Understanding Marginalisation: Its Impact on Society and Health

Some people seem to live at the centre of social life, where opportunities, services, and respect flow easily. Others live on the edges, watching from a distance as the same resources pass them by. This experience of being pushed to the fringes is what sociologists call marginalisation, and it shapes everything from a child’s school enrolment to a mother’s chance of surviving childbirth. Understanding how it works is the first step toward dismantling it.

What does marginalisation actually mean? 🔗

Marginalisation is not just about being poor or being different. It is a process through which individuals and entire communities are systematically pushed away from the social, economic, and political centre of society. Oxford Reference treats the word as a spatial metaphor for social exclusion, where groups are denied economic, political, and symbolic power. The European Commission similarly defines social exclusion as a situation in which a person is prevented from contributing to and benefiting from economic and social progress.

The NCERT textbook used in Indian schools puts it even more simply: to be marginalised is to be forced to occupy the sides or fringes, not the centre of things. What makes the concept powerful is that it is rarely about one dimension alone. A person may be excluded economically, socially, culturally, and politically all at once, and these forms of exclusion reinforce each other across generations.

Key features of marginalisation 🔗

A few traits help us distinguish marginalisation from simple inequality. First, it is structural: it is built into institutions, laws, customs, and everyday practices, not just individual prejudice. Second, it is relational, since a group is always marginalised in relation to a more dominant group that controls resources. Third, it is cumulative, because disadvantages in one sphere, such as education, feed into others like employment and health. Finally, it carries a sense of powerlessness, where marginalised people often cannot assert their rights against those who are wealthier, better educated, or politically stronger.

What causes marginalisation? 🔗

Marginalisation does not happen by accident. It is produced by specific social arrangements that decide whose lives count and whose are ignored. In the Indian context, several intersecting factors are responsible.

Caste and the legacy of untouchability 🔗

Caste remains one of the most stubborn axes of marginalisation. Scheduled Castes face structural discrimination in housing, employment, education, and access to public services, with the rules of purity and pollution dictating where members of these groups can go and what they can do. Globally, caste-based discrimination is recognised as a major human rights issue, affecting more than 260 million people, most of whom live in India. Despite constitutional safeguards, segregated settlements, denial of services, and bonded labour persist in many regions.

Tribal identity and geographical isolation 🔗

Scheduled Tribes, or Adivasis, are marginalised through a different mechanism: ethnicity combined with geography. Many tribal communities live in forested and hilly regions where roads, schools, and primary health centres are scarce. The disruption of traditional livelihoods through mining, dam construction, and forest laws has further weakened their economic base, leaving them with fewer assets than almost any other social group in the country.

Gender as a cross-cutting axis 🔗

Gender intersects with every other form of exclusion. Women in India face restrictions in education, mobility, decision-making, and inheritance. Female literacy and school retention are still lower in rural areas, and women receive unequal pay while facing barriers to formal employment. When gender combines with caste or religion, the disadvantage multiplies. Studies of higher education show that Muslim women’s access and educational attainments are generally lower than those of Hindu caste women, and that rural women from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes face comparable disadvantage.

Religious and linguistic minorities 🔗

Religious minorities, especially Muslims, occupy India’s economic, social, and political margins. The Sachar Committee, set up by the Government of India, examined the social, economic, and educational status of the Muslim community and found significant lags in literacy, employment, and access to credit. Linguistic minorities face similar challenges where the dominant language of schooling and bureaucracy is not their mother tongue, making it harder to participate in formal systems.

Economic status, disability, and age 🔗

Poverty itself is both a cause and a consequence of marginalisation. People in the lowest wealth quintiles are excluded from quality housing, schooling, and healthcare, and they have little political voice. Persons with disabilities encounter barriers related to accessibility, education, employment and social acceptance, while older adults, sexual minorities, migrants, and the homeless face their own forms of exclusion. Race, although less prominent in Indian discourse, plays out through colourism and discrimination against people from the North-East in many cities.

How marginalisation shapes health outcomes 🔗

Of all the consequences of marginalisation, the health gap is perhaps the most striking, because it shows up in something as basic as how long a person lives. Health is shaped not only by genes and behaviour but by what researchers call the social determinants of health: income, education, housing, sanitation, and the dignity with which one is treated.

