Caste and Emerging New Social Classes: A View from Fieldwork

This paper as entitled “Caste and Emerging New Social Classes” talks about the factors and processes that force to work on the changing dynamics of caste to class formation in Indian rural society. In this research paper I have dealt with the overlapping congruence between caste and class in the terms of occupational shift, access to housing pattern, access to agricultural resources, access to education, and access to skills and professions among Dalits. The discourse on caste and class gain momentum in post independent Indian society. This is a dichotomous debate on the traditional caste and modern emerging new classes. The traditional salient features of caste such as hereditary occupation or division of labour based on religious qualities, hereditary membership and ascribed status, closed groups, segmental division of society, hierarchy, restrictions on feeding and social intercourse, civil and religious disabilities and privileges of different sections and restrictions on marriage are the basic components of the caste system. After independence, modernization of Indian economy based on mixed economy (agriculture plus industrialization) and democratization of its political institutions (elections, adult franchise, political parties, reservation and affirmative action) have released new economic and political power in the society. The hierarchical, stratified order of castes now functions as horizontal groups, competing for control over economic resources and power in the society. Thus, these new processes began to start and the stratification based on traditional caste changed and a new type of stratificatory system (class) is emerging in Indian