UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF LEGAL

STUDIES, PANJAB UNIVERSITY

(CHANDIGARH)

POLITICAL SCIENCE

PROJECT ON

EQUALITY

Submitted by:- Submitted to:-

Srishti Sharma Prof. Nirmal

BA LLB(Hons.)
Section-C
Semester-II
 INDEX

1.) INTRODUCTION TO EQUALITY

2.) CHARACTERISTICS OF EQUALITY

3.) KINDS OF EQUALITY

4.) RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LIBERTY AND EQUALITY

5.) LIBERAL THEORY OF EQUALITY

6.) MARXIST THEORY OF EQUALITY

7.) CONCLUSION

8.) BIBLIOGRAPHY
 INTRODUCTION TO EQUALITY

Equality originates from aequalis, aequus and aequalitas.

These are all old French or Latin words. These French/Latin
words mean even, level and equal. Thus, the meaning of the
word equality used in political science corresponds to the
meaning from which it originates. The term equality used in
political science differs from uniformity, identity and
sameness. Equality does not mean obliteration of diversity.
Number of political scientists has defined the concept of
equality. According to Laski equality means “coherence of
ideas”. In the treatment meted out to different individuals
there shall persist coherence. While privileges are distributed
among the individual’s justice and reason must be maintained
so that no individual can think that he is neglected or is
deprived of his due share. In the distribution of privileges
attention shall be paid to the development of personality.
It means the absence of special privileges. Individual’s claim
for the privilege’s rests on the ground that without it he cannot
develop his personality and because of this reason an
individual’s claim for something is logical and legitimate.
In that case, if some individuals are deliberately made to
suffer that will be a gross violation of equality. Of course, the
deprived person must prove that others have been given more
than what is reasonably his due.
Mere providing privileges or opportunities is not all. This
does not bear the complete meaning of equality. Laski further
states that privileges provided by the authority must be
adequate. Individuals, with the help of inadequate
opportunities, cannot develop personality.
 CHARACTERISTICS OF EQUALITY