Life expectancy and mortality gaps 🔗

The Oxfam India Inequality Report shows that the rich, on average, live seven and a half years more than the poor, and that a woman from the general category lives 15 years longer than a Dalit woman. Infant mortality follows the same pattern, with the rate among Adivasis around 40 percent higher than the general category. A systematic review of caste-based health research concluded that Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste populations consistently have higher levels of morbidity and undernutrition, higher mortality, and lower utilisation of preventive and curative services, even after adjusting for education and income.

Access to healthcare and out-of-pocket costs 🔗

Marginalisation creates both physical and financial barriers to healthcare. Private hospitals now form a large share of India’s health infrastructure, yet only a small fraction of Adivasi and Dalit families can afford them. Out-of-pocket expenditure in private facilities is several times higher than in public facilities, and a single hospitalisation can push families below the poverty line. Public health centres in tribal and rural areas often suffer from staff shortages, broken equipment, and stockouts, making them unreliable.

Nutrition, sanitation, and women’s health 🔗

Stunting among children in Dalit and Adivasi households remains much higher than in general category households. Anaemia rates among Scheduled Tribe women are far above those of non-ST women, and access to clean toilets and piped water remains skewed along caste and class lines. A recent equity study in Jhargram, West Bengal, found that illiteracy, poverty, and unmet medical needs were the dominant determinants of high mortality, particularly among Adivasis, and that knowledge of health programmes and insurance schemes is limited among these groups.

Marginalisation in employment and education 🔗

The health gap cannot be understood without looking at the labour market and the classroom, because these are the institutions that determine income, awareness, and bargaining power.

Employment: from informal labour to caste-coded work 🔗

A large proportion of Dalits and Adivasis are concentrated in agricultural labour and low-paid manual work, often under exploitative conditions. Research on caste discrimination in Indian labour markets finds that name-based hiring biases, restricted access to networks, and the persistence of traditional occupations historically stigmatised as impure keep marginalised workers locked into the bottom of the ladder. Women, especially those from minority and lower-caste backgrounds, are over-represented in informal work without social security, maternity benefits, or protection against harassment.

Education: enrolment is only half the story 🔗

Constitutional guarantees, the Right to Education Act, and reservation policies have improved enrolment for marginalised groups, yet quality and retention remain uneven. Discrimination by peers and teachers, midday meal segregation, and language barriers contribute to high dropout rates. Girls in rural areas often leave school due to early marriage, lack of toilets, or the burden of domestic work. Higher education access requires scholarships, safe hostels, and expansion of college availability, none of which are equally distributed across regions and communities.

Systemic barriers and the way forward 🔗

What ties health, education, and employment together is the idea of systemic barriers, those built into institutions rather than imposed by isolated individuals. A hospital that operates only in English, a school curriculum that erases tribal histories, a hiring panel with no women, or a panchayat dominated by upper-caste men all reproduce exclusion without anyone needing to act with personal malice. Tackling marginalisation therefore requires more than individual goodwill. It demands policy responses to social determinants, stronger anti-discrimination enforcement, and meaningful representation of marginalised voices in decision-making bodies. Affirmative action, community health workers like ASHAs and ANMs, self-help groups, and grassroots NGOs have all played a role, but the gaps remain wide.

What do you think? Which form of marginalisation in your own surroundings feels most invisible to those who do not experience it, and what is one institutional change that could meaningfully reduce the health gap between dominant and marginalised groups in India?

References

1. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100132340
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_exclusion
3. https://ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/hess305.pdf
4. https://mu.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Sociology-MA-SEM-2-Paper-Paper-2-Marginalized-Groups-and-Communities-Caste-Tribe-and-Gender_Inside-pages-1.pdf
5. https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/problems-marginalized-groups-india/
6. https://www.cry.org/blog/gender-inequality/
7. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057925.2016.1220825
8. https://www.99notes.in/upsc-notes/general-studies-1/society/social-empowerment/marginalisation-and-empowerment-upsc-notes/
9. https://www.oxfamindia.org/press-release/india-inequality-report-2021-indias-unequal-healthcare-story
10. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5089-3_5
11. https://www.newsclick.in/healthcare-continues-remain-inaccessible-dalits-adivasis-study
12. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12743393/
13. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12939-025-02734-6
14. https://www.legalserviceindia.com/Legal-Articles/womens-education-and-economic-empowerment-in-india-breaking-barriers/