“How are open and closed systems of stratification undergoing transformation in the emergence of new hierarchical social order in societies?” (2013, 2010)
Two movements are running in opposite directions. Closed systems such as caste are losing their ritual basis and opening to achievement. Open systems based on class are hardening as advantage is passed down through credentials, capital and networks. Where the two meet, a new hierarchical order is forming: it is legitimated by merit but continues to depend heavily on birth.
Transformation of closed systems
- Legal-political: the abolition of untouchability (Article 17), reservation and adult franchise turned castes from ritual ranks into interest groups. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph (The Modernity of Tradition, 1967) showed caste associations acting as vehicles of democratic participation. M. N. Srinivas coined “vote bank” for their electoral weight.
- Economic: occupation is increasingly separate from caste. Harish Damodaran (India’s New Capitalists, 2008) traced agrarian castes such as Kammas, Reddys, Gounders and Patidars moving from farm surplus into industry and finance.
- Ideological: Dipankar Gupta (Interrogating Caste, 2000) sees vertical hierarchy giving way to horizontal, competing identities. Sanskritisation has been partly inverted: land-owning Marathas, Jats and Patidars now campaign for backward status. The Supreme Court struck down Maharashtra’s Maratha quota in Jaishri Laxmanrao Patil (May 2021).
- Old hierarchy in new form: Surinder S. Jodhka and Katherine Newman (2007) found private employers who spoke of merit while judging applicants by “family background”, which in practice coded caste. Satish Deshpande (2013) argues that upper castes have turned inherited caste capital into educational and professional capital and now present themselves as casteless.
Transformation of open systems
- Stable relative odds: Robert Erikson and John H. Goldthorpe (The Constant Flux, 1992) found relative mobility largely unchanged across industrial nations despite the expansion of education.
- Meritocracy as a new aristocracy: Michael Young’s satire The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) predicted that ranking by measured merit would produce a self-righteous elite and a stigmatised underclass.
- Multidimensional classes: Mike Savage and colleagues’ Great British Class Survey (2013) identified seven classes, from an “elite” to a “precariat”, defined by economic, social and cultural capital together. Guy Standing (The Precariat, 2011) describes a growing class of insecure workers without occupational identity.
- Categorical inequality: Charles Tilly (Durable Inequality, 1998) showed that opportunity hoarding along paired categories such as race, gender and citizenship turns open markets into closed niches. Global migration makes citizenship a new form of ascription.
The emerging hierarchical order
| Old basis of rank | New basis of rank |
|---|---|
| Ritual purity, birth | Credentials, cultural capital |
| Land, hereditary occupation | Financial, knowledge and digital capital |
| Kin and caste networks | Professional networks, “merit” discourse |
| Religious legitimation (karma) | Meritocratic legitimation |
- India’s figures: Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty and Anmol Somanchi (World Inequality Lab, 2024) estimate that the top 1% held 22.6% of national income and 40.1% of wealth in 2022–23, the highest shares in their series.
- Stratification within groups: mobile sections of Dalits and OBCs now form internal elites, so hierarchy reappears inside groups that were once treated as uniform.
Conclusion
Closed systems are becoming more open in form, and open systems more closed in outcome. The resulting order combines achieved status with inherited advantage, and its inequality is harder to challenge because it presents itself as fair. Sociology must therefore follow relative mobility and the conversion of old capital into new, not formal openness alone.