Social exclusion: The European concept for Indian social reality

Social exclusion, a European concept that has been inducted into the Indian social research domain, is the core area of inquiry in this article. It is argued that the concept of social exclusion needs to play a crucial role in Indian society in terms of handling multiple deprivations experienced by different social groups. This article aims to comprehend the trends of social exclusion and further examines its significance in Indian policy discourse. Further, it analyses the transformation that Indian state has undergone, having socialist orientation earlier and the neoliberal phase recently. The article has been divided into two sections. While the first section provides theoretical analysis of the concept and the second section studies purview of the new concept in Indian context and discusses some policy implications.