Making it in India Examining social mobility in three walks of life

Extending the Scope: Methods and Data The present examination substantially broadens and takes forward thismanner of examining social mobility in India by looking within three separate w

DRAFT: September 2, 2013

Making it in India:

Examining social mobility in three walks of life

Anirudh Krishna, Duke University

Abstract

Inequality is rising in India alongside rapid economic growth, reinforcingthe need to investigate social mobility Are children from less well-ofsections also able to rise to higher-paying positions, or are thesepositions going mainly to established elites? This survey of more than1,500 recent entrants to a variety of engineering colleges, businessschools and higher civil services – each of them a highly sought aftercareer destination – finds that class and caste continue to make animportant diference Factors that stand out as significant barriers toentry include rural upbringing and parents’ lack of education Individualswho have succeeded in surmounting these obstacles have almostinvariably been assisted by a relative or friend who motivated andinspired these students, providing them with mentorship along withcareer information and advice A way out of the conundrum – namely,that poorer children get poorer education and thus remain poorer inlater life – can be explored by investing in role models and informationprovision

Keywords: social mobility, inequality, opportunity, education, information, India

Is India an open and equitable society where, in the words of Roemer(2000: 21), “each individual’s expected level of achievement is afunction only of his [or her] efort and not of his [or her]circumstances?” Is there significant social mobility, with people fromless-advantaged backgrounds also aspiring to and achieving higher-paying positions? Or do high-achievers in India come principally fromamong its established elites, entrenching privilege and consolidatingsocial layering?

These questions have critical contemporary concern Inequalityhas risen steadily in the period after economic liberalization “The ratiobetween the top and the bottom deciles of the wage distribution [inIndia] has doubled since the early 1990s” (OECD 2011: 57) Wealthinequalities, large to begin with, have also grown larger “The ratio ofassets held by the individuals at the 95th percentile to those held bythe median individual rose from 758 percent [in 1991] to 814 percent”

in 2001 (Jayadev, et al 2011: 88).1

A dualistic mode of employment growth has accompanied andfed into these trends (Mazumdar and Sarkar 2008) Low-earninginformal-sector positions have grown the most, and while there wasalmost no net increase in formal employment (with increases inprivate-sector positions being ofset by reductions in the public sector),significant inter-sectoral shifts have resulted in raising the earnings ofhigher-skilled workers relative to lower-skilled ones.2 Compared toagriculture, which has declined, and organized manufacturing, whichhas remained static, the services sector rapidly increased its shares ofnational income and employment, the most shining example of Indianeconomic success Between 1993 and 2005, the number of physiciansand surgeons in India increased by 53 percent, the number of lawyers

by 45 percent, and the number of system analysts and programmersincreased by a phenomenal 572 percent.3 The incomes of such service-sector professionals rank very high among all occupational groups(Vakulabharanam 2010)

1 Other recent examinations concur See, for example, Azam (2012); Bardhan

(2010); Cain, et al (2010); Chaudhuri and Ravallion (2007); Himanshu (2007); Kijima (2006); Motiram and Vakulabharanam (2012); Sarkar and Mehta (2010); and Topalova (2008).

2 See, for example, Joshi (2010); Kannan and Raveendran (2009); Kochar et al (2006); Kotwal, Ramaswami and Wadhwa (2011); NCEUS (2007); Sanyal and

Bhattacharyya (2007); Unni and Raveendran (2007).

3 Author calculations from employment data provided by NSSO surveys of 1993-94 and 2004-05.

A large and widening skills-premium separates higher-educatedworkers from less-educated and less-skilled ones (Azam 2012; Cain, et

al 2010; Kijima 2006) Attaining only primary or middle schooleducation does not substantially enhance one’s earning capacity.Compared to the period before economic liberalization, there is “notmuch diference in wages of illiterates and up to primary levels ofeducation Even the middle level of education brought a marginal

diference in daily earnings Wages increased significantly only after at least secondary level of education” (Sarkar and Mehta 2010: 47,

emphasis added)

Those with college educations have gained the most, attainingnearly 15 times the gain achieved by people with only primaryeducation, whose average real wages have remained static(Chamarbagwala 2006) In contemporary India, more than ever before,acquiring a college education has “become key to gaining entry to themost dynamic segments of employment” (Mohanty 2006: 3777).Significant upward mobility in contemporary India is, by and large,contingent upon having or obtaining a college degree.4

It becomes important, therefore, to investigate which individuals– from what types of social and educational backgrounds and with whatkinds of preparation – have been able to secure entry into colleges,especially the more sought-after ones Which others were able to gaininfluential positions in the services sector? Deep and abidinginequalities are associated with a slew of economic and socialpathologies.5 However, as the record of land reforms in India shows,6and as scholarship on emergent policy alignments underlines (Kohli2012), it may be politically and administratively infeasible to addressgrowing inequality through large-scale redistribution of productiveassets Promoting social mobility may be more practically rewarding

Investigating Social Mobility

How can capable and hardworking individuals from backgrounds ofdisadvantage be assisted to gain entry into higher-ranked colleges andhigher-paying occupations? Unfortunately, relatively little is known onthis score, and what is known so far can be contradictory andconfusing

The study of social mobility is still in its infancy in India and otherdeveloping countries Even in the West, where social mobility has been

4 Although getting a college degree does not guarantee high-paid employment (Jefrey, et al 2004), not getting a college degree almost certainly ensures against it.

