Women, Social Exclusion and Inclusion

In the last couple of years there has been a spurt of growing interest in and awareness about questions of social exclusion and inclusion. While the nature of exclusion in India has centred around the caste system, other disadvantaged groups such as tribals, women and poor have also suffered from similar disabilities. Their politics of exclusion and inclusion, censure and celebration shows that they wish to be a part of the socalled mainstream academic discourse yet cannot be. The objectives of this book have been to discuss about social exclusion arising out of institutions of caste and gender in Indian society and the inclusive policies designed for them. Besides, the long history of struggle that led to the emergence of India’s reservation policy as a mechanism of inclusion for the segment of the Indian population that has been subjected to social abuse , dispossession , indignity, impoverishment and discrimination for millennia demands, that is precisely what this book also tries to discuss, depicting from Jotiba Phule’s contribution in the field of education to the framing of Constitution by Ambedkar. This book also attempts to address to what extent government’s initiatives have been instrumental in translating the search for inclusivity into a reality.