Social Stratification — caste, class, sex and gender, race and ethnicity

Articles 15, 16 and 17 of the Constitution of India do not exist in a vacuum — they exist because Indian society is stratified, along caste, class and gender lines, in ways deep and durable enough to need constitutional correction. You cannot argue a reservation case, a workplace discrimination claim, or an atrocities prosecution without first understanding what social stratification actually is and how India's specific forms of it — caste above all — work. This is the single most examined topic in this module for exactly that reason.

In two minutes

Social stratification is the hierarchical arrangement of society into layers with unequal access to wealth, power and prestige, and in India it operates most distinctively through caste, alongside class, gender and, in some regions, race and ethnicity — forms of inequality that constitutional provisions on equality and reservation are designed to address.

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