The caste gap in India’s literacy more than halved between 1987 and 2011, according to a new study of colonial census records and National Sample Survey (NSS) data. Among people aged 15 and over, the share of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/STs) with at least primary education rose from 27.0% to 62.8%. For all other castes it rose from 47.6% to 71.9%. The gap fell from 20.6 percentage points to 9.1.
The paper, “Caste and Meritocracy in India”, was published open access in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on 15 September 2026. Its authors are Bishnupriya Gupta, professor of economics at the University of Warwick and research director of its CAGE Research Centre; Kaivan Munshi, Frederick W. Beinecke Professor of Economics at Yale University; and Swapnil Singh, principal research economist at the Bank of Lithuania.
Their starting assumption is simple. If ability is spread evenly across castes, then wide gaps in schooling and jobs measure how far India is from a merit-based economy. “Historically the Indian economy was deeply unmeritocratic,” Gupta said when CAGE released the working paper in July.
A field labourer’s odds in 1911
The 1911 census shows how wide the caste gap in India was. In the Madras Presidency, which then included Malabar, 71.9% of Tamil Brahman men could read and write. Among the field labourers in Malabar, the figure was 3.0%. Fewer than 0.1% of the women were literate.
The pattern held in every province the authors examined. Men of the Mala caste, field labourers in Madras, were 1.4% literate. In the Central Provinces, under 1% of Chamar men, traditionally leatherworkers, could read. In Bengal, 71.9% of Baidya men, a caste of physicians, were literate.
Literacy decided who got the new jobs. The colonial administration, railways, public health service and schools needed educated staff, and so did private firms. In 1911, 45% of Tamil Brahman men in Madras worked in what the authors class as skilled occupations, from managers and officials to lawyers, doctors and teachers. For Cheruman men the figure was 3%.
The authors argue that British rule widened the divide. District boards dominated by upper castes set school budgets, and 60% of the education budget went to higher education. Untouchable castes were barred from sharing common spaces with other castes, schools included. Gupta said colonial modernisation “only served to widen caste disparities”.
What changed after 1947
Independent India reserved seats in universities and central government jobs for SC/STs in line with their share of the population: 15% for Scheduled Castes and 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes. Basic schooling expanded at the same time. In 1931, literacy had stood at 17.8% for men and 3% for women.
The NSS rounds from 1987 to 2011 record the catch-up. Mean years of schooling for SC/ST adults almost tripled, from 2.06 to 6.04 years. For other castes the figure rose from 4.29 to 7.64. SC/ST women gained the most, with literacy rising from 16.9% to 54.2%.
Hereditary work loosened as well. Citing earlier research by Guilhem Cassan, Daniel Keniston and Tatjana Kleineberg, the authors note that 48% of men and 37% of women worked in their caste’s traditional occupation in 1911. By 2011 the figures were 17% and 8.1%.
The authors credit two forces. Reservation in higher education helped. Studies of engineering admissions show SC/ST students entering elite colleges and choosing competitive subjects such as computer science. Reservation targeted universities, however, so it cannot explain the rise in basic literacy. That, the authors argue, came from a growing economy that paid more for education and from public spending on schools.
The second force began on the farm. India’s pre-modern economy rested on rain-fed agriculture, where harvests and food supply swung from season to season. A caste usually spans many villages, so its members could support one another when the rain failed in one place. The authors write that these mutual insurance networks were in place long before colonial rule.
Under the British, the same networks helped members migrate to cities and find work there. Trading castes used theirs to set up industrial firms. Munshi’s earlier research found that such networks strengthen fastest in disadvantaged castes with the fewest outside options, helping first-generation entrepreneurs move from traditional occupations into business.
“We find that the recent convergence of opportunity across castes is not a product of policy alone,” Gupta said.
Still in low-skill work
The jobs data are less encouraging. In 1987, 86.2% of SC/ST workers were in low-skill occupations, a category that covers agricultural workers, elementary occupations and machine operators. By 2011, 79.1% still were. The SC/ST share in high-skill professions rose from 1.1% to 7.6%. Over the same years, other castes went from 3.8% to 13.1%.
Averages also hide wide differences between castes. Literacy among the Mahars of Maharashtra rose from under 20% in 1961 to 75% in 2001. Among the Musahars of northern India, it rose from 2.7% to 8.7% over the same period. The authors point to growing inequality within castes too, and to the rise in income inequality since liberalisation began in the early 1990s.
Reserved posts are not always filled. A 2023 parliamentary committee report found that the quota for senior-level jobs falls short by two percentage points every year.
The study stops in 2011 for want of data. The census stopped recording individual castes after 1931, and many major surveys, the NSS among them, carry no caste-level detail. The authors say further research on differences within caste groups depends on that data.
India’s next census will record caste for the first time since independence. Its population count is due in February 2027.