1. Equality does not stand for absolute equality. It accepts the

presence of some natural inequalities.
2. Equality stands for absence of all unnatural man- made inequalities
and specially privileged classes in the society.
3. Equality postulates the grant and guarantee of equal rights and
freedoms to all the people.
4. Equality implies the system of equal and adequate opportunities for
all the people in society.
5. Equality means equal satisfaction of basic needs of all the persons
before the special needs’, and luxuries of some persons may be met.
6. Equality advocates an equitable and fair distribution of wealth and
resources i.e. Minimum possible gap between the rich and poor.
7. Equality accepts the principle of protective discrimination for
helping the weaker sections of society. In the Indian political system,
right to equality has been given to all and yet there stands
incorporated provisions for granting special protection facilities and
reservations to persons belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled
Tribes Other Backward Classes, minorities, women, and children.
Thus, Equality stands for 3 Basic Features:
(a) Absence of special privileges in society.
(b) Presence of adequate and equal opportunities for development for
all.
(c) Equal satisfaction of basic needs of all.
KINDS OF EQUALITY
1. Natural Equality:
Despite the fact that men differ in respect of their physical features,
psychological traits, mental abilities and capacities, all humans are to be
treated as equal humans. All are to be considered worthy of enjoying all human
rights and freedoms.
2. Social Equality:
It stands for equal rights and opportunities for development for all classes of
people without any discrimination. A modern central theme of social equality
is to end gender inequality, to ensure equal status and opportunities to the
women and to ensure equal rights of male and female children to live and
develop.
3. Civil Equality:
It stands for the grant of equal rights and freedoms to all the people and
social groups. All the people are to be treated equal before Law.
4. Political Equality:
It stands for equal opportunities for participation of all in the political process.
This involves the concept of grant of equal political rights for all the citizens
with some uniform qualifications for everyone.
5. Economic Equality:
Economic equality does not mean equal treatment or equal reward or equal
wages for all. It stands for fair and adequate opportunities to all for work and for
earning of their livelihoods. It also means that primary needs of all should be
met before the special needs of few are satisfied. The gap between rich and
poor should be minimum. There should be equitable distribution of wealth and
resources in the society.
6. Legal Equality:
Finally, Legal Equality stands for equality before law, equal subjection of all
to the same legal code and equal opportunity for all to secure legal protection
of their rights and freedom. There should rule of law and laws must be equally
binding foe all. In every society equality must be ensured in all these forms.
 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LIBERTY AND EQUALITY
There is a great controversy among the modern scholars of
political science about the relationship between liberty and
equality. In 19th century, the advocates of individualism
demanded liberty for the sake of free competition and their
ideas went against the theory of equality. Some scholars
thought that the concept of equality and liberty are against
each other. Lord Acton commented that the passion for
equality ‘made vain the hope of freedom’. By liberty he
wanted to mean unrestrained right to satisfy the appetite for
wealth and power. He had the apprehension that the
establishment of equality would impose restrictions on the
freedom of the wealthy people, and so he considered equality
to be antithetic to liberty. Thinkers like Tocqueville, Spencer
and Begihot also expressed the same view. John Stuart Mill
thought that liberty and equality are complementary to each
other. He analyzed liberty from the perspective of social
welfare. For this reason, Mill opined that economic equality is
necessary for establishing liberty. In the 20th century,
Hobouse, Laski, Barker, Tawney, Pollard and others
considered that equality and freedom are complementary to
each other. Even Rousseau argued in the 18th century that
freedom is impossible without equality. Analysing the
correlation between liberty and equality, Barker observes that
equality is not a detached principle. It stands in favour of the
principles like liberty and fraternity. So, what is needed is the
proper coordination between equality, liberty and fraternity.
So, it may be said that equality and liberty are not antithetic to
each other; they rather supplement each other.
 LIBERAL THEORY OF EQUALITY
Equality is an ideal upheld by a number of ideologies,
but nowadays it is seldom associated with
libertarianism or classical liberalism. Indeed, both
libertarians and their critics typically think of equality
as an ideal in tension with the ideal of liberty as
libertarians understand it. For a liberal in the original
sense, a free society must aim first and foremost at
minimizing the exercise of arbitrary power by limiting
all coercion to what can be accomplished by equal,
invariable, and indiscriminate law. Thus, the rule of
law, the absence of arbitrary legal privileges or
distinctions of status, appears to the liberal as the legal
embodiment of freedom and equality alike, and as his
greatest and proudest achievement. The liberal
champion of formal equality before the law will have an
eye, to be sure, on inequalities of opportunity, though
he will resist the tendency to focus too narrowly on
what happens to be most easily quantified.
 MARXIST THEORY OF EQUALITY
Marx eschewed the entire concept of equality as
abstract and bourgeois in nature, focusing his analysis
on more concrete issues such as opposition to
exploitation based on economic and materialist logic.
Marx renounced theorizing on moral concepts and
refrained from advocating principles of justice. Marx's
views on equality were informed by his analysis of the
development of the productive forces in society. the fact
that social inequality, related to the appearance and
maintenance of an indigent proletariat, under the influx
of bourgeois exploitation, constituted the basis of
empiric support for the Marxian theoretical and political
endeavour. Thus, it cannot be said that there are no
contributions in Marx's work that help to elucidate the
real movement of capitalist social policy.
 CONCLUSION
For political thinkers concerned with what constitutes
good democratic politics, concentrations of power are
sources of concern wherever they are found. This is
especially the case when these concentrations of power
threaten the basic democratic notion that citizens should
have a meaningful capacity to govern themselves and
participate on a roughly equal basis with other citizens
in their collective self-governance. In thinking about
what constitutes a good democratic politics we need to
recognize the inherent contestability of the very concept
of equality and that equality is one value among many
(albeit a very important value to democracy).
Democracy, by its very nature, requires that no
conception of the nature of equality can be taken off the
table of political discourse and debate. Furthermore, no
single conception should always prevail in democratic
deliberations or it risks the commitment of citizens who
do not share the dominant conception of the democratic
project. It is in fact the rich contestation over equality
and its relation to other political values that helps
ensure that new forms of domination cannot creep
unnoticed into democratic polities.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Politicalsciencenotes.com
Youtharticlelibrary.com
Scielo.br