"Is Caste Disappearing in Urban India? Illustrate Your Answer With Examples" — UPSC Mains 2026 GS1
A complete, examiner-standard 150-word model answer for the UPSC Mains 2026 GS Paper 1 question on caste in urban India — with pointer-based structure, a visible-vs-persisting panel, static core content, and the 2025 caste census decision current affairs linkage.
UPSC Mains 2026 GS Paper 1 asked candidates whether caste is disappearing in urban India, with examples, within a strict 150-word limit. Below is a full model answer in pointer-and-diagram format, along with a static-portion refresher and the relevant 2025 current affairs hook.
"Is caste disappearing in urban India? Illustrate your answer with examples." (150 words)
Model Answer
Introduction
Caste has not disappeared in urban India; it has become less visible in impersonal, public transactions while persisting powerfully in the discretionary domains of marriage, kinship networks and quiet discrimination.
Body
Visibly Weakened
- Anonymity of city life masks caste in daily transactions
- Rising formal acceptance among educated youth
- Merit/income visible alongside caste at work
- State incentives for inter-caste marriage
Still Persists
- Only ~5% of Indian marriages are inter-caste
- Matrimonial ads/apps still filter by caste
- Residential clustering along caste lines
- Private practice of untouchability in urban homes
- Public anonymity — in crowded cities, daily interactions in markets, public transport and offices rarely require caste disclosure, unlike villages where caste is locally known and enforced.
- Formal workplace norms — corporate hiring increasingly foregrounds education and skill, and the Supreme Court has publicly described inter-caste marriage as being in the national interest.
- Matrimony — the India Human Development Survey finds only about 5% of Indian marriages are inter-caste, and this figure barely differs between urban and rural India; caste continues to organise matrimonial websites and family networks even among the urban middle class.
- Housing and private life — caste-linked residential clustering persists in many cities, and surveys of Delhi households have found that a substantial share of non-Dalit families privately admit to practising untouchability.
- Caste Census, 2027 — in April 2025 the Union Cabinet approved including caste enumeration in the next Census, the first detailed all-caste count since 1931, an official acknowledgment that caste remains a live socio-economic reality, not a vanished one.
Conclusion
Urban India has made caste less overt in public life, but not less real — it has moved from open, ritual expression toward private, discretionary persistence in marriage, kinship and residence, which is why the state itself is choosing to count it again.
Last full caste enumeration: 1931 Census (colonial). SECC 2011 collected caste data but was not officially released due to methodological issues (reportedly 4.6 million distinct entries recorded, unusable for classification).
India Human Development Survey: consistently finds inter-caste marriage rates around 5% nationally. Census 2027 reference date: 1 March 2027 (1 October 2026 for snow-bound/Ladakh regions); will use a State Caste Codebook developed by the NCBC and AI-assisted verification.
Answer Writing Tips for This Question
- Answer the yes/no framing directly and precisely — "not disappeared, but changed form" is a stronger thesis than a flat yes or no, and the question explicitly asks "is caste disappearing," so commit to a position.
- Use a weakened-vs-persists panel to visually organise evidence on both sides before the prose — this is the fastest way to show balance on a sociology question.
- The question says "illustrate with examples" — always attach a concrete example or statistic to each claim (5% inter-caste marriage rate, Delhi untouchability survey) rather than asserting trends abstractly.
- Distinguish public/impersonal domains from private/discretionary ones — this distinction (market vs marriage, workplace vs residence) is the actual sociological insight the question is testing for.
- Anchor with the 2025 caste census decision — it is directly relevant evidence that even the state does not consider caste a settled, disappearing category.
- Close by naming what changed (form, not presence) — a nuanced conclusion outperforms a simple "caste is weakening" statement.
