Academic literature on the topic 'Underprivileged Sections'

Financial inclusion (FI) has received renewed attention of researchers and policy makers in all countries. FI refers to households accessing institutional credit including commercial banks, cooperative banks, self-help groups, and credible microfinance institutions. Many financially underprivileged people of the society are exploited by moneylenders at very high interest rates because they do not use the banking system. It is therefore necessary to design appropriate policy for FI. This review paper is part of a project sponsored by the ICSSRIMPRESS. This project creates a model in which the opinion leaders and influencers such as panchayat ward members, panchayat presidents, and PDS workers of the underprivileged sections of the society are roped in to be educated on the benefits of using the mainstream financial instruments, thereby, making banks as their primary and major source of savings and financial transactions. This will enable them to escape from loan sharks, moneylenders, pawn brokers and lead an enriched life and help in the growth of our economy and nation.

This article attempts to examine the combined impact of caste and class on voting choices. By using data from National Election Studies conducted by Lokniti from 1996 to 2019, the article seeks to situate the findings in the larger temporal frame of a quarter of a century. This allows us to also examine if changing patterns of party competition affect the impact of caste–class combined. The article argues that two patterns emerge: one is the consolidation of the more privileged social sections in terms of class and caste and the other is the dispersal of the less privileged. The latter, by virtue of their political dispersal, are unable to shape as a political force in both electoral politics and in agenda setting. This finding is partly an extension of the earlier findings that politics of backward castes hit a dead-end and politics of the poor never emerged as an all-India political alternative. Together with the earlier experience, the findings in this article throw light on the limits of democratization and on the prospects of politics of the less privileged sections across the country.

This essay concentrates on the social modernization that took place in Russia and Norway during the period from the late 19th to the early 21st century by examining the origins and the subsequent development of their welfare systems, including the social legislation passed. The focus is on the professional assistance provided and the specialized workers engaged in social care for the underprivileged sections of the population.

This study examines the access of students from diverse backgrounds to medical education in India. It shows how inequalities existing in society may entail significant social injustices with regard to access to a career in medicine. The study is based on data from secondary sources. The major part of the analysis is from the Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2019–20; All India Survey on Higher Education, 2019–20; and National Sample Survey data on Social Consumption, Education 2017–18. It is observed that the availability of health professionals is very low overall but it is even lower among underprivileged groups. There are indications of a better share of salaried health professionals among underprivileged caste/ethnic groups probably due to the presence of affirmative action but inequality prevails in self-employment and high quality occupations, thus reflecting the inequality prevalent in society. However, the pattern among Muslims is different from the caste/ethnic groups as the share of regular salaried workers is lower and self-employed is higher among Muslims. The study shows that access to medical courses is linked to family background depicted by caste/ethnicity and religious identities. The availability of medical education in general is very low. The situation is further aggravated for students from underprivileged backgrounds. The high cost of medical courses combined with the dominance of self-financed courses and private unaided institutions may make it inaccessible to students from weaker sections of society. In fact, the probability of attending a medical course is relatively lower for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SCs/STs) and Muslims than Hindu High Castes (HHCs). The low average expenditure of medical courses confirms the low quality of education accessed by the student from underprivileged backgrounds at every level. It is important to note that education of the head of the family emerges as the most important predictor for access to medicine education. Similarly low household size also improves the probability of attendance. It is thus important to improve the access to medical education through establishing new educational institutions with affordable costs. The challenge is to ensure equal access for students from underprivileged groups so that the existing inequality in the availability of health professionals may be addressed. For this, affirmative action for the students from poor families and first generation learners may be worthwhile to address the problem of inequality of access to medical education. Such policies would also improve the availability of health professionals from the underprivileged socio-religious background which in turn would play an instrumental role in ensuring better access to healthcare services for patients from underprivileged communities.