  Decision to participate in education depends on the circumstances individual
inherits and on the returns to education she expects as well. If one person
from any socio-economically disadvantaged social group inherits poor
circumstances measured in terms of family background, then she is having poor
opportunities vis-\`a-vis her capability set becomes confined. Accordingly, her
freedom to choose the best alternative from many is also less, and she fails to
expect the potential returns from educational participation. Consequently, a
complementary relationship between the circumstances one inherits and the
returns to education she expects can be observed. This paper is an attempt to
look at this complementarity on the basis of theoretical logic and empirical
investigation, which enables us to unearth the origin of inter-group disparity
in educational participation, as is existed across the groups defined by taking
caste and gender together in Indian society. Furthermore, in the second piece
of analysis, we assess the discrimination in the likelihood of educational
participation by invoking the method of decomposition of disparity in the
likelihood of educational participation applicable in the logistic regression
models, which enables us to re-establish the earlier mentioned complementary
relationship.
