Homo Economics that are under-socialized on Caste System in India

        There lacks a standard framework that can be used by the castes in economics, which motivates for this research paper analysis. Homo Economics is perceived as an agent that is self-maximizing and has exogenous preferences. According to Becker and Murphy (2003), modern economics normally presumes that the actions of the others do not directly influence individual behavior". The assumed attributes of Homo Economics have been propelled by (i) critics originating from social status (ii) the regain of interest by the previous theories that took part in contests of one or more attributes or insisted on the functions of the institutions (Bowles and Gintis, 2000), and (iii) the accumulation of many anomalies. New institutional economics posed a challenge to the costless information and altered the important rationality assumption to take care of the differences in the culture — however, the theories held in place the assumptions of consequential behavior.

Capability Approach by Sen on Caste System in India

        This approach was first called the political economy, and it promoted social welfare. There were assertions by the utilitarianism that by itself, it was a conceptual framework that was predominant. It was seen that the maximization of individual utilities lead to the existence of social welfare. According to Sen (1992, 1999a), using utility as a unit of measuring different grounds was inappropriate. Sen (1992), continues to argue that an individual who is thoroughly deprived and leads an impoverished life, might not be seen to be worse off when it comes to measuring the minds on their desires and their fulfillment, that is if hardship is not rejected. People can adapt what they prefer to what they can attain, and they may be satisfied with dangerous situations when they happen. Therefore, using utility as a unit of measurement can yield incorrect results leading to assessment inequality. Focusing on income as the critical argument for the utility function is also inappropriate, because of the significant heterogeneity in people’s ability to transform income into a good living (Sen, 1992). This kind of variance may austere from characteristics of individuals or groups. Sen continues to say that the experiments agree with this perception by proving that utility computed from the income mainly relies on the groups to which individuals are compared. There was a proposition by Sen (1992), on substituting utility for the capabilities concept, which can be thought of as freedom of leading a special life. Distribution of capabilities can be used to assess inequality better.

        There are five freedoms that are critical in advancing capabilities and were identified by Sen(1992a). They are as follows; freedom of using resources for production and consumption, social services like having access to education and health, security, transparency, and political rights.

References of Caste System in India

Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis, “Walrasian Economics In Retrospect,” The Quarterly