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On the second last day of 2021, I reflect in this article if the extreme disparities across India’s social groupings have improved over the past few centuries. Sunil Gangopadhyay won the 1985 Sahitya Akademi Award for a novel in Bengali titled Sei Somoy (Those Days). The novel set in the late 18th to the second half of the 19th century traces the lives of super-affluent zamindars of Bengal who lived in palatial mansions in Kolkata and owned multiple urban and extensive agricultural properties. Sei Somoy describes in moving terms the meagre incomes of domestic servants and peasants as compared to
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