Living with Inequality: Caste and Everyday Life in India

A 55-minute interactive session (45-minute workshop followed by a 10-minute Q&A) uses stories from caste society to explore how inequality shapes everyday life. Through group activities and discussion, participants will reflect on how unequal opportunities influence access to education, employment, resources, food practices, and migration. The session encourages critical thinking about discrimination and social justice, helping students understand how structural inequalities affect people's life chances and experiences in society.

This workshop uses the experiences of Dalits (formerly known as “untouchables” and recognised as Scheduled Castes in India) as a case study to explore how inequality shapes people’s lives and access to basic rights and opportunities. Through storytelling, discussion, and participatory activities, participants will examine how social hierarchies can influence access to education, employment, resources, food, and mobility.

The workshop highlights that inequality is not an isolated or individual issue but a systemic process that profoundly shapes opportunities and outcomes. Participants will be encouraged to think critically about how discrimination operates, how unequal opportunities are created and sustained, and how these inequalities affect people’s life.

By the end of the session, attendees will better understand how unequal social structures shape the world and produce unequal benefits and opportunities. The workshop will also encourage participants to recognise the often invisible and subconscious processes of inclusion and exclusion that operate in everyday life, helping them reflect on issues of fairness, belonging, and social justice in their own communities and beyond.

Abhishek Bhosale, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London.

His research focuses on caste, land rights, poverty, inequality, and the everyday experiences of marginalised communities in India, particularly Dalit communities in Western India.

Young people, 14-18

Anyone

By invitation only