5 See Berg and Ostry (2011); Weisskopf (2011); and Wilkinson and Pickett (2009).

6 See, for example, Appu (1996) and Bandyopadhyay (1986).

studied for a longer time, “the transmission of economic successacross generations remains something of a black box” (Bowles, Gintisand Groves 2005: 3)

Conventionally, social mobility has been examined by comparingindividuals’ social origins – examined in relation to their father’s socialclass, occupational status, income, or education – with theseindividuals’ own attainments expressed in similar terms In general, arobust correlation has been found to exist between parent’s andchildren’s socioeconomic status: richer fathers tend to have richerdaughters and sons, while poorer children tend to go together withpoorer parents Variations across time and space indicate, however,that the pattern of this relationship may be mutable: intergenerationalmobility varies significantly across countries; within countries, mobilityprospects can change over time.7

Explaining these diferences has proved so far to be contentiousand inconclusive Diverse factors have been shown to have varyingdegrees of influence Exposing a persistent myth, it has been foundthat diferences in “IQ cannot explain why children from less-privilegedsocial strata systematically perform more poorly than others or whychildren from privileged families systematically perform better”(Esping-Andersen 2005: 149) Education can help raise social mobilityprospects, but the efects of education are contingent and contextual.Other sources of influence – including early childhood nutrition andchild rearing practices, race- and neighborhood-related factors, schoolquality, state-supported daycare centers and pre-school programs,health conditions, aspirations and cultural capital – have also beenshown to make a significant diferent within particular contexts.8Calculations show, however, that all of these factors taken together

explain no more than one-quarter of the observed intergenerational

correlation in earnings in Western contexts (Bowles, Gintis and Groves2005: 20)

Initial examinations of social mobility and equal opportunity inIndia and other developing countries provide indication that parents’and children’s earnings may be even more closely correlated – mobilitymay be lower and opportunity structures more impermeable – in

7 See, for instance, Bowles and Gintis (2002); Corak (2004); Erickson and Goldthorpe (1992, 2002); Hout (2006); Hout and DiPrete (2006); Jantti, et al (2005); Morgan (2006); OECD (2010); Roemer (2000); Solon (2002); and Smeeding (2005).

8 See, for example, Behrman, Birdsall, and Szekely (2001); Bourdieu 91986); Breen (2010); Currie (2001); Danziger and Waldvogel (2005); DiMaggio (1982); Erickson and Goldthorpe (2002); Hannum and Buchmann (2005); Mayer (1997); Paxson and Schady (2005); Scott and Litchfield (1994); Torche (2010); and Trzcinski and

Randolph (1991).

developing countries compared to the West.9 Identifying the factorsthat matter, however, remains even more of a black box than in theWest

Few large-sample projects are available for India that comparedsons’ and fathers’ educations, levels of well-being, or occupations.Because data are not available that track the same individuals overlong periods of time, such studies have been limited to making cross-sectional comparisons, examining all fathers and all sons (ordaughters), regardless of age or cohort diferences

A disparate set of conclusions has resulted from these studies Onthe one hand, Jalan and Murgai (2008) find encouragingly that “inter-generational mobility in education has improved significantly andconsistently across generations Mobility has improved, on average, forall major social groups and wealth classes.” Similarly, Azam and Bhatt(2012) find “significant improvements in educational mobility acrossgenerations in India.” The popular media in India has especially of latebeen playing up this impression by highlighting accounts of and byindividuals whose rise, especially in the world of business, has beennothing short of meteoric.10

Other studies come to radically diferent conclusions, forexample, Motiram and Singh (2012) find evidence of substantialintergenerational persistence and considerable inequality ofopportunity Similarly, Kumar, et al (2002b: 4096) conclude that “therehas been no systematic weakening of the links between father’s andson’s class positions… The dominant picture is one of continuity ratherthan change.” Majumder (2010: 463) uncovers “strongintergenerational stickiness in both educational achievement andoccupational distribution,” especially among Scheduled Castes (SCs)and Scheduled Tribes (STs), both historically marginalized groups,noting how “occupational mobility is even lower than educationalmobility.” Hnatkovska, Lahiri and Paul (2013: 468) report results thatare more upbeat in this regard, finding “a remarkable convergence inthe intergenerational mobility rates of SC/STs to non-SC/ST levels in

9 See, for example, Behrman, Birdsall and Szekely (2001); Birdsall and Graham (2000); Castaneda and Aldaz-Carroll (1999); Graham (2000); Grawe (2004); Moser (2009); Perlman (2011); and Quisumbing (2006) In the specific case of India,

Bardhan (2010: 132) asserts that it may well be on the way to becoming “one of the worst countries in the world…in terms of inequality of opportunity and

intergenerational mobility.”

