BACKGROUND Caste is one of the traditional measures of social segregation in India and differs from other indicators as it is both, endogamous and hereditary. Evidence suggests that belonging to lower castes exposes one to social inequalities and affects health adversely. We examined the association of caste with childhood anemia in India and explored the effect modifying role of adult educatio...

This paper assesses the role of social affiliation, measured by caste, in shaping investments in child health. The special setting that we have chosen for the analysis - tea estates in the South Indian High Range - allows us to control nonparametrically for differences in income, access to health services, and patterns of morbidity across low caste and high caste households. In this controlled ...

Research on the development of implicit intergroup attitudes has placed heavy emphasis on race, leaving open how social categories that are prominent in other cultures might operate. We investigate two of India's primary means of social distinction, caste and religion, and explore the development of implicit and explicit attitudes towards these groups in minority-status Muslim children and majo...

Agricultural tenancy reforms have been widely enacted, but evidence on their long-run impact remains limited. In this paper, we provide such evidence by exploiting the quasirandom assignment of linguistically similar areas to different South Indian states that subsequently varied in tenancy regulation policies. Given imperfect credit markets, the impact of tenancy reform should vary by househol...

We propose a theory of the origins of India’s caste system by explicitly recognizing the productivity of women in complementing their husbands’ occupation-specific skill. The theory explains the core features of the caste system: its hereditary and hierarchical nature, and its insistence on endogamy (marriage only within castes). Endogamy is embraced by a group to minimize an externality that a...

Students of comparative development have found the Indian caste system of great interest as a social structure of salience in the modernization process. Indeed, it has served as an institution of upward social mobility, political mobilization and participation, and interest aggregation in recent decades. It has been suggested that, in its mobilizing role, caste works as a medium for transmittin...

The origins of the nearly one billion people inhabiting the Indian subcontinent and following the customs of the Hindu caste system are controversial: are they largely derived from Indian local populations (i.e. tribal groups) or from recent immigrants to India? Archaeological and linguistic evidence support the latter hypothesis, whereas recent genetic data seem to favor the former hypothesis....

Phenotypic diversity is frequently generated by differences in gene expression. In this study, we addressed the relationship between homology in gene expression and phenotype among four species of eusocial wasps. Specifically, we investigated the evolution of caste-specific and sex-specific gene expression patterns associated with caste polyphenisms and sexual dimorphisms. We also identified se...

This paper as entitled-“The History and Structure of Caste Systemin India”, talks about the caste system, as prevalent in Indian society, its features, different theories regarding its origin and other issues related to it. But most importantly, it focusses on the characteristics of caste which are still continuing today, its features which have changed partially and also which have undergone c...