The term Social exclusion is of relatively recent origin. The concept of social exclusion is seen as covering a remarkably wide range of social and economic problems. In India Social Exclusion is based on caste and patriarchy. The salient features of social exclusion on the basis of caste are social stratification, social inequality hierarchy and hegemony. In present study, an attempt has been made to examine the changes in the occupational distribution of workforce and poverty relationship across different economic, social and religious groups in Indian population. Among the social groups, schedule caste has performed the least in poverty reduction, both for agricultural labourers and non-farming workers. The XI Five Year Plan (Government of India) refers to low poverty, reduction among the tribal in the 1990’s as serious problem. The poverty has reduced at low rate for the scheduled tribe and scheduled castes among the social groups and the Muslims among the religious groups. The groups with better access to assets and low poverty in the initial years have done better. By implication, this indicate that the groups with high poverty and access to assets and quality employment needs affirmative action and focused policies, particularly if the groups like schedule caste, schedule tribe and Muslim suffered from social exclusion and discrimination. Hence, special measures like increasing the hands on skill, education and expansion of employment opportunity are the only alternative for this chronically poor section.