Question

“The present form of caste as a social institution has been shaped very strongly by both the colonial period as well as the rapid changes that have come about in independent India. The development activity of the state and the growth of private industry affected caste indirectly through the speeding up and intensification of economic change.”

How has economic change affected caste?

Answer 1

• Modern industry created all kinds of new jobs for which there were no caste rules.
• Urbanisation and the conditions of collective living in the cities made it difficult for the caste-segregated patterns of social interaction to survive.
• Modern educated Indians, attracted to the liberal ideas of individualism and meritocracy, began to abandon the more extreme caste practices.
• Recruitment to industrial jobs, whether in the textile mills of Mumbai, the jute mills of Kolkata, or elsewhere, continued to be organised along caste and kinship-based lines.
• The middlemen who recruited labour for factories tended to recruit them from their own caste and region so that particular departments or shop floors were often dominated by specific castes.