International Journal of
Advanced Multidisciplinary Application

Volume 3, Issue 6

• Author(s)Ananya Krishnaswamy, Rohan Shetty
• AffiliationDepartment of Sociology, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
• Page No.105-111
• Volume, Issue & YearVolume 3, Issue 6, June 2026
• Published On2026/06/14
• JournalInternational Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Application (IJAMA)
• ISSN No.3048-9350

Abstract

The relationship between caste-based social stratification and class formation in post-liberalisation urban India remains a contested terrain within Indian sociology, where structuralist accounts emphasising the enduring ascriptive force of caste compete with neo-Weberian arguments foregrounding market-driven class realignment and empirical accounts of rising intergenerational mobility among Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Class populations facilitated by reservations policy and urban migration. This study addresses the gap between these positions through a longitudinal panel analysis of intergenerational occupational and educational mobility across four caste social groups — Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), and General Category — in six Indian cities (Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune, Lucknow, and Ahmedabad) over three generations. Drawing on a primary panel dataset of 3,640 household triads (grandparent-parent-adult child), supplemented by occupational prestige scoring using the Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale adapted for the Indian labour market, and qualitative life history interviews (n = 80), the study tests three competing theoretical models: Ambedkarian structural persistence, Srinivas’s Sanskritisation-mobility synthesis, and the post-liberalisation market-opening thesis. Structural equation models confirm that caste retains a significant independent effect on occupational attainment net of parental education and income (β = 0.28, p < 0.001 for SC versus General comparison), but that this effect has diminished monotonically across birth cohorts from 1950–1999. The private sector technology cluster shows the fastest convergence; the public sector shows the slowest despite reservations mandates. Life history interviews identify ‘caste micro-aggressions in the workplace’ and ‘caste-network exclusion from informal labour markets’ as mechanisms sustaining structural disadvantage even among upwardly mobile SC and ST individuals with equivalent formal credentials.

Keywords: caste, social mobility, intergenerational mobility, class formation, urban India, Ambedkar, reservations policy, occupational prestige, structural equation modelling, life history

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