“Briefly discuss the Conflict Perspective on social stratification and examine the view that social inequality in India is the function of rigid social stratification system.” (2004)
The functionalist view (Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore, 1945) treats stratification as necessary for filling important positions. The conflict perspective treats it as the outcome of domination: groups that control scarce resources use power and ideology to keep their advantage. Applied to India, this raises the question of whether inequality comes from a rigid, caste-based order.
The conflict perspective
- Karl Marx: stratification rests on ownership of the means of production. The dominant class extracts surplus, and ideology presents exploitation as natural.
- Max Weber: conflict takes place across class, status and party, so inequality has several bases, not one.
- Ralf Dahrendorf (Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, 1959): conflict arises from unequal authority in organisations, not only from property.
- Melvin Tumin (1953): stratification restricts the discovery of talent and breeds hostility, so it is dysfunctional.
- Gerhard Lenski (Power and Privilege, 1966): once societies produce a surplus, power rather than need decides how it is shared.
Examining the view
Evidence for rigidity
- Caste is ascriptive, endogamous and ritually legitimised. B. R. Ambedkar described it as graded inequality, which splits the oppressed and so blocks collective challenge.
- Marxist scholars such as Kathleen Gough and Joan Mencher (“The Caste System Upside Down”, 1974) showed that, seen from below, caste works as a system of landlord control over labour.
- Disadvantage by birth persists:
- A 2022 study (PNAS) found that Adivasis and Dalits live over four and three years less, respectively, than upper-caste Hindus, and wealth explained under half of the gap.
- The NCRB recorded 57,789 crimes against Scheduled Castes in 2023.
Evidence against rigidity
- M. N. Srinivas (Sanskritisation, dominant caste) and André Béteille (the shift from cumulative to dispersed inequality) showed that the system has always had mobility and has loosened further under land reform, franchise and education.
- Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkind (2024) found that intergenerational mobility is low overall but rising for Scheduled Caste sons, largely because of affirmative action. Mobility is declining for Muslims, a group outside the caste framework.
- Other sources of inequality: market-driven class inequality since 1991, regional imbalance, gender, and informal work. In PLFS 2025, 56.2% of workers were self-employed and 20.2% were casual labourers.
- Functionalist rejoinder: some wage differences reflect scarce skills and education, not only birth.
Assessment
The view is partly valid. Inequality in India does come from stratification, but the stratification is resilient and reproductive rather than rigid. Caste advantage is converted into class assets such as land, credentials and networks, which then pass on as “merit”. A conflict lens explains this better than the idea of rigidity: dominant groups adapt their means of closure as institutions change.
Conclusion
Social inequality in India is a function of an interlocking caste–class–gender structure maintained by power, not of an unchanging hierarchy. Policy therefore has to address both ascriptive exclusion and market inequality.