10 One such story that attracted a great deal of public attention was reported with the provocative title: “Your Birthplace, Background Don’t Determine Your Success.” Retrieved June 27, 2012, from http://www.redif.com/getahead/slide-show/slide- show-1-achievers-vikas-khemani-your-birthplace-background-don-t-determine-your- success/20120626.htm

both education attainment and wages.” Desai and Kulkarni (2008)uncover some equalization of educational achievement across castegroups but only at the primary level, with inequalities remaining high

at the upper end, especially at the college level, while Gang, Sen andYun (2012) find evidence of occupational mobility among SCs but notamong STs

These competing visions are hard to resolve using theconventional methods Until the required longitudinal data sets havebeen assembled, which can take a very long time, new andunconventional methods are required to shed more light upon thecritical questions of opportunity and social mobility in India

In one promising alternative mode of inquiry, investigators havelooked directly at particular occupations or within educationalinstitutions that serve as gateways to such occupations The earlieststudy of this type was conducted by Rajagopalan and Singh (1968),and it investigated the social backgrounds of students admitted to oneelite engineering institute (one of the Indian Institutes of Technology,

or IITs) Later, Fuller and Narasimhan (2007) examined the socialprofiles of employees at one software engineering firm in Chennai;while Krishna and Brihmadesam (2006), followed by Upadhya (2007),looked within small groups of such firms in Bangalore Because theseinquiries have focused on only one college or a tiny group of businessenterprises, their conclusions, while illuminating, have lacked breadth

Extending the Scope: Methods and Data

The present examination substantially broadens and takes forward thismanner of examining social mobility in India by looking within three

separate walks of life: engineering, business management, and civil services Within each of these walks of life – referred to below as

occupational silos – we looked at multiple institutions, ranked in terms

of quality and status from high to low Within the silo of engineeringcolleges, we looked within five separate colleges corresponding todiferent quality tiers, and within the second silo, of business schoolsgranting MBA degrees, we studied eight institutions, once again rankedfrom high to low Our sample among the third occupational silo, civilservices, is smaller in comparison, consisting of the IndianAdministrative Service (IAS), an elite cadre, and two lower-statuscadres of civil services Taken together, this data base, which tookmore than three years to compile, represents the broadest inquiry ofthis genre to date

These three career choices were carefully chosen: each sits close

to the pinnacle of aspiration among youth in India While the civil

services have traditionally been the career of choice among educated youth, the other two pathways discussed here have been onthe ascendant, arguably eclipsing the IAS as the foremost careerpreference.11

college-Especially in the years following economic liberalization,

“enrolling in an MBA program, particularly at an elite school hasbecome for some the equivalent of taking an elevator to the executivesuite.”12 The number of MBA-granting institutions has grownexplosively.13 The report of the National Knowledge Commission,appointed by India’s Prime Minister in 2005, notes however that while

“the number of business schools has trebled in the last ten years…many [are] of indiferent quality The market has already starteddiscriminating the quality of institutions.”14 Business magazines inIndia publish annually their pecking orders of business schools,strikingly similar across diferent publications

Similarly, a rapid growth of engineering colleges has followedupon the rise of the software industry, the largest employer ofgraduates, ofering each year a large and growing pool of high-payingpositions While in early 1980s, there were only about one hundredengineering colleges in India, admitting fewer than 25,000 studentseach year, the number of engineering colleges in the country hasgrown apace, reaching nearly 1,600 by 2010, collectively admittingover 500,000 students each year – a 20-fold expansion over 30 years,the fastest within any sector of Indian higher education.15 Once again,there are significant diferences in quality

11 A contentious debate on this point has been waged in the popular press The following news reports are illustrative:

officers-make-beeline-greener-pastures-pvt-sector.html ;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2159428/Babus-flight-IAS- services-top-career-financial-facilities ; and

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2007-07-01/news/28415967_1_civil-http://www.theweekendleader.com/Dreams/1025/Mules-and-horses.html

12 Bolshaw, L “Push to Help Women find the Keys to the C-suite.” Financial Times, November 21, 2011.Retrieved from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/23b91ca8-0ee0- 11e1-b585-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fAbUCUcd

13 Starting from a tiny base in the early 1950s, business schools in India increased slowly in number over the next 30 years Since the mid-1990s, more than 100 new business schools have been established annually, and more than 100,000 students start MBA programs every year.

