ABSTRACT
Poverty is not just poor living. Aristotle linked the richness of human life by first ascertaining the function of man and then exploring life in the sense of activity. he observed an impoverished life to be one without the freedom to undertake important activities that a person would choose. Being excluded from social relations can limit our living opportunities. Social exclusion can, thus, be a constitutive part of capability deprivation as well as an instrumental cause of diverse capability failures. one form of the dispossession from social interaction is the inability to appear in public freely and to participate in the life of the community. it is a loss on its own, in addition to whatever further deprivation it may indirectly generate, both actively and passively. Among the multiplicity of exclusions, what is relevant for us is the sharing of social opportunities. it was precisely the lack of social opportunities, sanctioned by law and custom, which pushed vast sections of indians to live a life of penury, shorn of both cultural and social capital. in order to bridge the gap, affirmative action was made constitutionally mandatory so as to enable the deprived populace to regain their dignity. one way of ensuring social opportunities is through education, for long regarded as a liberating and modernising force. The indian welfare state has the moral obligation to guarantee that every child goes to school — a dream that is still far from being realised.
