Jliti10snpitv in ~buration - Institute for Social and Economic Change

is reasonable to assume that a 'sufficient' number in
a
caste would be needed for the caste to be dominant
(Sharda, 1977: 35 ) • Caste dominance was related to
property holdings and ritual status. Out of 12 villages
e)(amlned, 9 of them had the politically dominant caste
as major property owners of the village while 3 of
them
shared property holdings with another caste. However,
all the dominant castes are also reported to be
holding
high ritual status in their villages.
Another generalisation that can be drawn IS
that caste and t r ad i t i on a I occupations are closely
linked (Srinivas 1961:1-31, Bose 1959:201). Recent
researches have seen increasing movement away from caste
occupations (Hitchhock 1959:14, Beteille 1965:103, Mayer
1960:3, Beals 1955:147-160, Karve 1961). Caste free
occupations
are seen as a result of diversification of
rural economy (Dube 1967:5-87). And theIr
diversification was attributed to the improvement of
lower
status caste groups (Shah
and
Shroff
1959:45,
Sllvestar, 1963).
An important finding of Sharda's study
( 1977 )
on the status attainment in rural India based on the
basIc status attainment model of Blau and Duncan, is
that
Jati ranking status has the single largest direct
influence on a respondent's educational attainment.
As
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