14 Report of the Working Group on Management Education of the National

Knowledge Commission Accessed on April 29, 2013 at

http://www.knowledgecommission.gov.in/downloads/documents/wg_managedu.pdf

15 For these and other trends related to engineering education in India, see the 2007 report by Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P Muley, titled Engineering Education in India, available at http://www.ese.iitb.ac.in/EnEdu.pdf

Simultaneously, competition for entry into the civil servicesremains fierce, assisted in part by salary increases mandated by thecentral government.16 The ratio of those who make it in to those whoapply continues to remain hefty, with no more than one in nearly 500applicants making it into the IAS.17 As seen below, however, the socialcharacter of the IAS intake has changed from earlier times.

Corresponding to each of these occupational silos, three sets oforiginal data were assembled between 2009 and 2012 A standardizedquestionnaire was formulated, pre-tested, and revised, before beingadministered among entrants to diferent engineering colleges andbusiness schools as well as to new recruits to the IAS and two lower-tier civil services

A total of 671 engineering students were surveyed, comprisingnearly equal numbers in each of five engineering colleges located,respectively, in the north, south, east, west, and center of India Thesecolleges correspond to three diferent quality tiers – with one belonging

to Tier 1 and two each to Tiers 2 and 3 – that were determined inreference to the educational qualifications of faculty, the employmentprospects of graduates, and students’ average test scores.18

The same questionnaire was administered to a total of 802students in eight business schools, also located in diverse regions ofIndia and also belonging to three diferent quality tiers.19 Once again,

16 As Azam (2012: 1145) notes, “The public sector workers at the top-end not only enjoy a positive premium but this premium has increased between 1993 and 2004.”

17 See

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2009-03-25/news/28435314_1_civil-services-private-sector-aspirants

18 A large majority of faculty teaching at the Tier 1 institution (widely regarded as one of the best in India) has a PhD degree, most from highly-ranked institutes in India and abroad, compared to fewer than 50 percent of Tier 2 and less than 25 percent of Tier 3 faculty Students’ employment prospects also vary considerably across these three tiers A national employability report, based on a sample of 55,000 students from more than 250 engineering colleges across India, found vast diferences in employability across colleges of diferent quality tiers (see

www.aspiringminds.in) While this report did not look at the very best colleges (such

as IITs and IIITs, which constitute Tier 1 for the present examination), it did examine diferences between the next one hundred engineering colleges (our Tier 2) and the rest (our Tier 3), finding, for example, that 31 percent of Tier 2 students would be able to find employment in the IT services sector, compared to only 16 percent of students in Tier 3.

19 Almost the entire faculty of our Tier 1 business school has a PhD from eminent national and international institutions Starting salaries for the class graduating in

2010 averaged Rs 965,000 annually Two institutions in our sample are Tier 2 About half of all faculty members have PhDs Average starting salaries for the class graduating in 2011 were Rs 550,000 Another eight institutions belong to Tier 3 Only a handful of faculty has PhDs Average starting salaries are close to Rs

all students in the entering class were solicited for the survey Tier 1broadly represents the top 20 Indian business schools and besidesothers includes those six state-managed Indian Institutes ofManagement that have been in operation for more than five years Oneinstitution was selected from this tier, which is consistently placedamong the top-five business schools in India, and 208 students wereinterviewed here (n=208) Three institutions ranked between 21 and

50 were considered within Tier 2 (n=333), while another threeinstitutions ranked below 50 were clubbed together in Tier 3 (n=361)

For reasons of confidentiality, we do not refer to any of theseinstitutions by name The names of individuals, extracts from whoseinterviews are cited below, have also been disguised to make good onour promises of anonymity

Students in all but two of these engineering colleges andbusiness schools were administered the survey instrument online whenthey appeared for the AMCAT (Aspiring Minds’ Computer AdaptiveTest), a standardized examination that helps students and employersconnect with one another.20 Students in the highest-tier businessschool and engineering college were separately administered an onlineversion of this survey In the third occupational silo, higher civilservices, a paper version of same survey instrument was administered

at the National Academy of Administration to an entire recentlyrecruited cohort of the IAS (n=117) The entering cohort of the stateadministrative services of one north Indian state (often termed thePCS, or provincial civil service) – who tend to occupy positions justbelow the IAS – was similarly surveyed (n=38) Finally, a broadgrouping of state civil services, ranked just below the PCS, was alsosurveyed in the same state (n=63)

Response rates were, in general, greater than 90 percent acrossinstitutions, except in the highest-tier business school, where thesewere 68 percent, and in the middle-tier civil service, where theresponse rate was just under 70 percent, all of which are more thanthe average achieved in surveys of this kind.21

Distinguishing quality tiers within each of these occupational siloswas helpful for a variety of reasons Most usefully, it helped us dealwith a basic problem of comparison, not otherwise easy to handle:Individuals who do not get into any engineering or management300,000

