Analyzing Inequality among Industrial Workers

The study of inequality is an important aspect of modern social science. Issues concerning the distribution of life chances, incomes, mobility and opportunity, poverty, and social exclusion have had a prominent place in the social sciences since their inception. In all likelihood, these issues will remain on the social scientific agenda indefinitely. The study of inequality fuses normative, descriptive, and explanatory aspects to explore how much inequality there is in quantitative terms: who gets what compared to others? The explanatory analysis focuses on why some get more than others. The normative analysis of inequality is philosophical in nature and asks whether the current state of inequality can be regarded as just: by what standards is the distribution of various goods and burdens to be considered fair or unfair, and to whom? The amount of inequality is dependent on these parameters. This paper aims to analyze life chances, social mobility, and the use of indicators such as achievement orientation among the industrial workers. Factors facilitating mobility are intrinsically instrumental in developing a new class order. It assumes that blurring of class divisions is taking place in the Indian industrial work organization because of the unequal opportunities construed as the aspect of life-chances (Merton:1968). Consequently, new class configuration is emerging which is prompting a situation of class-structuration. The differential achievement orientation found among the respondents working at two different types of organization i.e. 'mechanistic' type and the 'organic' type of organization.