Status attainment in rural India

An effort is made in this monograph to describe a process of stratification in rural India from the persepective of Blau and Duncan paradigm. We know of no other study that has employed this paradigm to describe the status attainment process of a rural society as yet. Such commonly held assumptions simplicity of rural life and lack of occupational inequality (relatively speaking) in rural societies are not warre nted. As I have indicated elesewhere:even where wide spread poverty prevails such as in rural India-small "inequalities" my be important in determining
who shall service and who shall not (p. 121).
Struggle to attain statuses in these societies may therefore, be examined carefully and with some detail. Whereas I have recognized the limitations of my Indian data, I think, I have provided several clues to the working of this struggle i.e. the non-relevance of education for rural Indian occupational hiera chy and the role that father's occupation (a background vari able) plays for statuses attained. But to our surprise and for those who have long maintained that 'caste status determines all other statuses, caste status (Jati rank) does not play any significant role in the occupational recruitment. This may be interpreted to mean that though differential occupational and other socio-economic' inequalities are prevalent among different castes (Jati-clusters) it nevertheless is possible for low caste individuals to achieve high status positions.
Others may offer different interpretations, however. I will be looking forward to alternative interpretation of my data as I have given to other scholar's data, while reviewing the literature.