Of late, a number of scholars have attempted to argue that caste as a system is dying very fast and individual castes are flourishing (for example, Gupta, 2005b; Mayer, 1996; Searle–Chatterjee and Sharma, 1994; Srinivas, 2003). Their argument that ‘vertical social system’ defined by hierarchical relationships is decaying and castes are becoming like ‘horizontally disconnected ethnic groups’ draws on mainly two ongoing processes in contemporary India. One of these seems to be the breakdown of the closed village economy and decaying of caste-based division of labour. And the other process, according to them, is the significant spread of democratic politics in post-colonial India.

The present ethnographic research on Kalipur and Kadampur reveals clearly that ‘the localized traditional system of production of food grains and other necessities based on caste-wise division of labour’ (Srinivas, 2003: 455) has changed a lot in recent times. The hierarchy based on ritual purity and pollution that was an essential characteristic of the caste system has also undergone profound changes under the impact of modernization and other socio-economic factors. But does it mean that caste as a system has collapsed? How far do the people from subordinate caste groups in rural areas emerge as leaders in the positions of power? These questions seem to be important when the scholars argue that in India, ‘social and economic conditions have connived to limit the capacity of subordinate groups to effectively exercise their rights’ and ‘with ritualised exclusions and deeply embedded hierarchical relations, the caste system had reinforced political marginalization and socio-economic inequalities…’ (Jha and Pushpendra, 2012: 25).