20 A fuller description of this test, as well as details about the innovative company,

Aspiring Minds, that has designed and which administers this test, are available at

the web site: www.aspiringminds.in

21 The average response rate for online surveys is around 34 percent, according to Cook, et al (2000)

college or civil service are hard, even impossible, to identify, especially

if we consider, in addition to those who applied but did not get in, allthose who did not apply, thinking their chances were slim

The way in which we deal with this problem is best explained byconsidering the following thought experiment Imagine that thepopulation of MBA students is stratified according to the pecking order

of colleges People who get into the top-tier business school constitutethe top stratum of this population; people who get into the second-tiercollege, the second stratum; and so on Otherwise eligible and capablepeople who do not get into any business school constitute the(hypothetical) lowest stratum

If the analysis is able to identify some factor or factors thatregularly decrease (or increase) in value from the highest to the lowesttier, so classified, it stands to reason that these same factors mighthelp distinguish those who do not get into any MBA school, particularly

if after examining secondary data it is found that these factors exist ateven lower (or higher) levels among the general population Thisanalysis of diference is complemented below by an analysis ofsimilarity Factors that have commonly high (or low) values across tiers,but which are, on average, much lower (or higher) among the generalpopulation also bear paying attention, because they help identifythreshold efects, minimum levels associated with successful entry intohigher-paying occupations To the extent that common trends arediscerned across separate occupational silos, a more generalstatement can be ventured about correlates of social mobility in India

- Higher economic status confers an advantage in terms of gainingentry, but by itself does not get one a place within the highest-ranked institutions In combination with rural residence or less-educated parents, however, relative poverty has a more severelydisabling efect

- The representation of SCs and STs within the student bodies ofengineering colleges and business school is greater at thecurrent time compared to historical trends, but these numbersremain considerably lower than the population proportions ofthese groups

- Women have made the most significant gains among all groupsexamined here, raising their presence within all threeoccupational silos far above the proportions that existed eventwo decades ago Even so, they are not yet 50 percent of theintake

- The majority of those who gained entry have relatively educated parents, with most fathers having a college educationand the majority of mothers having at least high-schooleducation, a characteristic that is rare among Indians at large A

well-vast majority of fathers belong to the salariat class, service

professionals in the private or public sectors or self-employedwith their own businesses

- A combination of disadvantages – being rural and poor, or SC/ST and rural, or the child of less educated parents and female –

constitutes a more severe handicap Only a handful of suchmultiply-disadvantaged people have managed to gain entry,even within the lowest-tier institutions

- In general, the conclusion cannot be avoided that an urbanprofessional elite is being reproduced, with the sons and(increasingly) the daughters of salaried and self-employedprofessionals themselves joining higher education and higher-status occupations in the largest numbers

There are, however, a small number of notable exceptions.Detailed follow-up interviews with these “outliers” – people who buckedthe trend and despite facing long odds made it into one of these places– show how, to a considerable extent, socio-economic disadvantagestend to operate via the medium of what Heckman (2011) hascollectively termed “soft skills”: information, motivation, aspirations,social networks, and cultural capital.22

22 Clearly, some among these factors – such as urban residence and salariat

parents, or urban schools and English-medium education – may be related to each other, pointing toward the importance of clusters rather than individual

characteristics, a point to be borne in mind as we examine the results presented below Multiple regression can help tease out the relative (and joint) significance of diferent factors, but the scope for such analysis is limited, because a large missing part of the data relate to the characteristics of those do not get into any of these occupational silos In these circumstances, we can only compare across individuals

in higher and lower tiers, de-emphasizing comparison with the general population, a critical piece Undertaking such analysis, however, and comparing across tiers within the management schools silo (and separately across tiers among engineering colleges) using multinomial logistic regression analyses, helped uphold the results reported below, particularly highlighting the separate significance of soft skills.

Rural Origin: Degrees of Rural

We begin by looking at the experiences of rural residents A point ofclarification is in order here Classifying some individual as urban orrural is not a straightforward task How does one classify someone whowas born in a village but at the earliest opportunity left to pursueeducation in an elite boarding school? Or someone who spent one ortwo years at a rural school, but for the rest of her time was educated in

a city? Or someone else who lived in a rural area while commuting to acity school?

