themselves. A last contribution of the research is to provide a more qualitative assessment of the impact of those inequalities on individual lives. A special focus will be put here on Nepal migrants and workers in large firms.

The first impact of our pro is through the methodological breakthrough in the measurement of inequalities that it will provide. We expect in effect our research to bring about important innovations in the measurement of multidimensional inequalities (including inequalities of opportunity and inequalities in exposures to risk) and inequalities in the distribution of variables that cannot always be meaningfully measured on a cardinal scale, such as health, education or social status. Our research will also propose new methods for more traditional cardinal income measures to account for the fact that several goods that matter for individuals' welfare are available either for free or at a highly subsidized rate. All these methodological innovations will benefit academics, policy makers and citizens mobilized by these issues. The second impact that our research will have is through deeper knowledge that the proposed research will provide on individuals' attitudes toward inequalities, and on the way these attitudes differ between Europe and India. As discussed in the case for support, our research will provide many surveys and experiences conducted with subjects from both India and Europe that will shed precise lights on the difference in public attitudes between Europe and India on inequalities. The results of these surveys will be disseminated to both the academic and non-academic community by our impact strategy (see below). The third impact of our research is to contribute to the animated debate around programs and policies aimed at promoting greater equality of opportunities, e.g. caste quotas and affirmative action policies, or at mitigating the adverse consequences of inequality, e.g. anti-poverty policies. First, we will carry out a comparative study of the relative performance of Indian and European governments in promoting equality of opportunities between social groups in the last thirty years, which we expect to provide important policy lessons. Second, the randomized evaluation of innovative new practices for the national training and placement program DDU-GKY will be implemented in close partnership with the government of the Indian state of Odisha. The research will bring new evidence on the workings of the scheme and provide precise policy recommendations, which could be applied by the Odisha government and all other states of India. Third, we will also contrast the DDU-GKY program with the MGNREGA, which guarantees low skilled employment in rural areas, and study their combined effect on the rural poor. We will also carry out a survey of some 10 000 girls from four Indian states to evaluate the effects of a government scheme which provides bicycles to girls who are registered in grade 9 at school. This project, initiated by the government of Bihar, is currently extended to other parts of India. Our study will provide guidance for governments who may be interested in adopting it across India and the developing world. Finally, both the academic and non-academic communities will benefit from the quantitative and qualitative analysis that many researchers of the project will conduct on the consequences of these inequalities on the life trajectory of individuals. Rural India in Tamil Nadu for instance presents an ideal example of a region which has been subject to rapid transformations in recent years, a region where new forms of inequalities (in access to non-agricultural jobs, skills and social networks) coexist with more traditional structures, which have historically endorsed inequality situations. While research on inequality has developed considerably in recent years, we believe that most of the available research is dominated by mono-disciplinary analyses, focusing on one aspect of these inequalities in isolation of the environment in which they are formed. The interdisciplinary nature of this project seeks to go beyond this standard approach.