What has been the nature of work and discourse on inequality in India? Has it been more anecdotal and ordinal? Does it sidestep the conceptual and refl ective? Is it an elite discourse even within the subaltern? Does it remain blind to both the subtleties and the macro forces that generate, fuel, and reproduce the condition of inequality? And importantly, has it seriously considered the issue of what inequality does to those at the margins? The recent Dadabhai Naoroji conference at NIAS, on the instrumentality of inequality raised these conceptual, ethical, and practical dimensions of inequality.
