Resources, Ownership and Basis of Inequality:Evidence Through Household Analysis of a Punjab Village

Ownership of resources and evolving development processes around land lead to structural inequalities in avillage in which originates economic inequalities and strengthens social stratification in certain social and institutional settings. The landless households which belong mostly to the schedule caste and backward caste categories have been dispossessed of their land ownership since the colonial period when the permanent land settlements process started in the Punjab region. High inequalities registered across landed households and landless households were found among three main categories of caste- based households while examining productive assets as well as household assets at the household level in the village under study. Correspondingly, income shares across households revealed inequalities within landed households and between the landed and landless households. Forward caste households achieved a privileged position in terms of education attainment, landholding and assets as compared to backward caste and schedule caste households. This paper also examined the estimates of Gini coefficients and other tools which described very high levels of inequality across households at the village level. This paper endorses the view that resource ownership inequalities across economic and social classes led to persistent inequalities- in education, income, household assets and productive assets in the village.