Drèze, Jean, and Amartya Sen. "The Grip of Inequality". In An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, 212-242. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

Drèze, Jean, and Amartya Sen. "The Grip of Inequality". In An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen, 212-242. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.

• Inequality in India exists across region, class, caste, language, and gender. The intersections of these identities feature particularly stark inequalities. For example, at the time of independence, over 50% of Brahmin men were literate, while essentially no Dalit women were literate (212-213).
• These inequalities are more pronounced in northern India, with disparities of gender and caste being more important in these regions (215).
• Inequalities in India are particularly troublesome and resistant to change because groups with one kind of privilege tend to have others and persons disadvantaged in one way are very likely to have many other disadvantages. In this way, the wealthy tend to be upper caste, have good educations, have high social standing, have political influence, and have good jobs, whereas the poor are mainly lower caste, uneducated, disempowered, work in difficult conditions, and be treated badly. The vast majority of the rich and poor in India are concentrated at the intersections of multiple forms of privilege or disadvantage (239).
• It is estimated from income tax data that India has a Gini index of 0.54, a high level of inequality that places it on par with many South American and southern African countries (215). Economic inequality has only increased since 1991, one of the reasons that consistent economic growth has failed to significantly reduce the poverty rate (216). 
• High levels of economic inequality creates negative social conditions that affect the entire society, resulting in lower levels of health for the entire population and high levels of crime. High inequality also undermines societal unity and cohesion, weakening democratic politics (216).
• Other countries, like China, also have high levels of inequality and rates of economic inequality that have increased in recent decades, but India is different because the level of poverty experienced by the poor is so much greater. The authors content that the issue of economic inequality in India is so severe because the poor lack most basic necessities for a dignified life (217).
• In previous decades, Dalits faced a vicious and pervasive system of social discrimination that prohibited them from wearing shoes, riding bicycles, entering temples, or sitting down in the presence of higher castes, among other restrictions. Many of these taboos have disappeared, but discrimination is still common, especially on topics like intercaste marriage (217-218).
• The most remarkable aspect of continued caste discrimination in India is that the upper castes, who constitute a minority of the population, manage to control such a large proportion of the high level positions across all spheres of society. Most lower castes are still represented, although Dalits are sometimes entirely absent, but upper castes have a representation far greater than their proportion of the population (218).
• Discrimination is even more intense in civil society organizations than in official positions since no reservation systems exist. As a result, upper castes often dominate the majority of civil society organizations, even those whose majority members are lower castes, and almost all businesses (218, 221).
• Caste discrimination also reaches across religious lines, although sometimes taking other forms. Poor Muslims, the descendants of poor Hindus who converted, face discrimination on religious grounds and caste grounds from both wealthy Hindus and Muslims. Poor and lower caste Muslims and Christians are also not covered by anti-discrimination laws or reservation policies, depriving them of limited tools to escape poverty and marginalization (221-222).
• Gender inequalities in India have massively decreased since the British Raj, when women were effectively excluded from education. While women have successfully established a presence at the top level of Indian society, they suffer from a national discrimination in society that leaves women disproportionately ill and malnourished throughout northern and western India (222-223).
• Women are still large absent from the Indian workforce, with low rates of female employment compared to Bangladesh or China. Although high levels of unemployment affect it, this low rate of participation is driven by social attitudes that believe women should remain in the home. This attitude remains pervasive, with female workforce participation actually declining among better educated and wealthier communities (223).
• Female participation in politics is also extremely limited. Although women have participated in local government after a 33% quota was established for panchayat raj governments in 1992, they consistently constitute only a tenth of national and state legislatures (224).
• Other patriarchal practices have actually increased in India since independence as more social groups found the wealth and resources necessary to participate in practices previously restricted to upper castes. This includes the giving of dowries and more restrictions of freedom of movement for women (224).
• Rates of sexual violence are high in India, an issue which became a topic of national debate after the brutal gang rape of a women in a bus in Dehli in December 2012. This incident has drawn attention to the widespread sexual violence in India, but the narrative has largely excluded the prevalence of marital rape and rape of Dalit women, widespread in rural areas (225).
• Police often do not investigate allegations of rape or otherwise discourage women from reporting the crime. The combination of police forces and a judicial system unsupportive of rape victims and a deeply misogynistic society means that rapes in India are severely unreported (226).
• Women in India tend to do a larger share of household chores than men and receive less access to medical care, food, and education (227). The continuation of this status is enabled by patriarchal attitudes, the lack of economic resources for women, and high birthrates, which prevent women from working due to the need to care for children (228).
• Like other parts of Asia, particularly China and Korea, India faces a lack of women due to the large number of sex-selective abortions performed in the country since the technology to determine fetal sex became available in the 1980s. This trend in India has not decreased with advanced education, partially because the main advocates for sex-selective abortion are generally the mothers (230-231).
• The phenomenon of sex-selective abortion is most prominent, and the sex ratio most skewed, is the north and west of India, especially Haryana (232). The trend is expanding outside of this region, however, with the sex ratio tilting increasingly towards men across India as sex-selective abortion becomes more common in the south and east (234-236).
• Since the 1990s, there has been a massive growth in the power of business and corporations in India, shaping government policies in way that are often harmful for the interests of the poor (236-237).
• A prime example of this trend in Indian politics has the attempt of the Biscuit Manufacturers' Union to replace the hot meals provided to Indian schoolchildren through the school lunches program with prepackaged biscuits. This campaign came under harsh public attack, especially by nutritionists, by the Union managed to replace hot meals with commercial biscuits in some related state-level childhood nutritional programs (237-238).
• The Indian health care system reflects a similar degree of commercial power, with almost all health care being privatized through poorly managed and meagre medical insurance plans. Like other heavily privatized healthcare systems, like the USA, India has high medical expenditure per capita and a low quality of services except for the very rich (238).