क्या शहरी भारत में जाति लुप्त हो रही है? अपने उत्तर को उदाहरणों के साथ स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Read this question in English
Is caste disappearing in urban India? Illustrate your answer with examples.
🧭 How to think about this question · directive: “illustrate”
Decode the demand
- Directive 'illustrate': take a clear position and prove each half of it with concrete examples: a study, a dataset, a case, a named practice. Opinion without an example earns nothing here.
- The issue in one line: does the anonymous city dissolve caste, or does caste simply change its address from the well and the temple to the hiring shortlist and the rental market?
- Three things to answer: where city life has weakened caste, where it persists, and what form it now takes; the conclusion must say 'disappearing' or 'changing form' in plain words.
- The trap: writing a one-sided essay (either 'caste is dead in metros' or 'nothing has changed'). The examiner wants both columns and a verdict.
Think in a structure
- Open with the NCERT paradox: caste invisible for those it benefits, visible for those it burdens, then state the position.
- Three headings in the question's own words: weakening, persisting, changing form; each point = one sphere (work, marriage, housing, politics) + reason + a sociologist or a dataset as sub-point.
- Visuals: a two-column table contrasting weakening and persistence sphere by sphere, and a short flowchart of caste's shift from ritual rank to network capital.
- End positively: measures a city administration can act on today, then an Ambedkar insight that resolves the paradox rather than a vague 'holistic approach'.
Facts checked at source (4)· open
- India Human Development Survey (NCAER–University of Maryland): only 5.4% of married women aged 15–49 said theirs was an inter-caste marriage, marginally higher in urban than rural India.Just 5% of Indian marriages are inter-caste: survey — NCAER (reporting IHDS data shared with The Hindu) ↗“just 5.4 per cent said yes the proportion being marginally higher for urban over rural India”
- An Indian Institute of Dalit Studies correspondence study of urban private-sector hiring found Dalit applicants' odds of an interview call were about two-thirds of equally qualified high-caste Hindus'.Urban labour market discrimination — GSDRC summary of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies working paper ↗“The odds of a Dalit applicant being invited for interview were about two-thirds of the odds of a high caste Hindu applicant.”
- Of 54,574 validated sewer and septic tank workers under NAMASTE, 37,060 (67.91%) are Scheduled Castes.Parliament question: Welfare and profiling of sewer and septic tank workers — PIB, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment ↗“General 4,391 8.05 OBC 8,587 15.73 SC 37,060 67.91 ST 4,536 8.31 Grand Total 54,574”
- The government's position: sewer and septic tank cleaning is occupation-based rather than caste-based.Parliament question: Welfare and profiling of sewer and septic tank workers — PIB, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment ↗“Sewer and Septic Tank cleaning work is an occupation-based activity rather than caste based.”
Question: UPSC's CS (Main) 2026, GS Paper I — paper ↗. Guidance: Minimalist IAS, checked 8 Nov 2026 (how we verify). ·
Model answer· 592words · Minimalist IAS
NCERT's sociology text calls it a paradox: for the urban upper-caste middle class, which gained most from post-colonial development, caste has become 'invisible', while for Dalits it still decides marriage, housing and work. The city has changed caste's form rather than ended it, and the examples below test both halves of that claim.
Where city life has weakened caste
- Anonymous work: offices, factories and gig platforms hire by credential and clock, not birth; purity–pollution rules cannot survive shared canteens and crowded trains (NCERT).
- Constitutional levers: Article 17 abolished untouchability, Article 15(2) opened shops and hotels to all, and reservation built a Dalit–OBC class of professionals.
- Ambedkar urged Dalits to leave the village, which he saw as a sink of localism and narrow-mindedness, for the anonymity of the city.
- Westernisation (M.N. Srinivas): English schooling, dress and diet blur the ritual markers by which caste was once read on the street.
- Choice in marriage: love marriages and 'caste no bar' listings grow in metros; Shakti Vahini (2018) placed an adult's choice of partner under Articles 19 and 21.
- Dalit enterprise: bodies like the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry show capital, not caste, can define a businessman's standing.
Where caste persists in the city
- Endogamy holds: marriage remains caste's last fortress, in towns almost as firmly as in villages.
- IHDS (NCAER): only 5.4% of married women reported an inter-caste marriage, marginally higher in urban than rural India.
- Hiring bias: identical résumés fare differently once the surname signals caste, so merit markets are not caste-blind.
- Indian Institute of Dalit Studies correspondence study: a Dalit applicant's odds of an interview call were about two-thirds of a high-caste Hindu's.
- Occupation by birth: the dirtiest city work is still caste-coded, whatever the official label.
- NAMASTE profiling: 37,060 of 54,574 validated sewer and septic tank workers (67.91%) are Scheduled Castes; the government calls the work occupation-based.
- Housing filters: landlords screen tenants by surname and diet, producing caste colonies and vegetarian-only towers in every metro.
- Campus and office: equal-opportunity cells exist on paper, but complaints of caste taunts and biased referrals keep surfacing in universities and firms.
| Sphere | Weakening | Persistence |
|---|---|---|
| Work | Credential-based hiring | Callback gap, sewer work |
| Marriage | 'Caste no bar' listings | 5.4% inter-caste |
| Housing | Mixed trains, canteens | Surname-screened rentals |
How caste has changed form in cities
- Ritual rank (purity–pollution)
- Occupation by birth
- Vote bank and association
- Network capital in the market
- Hierarchy to identity (Béteille): caste as a ladder of purity, Dumont's reading, gives way to caste as a group that organises hostels, credit and jobs.
- Dominant castes mobilise: Marathas, Jats and Patidars, Srinivas's dominant castes, now demand quotas from city rallies and social media.
- Caste as capital: inherited land, contacts and English convert into school seats, referrals and start-up funding; Ashwini Deshpande calls this the grammar of caste.
What a city administration and the state can do
- Enforce existing law: apply Article 17 and the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 to rentals, campuses and workplaces, not only villages.
- Mechanise sanitation: scale NAMASTE so machines, not Scheduled Caste men, enter sewers, honouring Article 21's dignity.
- Protect choice: inter-caste marriage incentives under the Dr Ambedkar Scheme for Social Integration, with special cells against honour crimes as Shakti Vahini directed.
- Count to correct: publish caste-disaggregated data on private hiring and housing, as government already does for its own recruitment.
Ambedkar held that caste lives as a notion in the mind, not merely in the well and the temple; the city has emptied the well and opened the temple, and law, mechanisation and honest data must now empty the mind.
Prepared by Minimalist IAS to the answer standard of Shivam Singh (mentor, 7 years) · facts checked against official sources (how we verify) · updated 8 Nov 2026. UPSC publishes no model answers: compare your structure and coverage with this, then write your own.
