“Write short note: Intergenerational mobility in a caste society.” (1986)
In theory, a caste society rules out intergenerational mobility. Membership is fixed at birth, occupation is inherited, marriage stays within the caste, and the doctrine of karma justifies the order. In practice caste has always allowed some movement across generations. It has mostly been movement by groups rather than individuals, and it has often changed a group’s position without changing the hierarchy.
Why mobility is normatively blocked
- Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966) located the logic of caste in the opposition of purity and pollution. An individual cannot purify his birth. Only his descendants, collectively and slowly, might claim a different rank.
- G. S. Ghurye listed hereditary occupation, restrictions on eating and marriage, and segmental division as defining features. Together they tie a son’s life chances to his father’s.
- Jajmani ties passed service relationships from father to son and carried inequality into the next generation.
How mobility happened across generations
- Sanskritisation: M. N. Srinivas showed that a low caste could adopt vegetarianism, teetotalism and Brahmanical rituals and, over a generation or two, claim higher rank. Mobility of this kind was group-based and slow.
- Political power and land: Kshatriya status was historically claimed by lineages that acquired territory, such as Maratha and Rajput clans.
- Wealth: F. G. Bailey (Caste and the Economic Frontier, 1957) showed that Distiller families in Bisipara who grew rich in trade bought land and sought higher ritual standing.
- Hypergamy: marrying daughters into higher sub-castes raised a family’s standing over generations.
- Change in the power structure: André Béteille (Caste, Class and Power, 1965) found that in Sripuram, land and political office were passing from Brahmins to non-Brahmins. Caste, class and power were ceasing to overlap.
Modern avenues
- Delinking caste and occupation: education, urban jobs and reservation allow a cobbler’s son to become a doctor. This is individual intergenerational mobility, which the traditional order did not allow.
- Evidence of convergence: National Sample Survey rounds from 1983 to 2005 showed SC/ST educational and income mobility across generations catching up with other groups (Viktoria Hnatkovska and colleagues, 2013).
- The higher-education enrolment ratio for Scheduled Castes rose from 18.9 in 2014-15 to 27.8 in 2023-24 (AISHE).
Persistence and limits
- Group mobility, fixed hierarchy: Srinivas himself noted that Sanskritisation brings positional, not structural, change.
- Stigma survives occupational mobility: Dalit professionals still meet exclusion in marriage and housing, and manual scavenging continues to fall on particular castes.
- Uneven benefits: a few groups within each reserved category capture most gains, which is why sub-classification of reserved categories has become a policy issue.
- Mobility that looks like caste reaffirmed: caste associations, as Rajni Kothari showed in Caste in Indian Politics (1970), used democratic politics to raise the standing of whole castes. The result was a stronger caste identity, not a weaker one.
Conclusion
Intergenerational mobility in a caste society has mostly been collective, slow and positional. Modern institutions have added an individual route that erodes the link between birth and occupation. Social distance based on caste, however, still limits the full conversion of that mobility into equal status.