Q.What have you observed about the stratification system existing in your society? How are individual lives affected by stratification?

Caste and class both continue to shape Indian society, often reinforcing each other, and their effects are visible in everyday patterns of occupation, neighbourhood and access to schooling. …

Stratification in Indian society today is visible along more than one axis at once — caste continues to structure a great deal of social life even as class, organised around income, education and occupation, operates alongside it, sometimes reinforcing caste-based disadvantage and sometimes cutting across it. In everyday observation, this shows up as patterns rather than isolated incidents: certain castes and communities are still disproportionately concentrated in certain kinds of low-paid, low-prestige occupations, certain neighbourhoods or residential areas are informally understood to belong to particular class or community groups, and access to good schools, healthcare and secure employment tracks fairly closely with a family's existing position in this structure rather than being distributed at random.

This matters because stratification does not affect just one part of a person's life while leaving the rest untouched — it works cumulatively, across every major life chance at once. A family positioned favourably within the stratification system tends to have better access to health and a longer life expectancy, greater physical and economic security, stronger chances of educational success, more fulfilling and better-paid work, and greater ability to influence political decisions that affect them. A family positioned unfavourably experiences systematic disadvantage across all of these same dimensions simultaneously, and that disadvantage is typically passed on to the next generation rather than resetting with each new individual. …