Rural and urban are not neatly divisible categories of individuals.There is a whole range of “rural-ness,” distinguished by degrees

To assess where some particular individual should be placed onthis spectrum, we looked at three separate characteristics, associatedwith diferent degrees of rural-ness We began by examining the nature

of schools – rural or urban – that an individual attended at fourseparate stages of his or her education (respectively, primary, middle,high school, and higher secondary or pre-university) Next, we looked

at their place of residence while growing up (rural village, tahsil/taluka

headquarter, district capital, state capital, and metro city).23 Finally, welooked at the occupations and the current place of residence of theirparents

Combining these separate criteria helped generate confluences

of characteristics associated, respectively, with higher and lowerdegrees of rural-ness Someone who attended a rural school for evenone year is regarded as minimally rural for the purpose of thisclassification (R1).24 Another person who attended rural schoolsthroughout, from the primary to the higher secondary level, isconsidered rural to a higher degree (R2) Those who attended ruralschools all through and whose parents live in rural areas constitute thenext higher degree (R3) The most rural individuals in terms of this

classification are those who attended rural schools throughout and whose parents live in rural areas and work in agriculture as farmers or

agricultural labor (R4) This image that comes to mind when one thinks

23 At the time of writing India was divided into 604 administrative districts Districts,

particularly rural ones, are further divided into tahsils or talukas, the headquarters

of which are often large villages and may sometimes be small towns.

24 A school was classified as rural for this analysis if it is located in a village or at a

taluka/tahsil headquarters Schools located at district and state capitals and metro

cities (along with the tiny number reported to be outside India) were classified as

urban Including all schools located at tahsil/taluka headquarters within the

category of rural schools (in addition to all those located in rural villages), tends to over-estimate somewhat the representation of rural students.

of a person in India as being rural commonly conforms to this maximaldefinition Table 1 presents the related results

Table 1 about here

-The first general trend to report is that rural India is considerablyunder-represented Regardless of which definition of rural isconsidered, the proportion of rural people in any tier of any of thesethree walks of life is much lower than the proportion of rural residents

of India (which was 69 percent in 2011, falling slightly from 72 percent

in 2001) Even if we consider minimally rural people (R1), thisproportion is only 6 percent in the Tier 1 business school, rising to 24percent in the Tier 3 engineering college, and to 56 percent in the Tier

3 civil service As progressively higher degrees of rural are considered,the proportion of entrants consistently falls

Across occupations and quality tiers, the more rural one is theharder it is to gain entry Not one R4 individual found a place in thetop-tier business school and the corresponding proportions in otherbusiness schools and in engineering colleges is nowhere more than 3percent

Among civil services the proportions of rural individuals arehigher in comparison, illustrating what is perhaps an emergent trend:Rural India is relatively poorly represented in the rising occupations,engineering and business management, and it is better represented inthe civil services This trend represents a change from the past Potter(1996: 231), reporting on the nature of individuals recruited to the IAS

in the 1980s, found them to be largely urban-educated, “products ofthe ‘better’ schools and colleges,” and raised in cities It seems likely,therefore, that as urban elites have gravitated away from civil services,others, including some educated in rural schools, have come in to takethese places.25

Why do rural origins impose handicaps to social mobility? Evenwhen they have been successful in gaining entry, why have ruralindividuals more often made it lower-tier compared to higher-tierinstitutions?

25 Increased investments in school education by richer farmer families, acquiring a

“new sense of urgency” in recent years, have also helped promote this emergent trend (Jefrey 2010: 70) Corresponding to the results reported here, Fernandes (2006: 106) notes how “fields such as business and information technology [have] replaced civil service employment as the social marker of the upper-tier [urban] middle class.”

Our outlier interviews helped shed light upon these questions.Shivana Prasad,26 who gained admission at a Tier 2 engineeringcollege, despite being up against cumulative odds – being maximallyrural (R4) and female – provided the following explanation:

Lack of good primary and higher education is a key factor Just beinghighly intelligent doesn't suffice One's mind has to be trained andskills have to be sharpened for one to get admission in a good place.Poor schooling is a major constraint Once a person has been welleducated, he might still not find a good college because goodopportunities to excel aren't made available to him

The contacts and connections that the student's parents and relativeshave are also limited Lack of inspiration due to absence of role models

is related Students may feel that the aim is unclear and unachievable

In my case, my cousin, who had studied in nearby city, guided me Hewas appearing for PSC [the qualifying examination for employment inthe state civil service] He had done a course in polytechnic He helped

me with my school work and gave me books to read He guided meabout engineering colleges and how to study for them

Other outliers similarly emphasized how poor-quality educationcombined with lack of information resources (including role models,guides, and mentors providing career advice) hold back many capableand hardworking individuals Those few rural individuals who havenevertheless secured entry to gateway academic institutions and thecivil services have almost invariably benefited from the intervention ofsome helpful individual – a cousin, uncle, teacher, or family friend –who motivated them and provided guidance

Education in English: Another aspect of a less-promising education in

rural areas has to do with training in the English language In herperceptive analysis of the new middle class in India, which includes, ofcourse, the three occupational silos considered here, Fernandes (2006:69) notes how “fluency in English marks an individual with thedistinction of class culture…such linguistic skills are a necessarycomponent for access.” Examining national data, Azam et al (2013)uncovered a substantial wage-premium for English speakers across alloccupations

