A Research Methodology Course on Social Exclusion and Discrimination was inaugurated on Thursday at the Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy (CSSEIP) at the National Law School of India University (NLSIU).
Speaking at the launch of the three-day programme, Sukhdadeo Thorat, Chairman of Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), said: “The purpose behind this workshop is to train participants in engaging with issues of group inequalities.” Support for the course has also come from the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (IIDS), New Delhi.
Elaborating on the theme of the workshop, Prof. Thorat said that social science has not devoted enough time to study social exclusions of various groups in our society and their consequences. He added: “The problem of a lack of method and conceptual understanding of social exclusion is because the social sciences in India have ignored the theme completely. For e.g.., economists have failed to explain caste as an economic institution. Over the past few decades demands by groups for benefits have become vocal. Why is this happening? We do not have a methodology to study this.”
Prof. Thorat said that a way in which one could understand social exclusion is to borrow a conceptual framework on discrimination from the ‘Western imagination' but while this could be used to understand caste, it was still not possible to understand discrimination against tribes and religious minorities. Another challenge, according to Prof. Thorat, would be to study ‘market discrimination' against various groups.
The sessions over the next three days will dwell on various methods of measuring inequality in the economic and non-market spheres such as education, health, housing and political institutions. It will then look at the ways in which the consequences of this inequality can be estimated in a quantitative way. Participants mainly include faculty members drawn from various centres of social exclusion and inclusive policy from universities across India.
R.P. Mamgain, Director, IIDS, New Delhi, and S. Japhet, Director, CSSEIP, NLSIU, spoke.