D.+Social+Mobility

=**Social Class Mobility: Chances of moving from one group to another...**=

Caste Hierarchies and Social Mobility in India
Since the 1950s an expansion in public education and affirmative action programs have combined to reduce group inequalities in India. One of the puzzling patterns within this overall picture of greater social equality in India is the asymmetry in the gains made by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Both groups were equally disadvantaged in the pre-independence period and there was much more overt discrimination against the castes than the tribes. Yet, many of the formerly Untouchable Castes have performed better than the tribes in terms of educational levels, jobs and political representation (Sethi & Somanathan, 2010).

In the 1950s, soon after political independence, the several thousand castes and tribes that had previously been enumerated in the Indian census were classified into one of four categories: Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and a residual category often referred to as the General or Forward Castes (FCs). In 1961, SCs and STs were 15% and 7% of the population respectively and became the recipients of a range of affirmative action policies leading to their greater representation in politics, state employment and publicly funded education. The Other Backward Classes was a category designed to include poor and socially backward individuals, irrespective of caste, but the only official lists of these communities are based only on caste and the terms Other Backward Classes and Other Backward Castes are now used interchangeably. The census has never enumerated the OBCs and they are believed to be between 30-50% of the population. The OBCs first began to received caste-based preference in public employment in the nineties and affirmative action towards them has recently been extended to higher education. Castes not included among the STs, SCs and OBCs are defined as General based on the absence of any legally institutionalized preferential treatment by the state (Sethi & Somanathan, 2010).

Two features of the traditional caste system, hierarchy and endogamy, have tightly linked caste identities to social mobility. Although the several thousands of castes into which the Indian population is divided are not all placed in a well-accepted hierarchy, the notion of such a hierarchy is an essential part of the caste system, and mobility is seen as a result of actions taken collectively by the caste groups rather than individually by its members. Inter-caste differences in social standing in the early part of the twentieth century were staggering. Many of the Scheduled Castes were considered Untouchables and barred from public utilities such as roads and water sources, from shrines and from trade with other groups.

"The tribes were less subject to explicit atrocities but were typically too geographically isolated to effectively use public facilities and also suffered on account of being offered a primary education in a language that was not their own. Nomadic tribes and those that migrated seasonally also found it difficult to combine regular schooling with their migratory lifestyle" Sethi & Somanathan, 2010, p. 6).

For the complete article: [|Caste Hierarchies and Social Mobility in India]

More Information
Commentary: [|Determinants of Social Mobility in India by Sanjay Kumar, Anthony Heath & Oliver Heath]