Among our sample, the critical importance of English showed upstarkly For instance, 88 percent of Tier 1 business school studentsstudied in high schools where English was the medium of instruction

26 This name, like other interviewees’ names, has been made up for the sake of confidentiality.

(or first language used) As many as 71 percent of Tier 1 studentsattended English-medium schools from the outset, starting from theprimary level The corresponding proportions for Tiers 2 and 3 are 82percent and 59 percent In engineering colleges these percentages aresomewhat higher, while in the civil services they are somewhat lower,but not radically so, particularly within the IAS

Those who make it to top-tier schools and civil services are in thissense not representative of the Indian population: Only 13 percent ofIndia’s schools at the primary and upper-primary stage have English asthe medium of instruction and a further 18 percent teach English asthe first or second language (NCERT 2005)

Few village schools are able to field teachers who are competent

to teach in English Results of standardized tests conducted among

11-14 year-old schoolchildren as part of the India Human DevelopmentSurvey of 2004-05 show that while all types of learning outcomes are

at considerably lower levels in rural compared to urban schools, fallingregularly with increasing distances to towns; English language

proficiency is more than seven times higher among urban compared to

rural schoolchildren – 16.2 percent of urban but only 2.4 percent ofrural children who were tested could read or write even a word ofEnglish

Rural-Urban Migration: To overcome these and other disadvantages of

a rural education, many families have migrated from villages to cities.Geographic mobility has served in a large number of cases as a means

of social mobility – for those who could aford to make the move Weasked respondents about whether their families had ever movedresidence and whether this move was motivated primarily by thedesire “to improve the academic prospects of you and your siblings.”

On average, as many as 29 percent of business school studentsreported moving for academic reasons

Across occupational silos and quality tiers, a higher proportion ofinterviewees began primary school in a rural setting, but by the timethey had reached high school the percentage still in a rural setting hadsteadily fallen For instance, among students of one Tier 2 engineeringcollege, 11.1 percent attended rural schools at the primary level, butonly 7.1 percent attended rural middle schools, and fewer yet, 3.8percent, studied in rural high schools Among entrants to the IAS, forexample, 43 percent attended rural schools at the primary level butonly 26 percent remained in rural areas through high school

It is not only rural government schools where these percentages fell as students advanced: the percentages attending rural private

schools also fell as students moved from the primary through thehigher secondary level Among IAS entrants, 17 percent attended ruralprivate schools at the primary level, but only 9 percent remained insuch schools for higher secondary Among entrants to engineeringcolleges this drop was sharper: from 19 percent to 1.6 percent.

The ability to send one’s children to private, English-medium, andcity-based schools is dependent upon a family’s economic situation

We look next to see how relative wealth has made a diference to anindividual’s chances

Relative Wealth

In order to examine diferent levels of household wellbeing, we askedrespondents about the ownership by their household of origin (i.e.,their parents’ household) of 16 types of assets, including movableassets (such as TVs, motorcycles, and refrigerators), immovable assets(homes, commercial properties, agricultural land), and financial assets(stocks, fixed deposit accounts).27 The survey question asked simplyabout the presence or absence of each asset type in the parentalhousehold at the time when the respondent was growing up,specifically when he or she was studying in high school Basic andrelatively low-value assets, possessed on occasion even by less well-ofhouseholds, form part of this asset list, including bicycles, radios, andpressure cookers Higher-value and less frequently possessed assets,including stocks and bonds, washing machines, and cars, are alsoincluded We constructed a simple asset index constructed by addingthe total number of assets possessed by each household.28 Table 2presents these results

Table 2 about here

-The first data row shows the average number of assets possessed

by the families of entrants to these institutions Notice that theaverage number of assets owned by entrants to these institutions ishigher among business school and engineering students and loweramong civil service entrants

27 Incomes are particularly hard to recall accurately, especially in rural contexts where seasonality can result in considerable fluctuations Following Carter and Barrett (2006), we preferred to examine households’ usual (or structural) material conditions using asset ownership as the measure of household wealth

28 We also used principal component analysis to create other asset-based indices, weighted in diferent ways However, the correlation of these indices with the simple count of the total number was > 0.95 in each case, reinforcing our

preference for using the simpler and more intuitive measure

Notice also that household wealth and level of entry are notmonotonically related: those getting into higher-tier institutions arenot, on average, from wealthier backgrounds compared to their peers

at or close to high school) only 13.4 percent of all households in Indiapossessed a refrigerator (NCAER 2005)

Not everyone who made it into these institutions was from arelatively rich family In order to examine how many relatively poorindividuals have also got into these places – and whether thesenumbers difer substantially between lower- and higher-tier institutions,

we assessed degrees of deprivation by examining diferent criteria,including asset ownership and attendance at government schools Webegan identifying economically deprived individuals by short-listingthose whose parental households possessed four or fewer assets (P1).29Separately, we considered parental households that possessed two orfewer assets (P2) The second and third data rows of Table 2 providethese figures

