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UPSC 2018 GS-I · 10 marks · 150 words

‘Caste system is assuming new identities and associational forms. Hence, the caste system cannot be eradicated in India.’ Comment.

What “Comment” demands

give a considered opinion on the specific proposition, supported by evidence — brevity is expected, evasion is not.

The characteristic failure: a general essay on the topic that never addresses the proposition itself.

What a top answer must contain

These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this question — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.

  • New forms: caste associations and federations, vote banks, matrimonial networks, professional caste bodies, digital caste groups
  • Srinivas on sanskritisation and dominant caste; Rudolph and Rudolph's 'modernity of tradition'; Dipankar Gupta on hierarchy giving way to difference
  • Evidence of persistence: endogamy near-universal in IHDS data, caste-based discrimination in labour markets (Thorat-Attewell)
  • Counter to the 'cannot be eradicated' claim: ritual hierarchy has weakened, untouchability practice declined, reservation altered mobility
  • Ambedkar's position that caste ends only with the end of endogamy — the sharpest closing anchor

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