“How are Hierarchy and Exclusion the major impediments in the transformation of societies? Discuss.” (2020)
Social transformation means a shift from ascription to achievement, from subjects to citizens, and from stagnation to broad-based development. Talcott Parsons described this through his pattern variables, and T. H. Marshall (Citizenship and Social Class, 1950) through the spread of civil, political and social rights. Hierarchy fixes people in ranked positions, and exclusion keeps whole groups out of the institutions through which change travels. Together they slow transformation, though they do not stop it.
How hierarchy impedes transformation
- It makes inequality look natural. Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966) showed caste ranking legitimised by purity and pollution. André Béteille called such orders harmonic: inequality matches the values people hold, so it is rarely questioned. Karma turned low status into a personal fate.
- It divides those who might resist. B. R. Ambedkar’s “graded inequality” gives every caste someone below it, which blocks solidarity among the oppressed.
- It wastes talent. When positions are assigned by birth, ability is misallocated. Gunnar Myrdal (Asian Drama, 1968) saw rigid social stratification as a major obstacle to South Asian development.
- It persists inside institutions. Patriarchal hierarchy keeps women out of paid work: female labour force participation was 41.7% in PLFS 2023–24.
How exclusion impedes transformation
- It destroys human capability. Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (An Uncertain Glory, 2013) contrast East Asia and Kerala, where mass schooling came first, with an India that long left Dalits, Adivasis and women out of education. Growth then fails to become development.
- It distorts markets. In Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attewell’s study (2007), equally qualified Dalit applicants had lower odds of a job callback, so merit went unused.
- It weakens solidarity. Émile Durkheim’s forced division of labour describes a society where positions are imposed by birth or force rather than matched to aptitude, which breeds conflict instead of cooperation.
- It produces grievance and violence. W. G. Runciman’s relative deprivation helps explain ethnic and caste conflict; the National Crime Records Bureau recorded 57,582 crimes against Scheduled Castes in 2022. Ambedkar warned on 25 November 1949 that political equality without social and economic equality would be a “life of contradictions”.
The counter-view
- Hierarchy can organise change. Meiji Japan modernised under a hierarchical elite, and Max Weber saw bureaucratic hierarchy as the engine of rational administration.
- Exclusion can spark transformation. Dalit and Adivasi movements, studied by T. K. Oommen and Gail Omvedt, and the political rise of lower castes (Christophe Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution, 2003) turned exclusion into mobilisation.
- Hierarchies adapt rather than vanish. Caste has moved into electoral politics and urban networks.
- Change is real but uneven. Mobility of Scheduled Caste sons has risen under affirmative action while that of Muslims has fallen (Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkin, 2024).
Conclusion
Hierarchy and exclusion are impediments because they turn difference into destiny. They are not permanent barriers, however: constitutional rights, education and social movements have made India’s order disharmonic, in Béteille’s term, so its inequalities are now openly contested. Transformation, therefore, depends less on growth alone than on dismantling the ranked and closed structures through which growth is distributed.