The share of individuals with less than four assets is notinsignificant within any of the institutions considered here In the top-tier business school, such individuals constituted 6 percent of theintake, rising to 16 percent in the Tier 3 business school – and further

to 37 percent in the IAS and to 48 percent, nearly half, in the Tier 3civil service Poorer individuals, like rural ones, have a higherprobability of getting into the civil services, especially lower-tier ones,and their chances of getting into business schools and engineeringcolleges are lower

Turning to a stricter definition of relative deprivation (two or fewerassets), we find these numbers falling sharply Only 2 percent in thetop-tier business school and no more than 25 percent in any institution

29 Bicycles, radios, TVs, and pressure cookers were the most common asset types.

(the Tier 3 civil service) grew up in households whose only assets were

a bicycle or radio or TV or pressure cooker Again, to put thesenumbers in perspective, nearly half of all Indians lived in a householdthat did not own a TV in 2005 and 45 percent did not possess a bicycle,according to data provided by the India Human Development Survey

Yet another criterion for examining relative poverty relates toattendance at government (rather than private) schools At the primarylevel, government schools usually charge no fees, and at higher levels,fees in government schools are nominal, being substantially lower thanthose charged by private schools Children of relatively deprivedfamilies are thus much likelier to attend government schools, althoughthere is no one-to-one correspondence We looked at two combinations

of relative deprivation and government school attendance: first,identifying individuals whose families possessed four or fewer assetsand who attended only government schools (P3), and next, looking atindividuals whose families possessed two or fewer assets and who alsoattended only government schools (P4) These numbers are muchsmaller than those reported above, both falling to zero in the top-tierbusiness school and engineering college Within the Tier 3 civilservices, as well, the representation of poorer people, so defined, isquite small, being 16 percent for P3 and only 5 percent for P4 Peoplefrom relatively poor households who can only aford to attendgovernment schools are thus unlikely to achieve significant upwardmobility

If one is poor and rural, sufering two disadvantages

simultaneously, then one’s chances of getting into any of theseinstitutions become truly dismal The last two rows of Table 2 providedata for two diferent combinations of rural upbringing and relativedeprivation P5 refers to two or fewer assets and education throughout

in rural schools (government or private), while P6, the stricter criterion,refers to the combination of two or fewer assets and the strictestdefinition of rural considered here, R4 Considering either combination,the numbers are zero in most cases, and no greater than 4 percent inany case (that of the Tier 3 civil services)

Even as relatively large numbers of rural individuals have been

getting into this lower tier of civil services, the share of rural and poor

individuals is closer to zero The impression gained here of an urbanand relatively well-of elite reproducing itself – with some notableexceptions, of course – gets reinforced when data are examined nextrelated to parents’ occupations and education levels

Parents’ Occupations and Education

Parents’ occupations and education levels, because ofintergenerational stickiness, have been shown repeatedly by socialmobility analyses to have a critical impact upon children’s prospects(Motiram and Singh 2012; Heckman 2011) In the Indian context,Kumar et al (2002 a and b) have highlighted the critical role of what

they term the salariat, comprising salaried employees in government

or private-sector offices together with self-employed professionals andbusinesspeople

Table 3 presents these data, showing how salariat fathers

constitute as many as 94 percent of the total within Tier 1 businessschools and engineering colleges, falling in Tier 3 civil services, but still

only to 71 percent The large numbers of salariat fathers, coupled with

the near-monotonic decline of this percentage across quality tiers,provides indication of inter-generational reproduction of occupationalclass.30

Table 3 about here

-Note the high share of government employees among fathers,ranging from 64 percent in the Tier 1 business school to 34 percentamong Tier 3 business schools In general, the highest share ofgovernment-employee fathers is found among those who arethemselves government employees More than half of all entry-levelcivil servants across the three tiers have fathers who are (or were) also

in government service, and relatively few have fathers employed in theprivate sector or with their own businesses The children of private-sector fathers are more likely to be in business schools or inengineering colleges

Across these three occupational silos, the share of agriculturistfathers (and mothers) is very low According to data on occupationalclassifications collected in 2004-05 by the National Sample SurveyOrganization, more than 55 percent of India’s working population iscategorized as cultivator or agricultural labor Yet, only 3 percent ofTier 1 business-school fathers are so classified, with this share risingwithin lower-tier business schools and engineering colleges and amongall tiers of civil services, but still nowhere more than 26 percent, lessthan half the population share of agriculturists Among motherssimilarly, the share of agriculturists is very low The rural-urban divide

is critically important, as we saw before

30 Further, and to some extent contrary to what Bertrand et al (2010) found earlier

in relation to engineering students, occupational class seems to matter within caste

categories as well: nearly all SC and ST students in our sample have salariat fathers.