Social Stratification and Inequality: Caste, Class, Mobility and Affirmative Action
What this domain tests
This domain covers ranking systems - slavery, estate, caste and class - their features, the theories that justify or attack them, types of mobility, and India's constitutional response to caste inequality. Comparison questions (caste versus class) and short notes on Ghurye's features or the Mandal Commission are frequent.
Core rules and concepts
- Ogburn and Nimkoff: stratification is 'the process by which individuals and groups are ranked in a more or less enduring hierarchy of status'.
- Ghurye's features of caste: segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on commensality, restrictions on social intercourse, civil and religious disabilities and privileges, and restriction on choice of occupation. Dumont adds purity and pollution as the organising principle; the jajmani system linked castes economically.
- Caste is closed, ascribed and endogamous; class is relatively open, achieved and exogamous in principle. Marx defines class by ownership of the means of production and distinguishes a class-in-itself from a class-for-itself; Weber separates class, status and party.
- Mobility (Sorokin): vertical versus horizontal, intergenerational versus intragenerational.
- Theories: Davis and Moore argue stratification is functionally necessary; Tumin and Marxists rebut this as self-serving; conflict theorists stress domination.
- Constitutional remedies: Article 17 abolishes untouchability; Articles 15(4) and 16(4) permit reservation; the Mandal Commission (1980) recommended 27 per cent for Other Backward Classes, implemented in 1990.
Worked example
A Dalit student becomes an IAS officer. This is vertical, intergenerational mobility achieved through education and reservation policy, showing that caste is no longer the sole determinant of occupation; yet caste endogamy in marriage persists, so the mobility is partial rather than a collapse of the caste order. Reason through both the change and its limits.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating caste and class as synonyms, or calling class a closed system.
- Confusing the Mandal Commission (OBCs, 1980) with the Kaka Kalelkar Commission (1953).
- Quoting Article 17 for reservation instead of untouchability.
- Ignoring Tumin's critique when asked to 'discuss' Davis and Moore.