[2] A village study by William Wiser published in 1936 was the first significant attempt to examine the relationships within the caste system of India from an economic perspective,[3] although colonial administrators such as Baden Henry Powell had earlier noted the phenomenon.
[3] Along with barbers and carpenters, John Bodley notes potters, shoe-makers and sweepers as being typical examples of the artisanal occupational groups,[6] but the system also incorporated Brahmin priests and other castes with religious functions.
For example, Gould reported in his 1960s study of an area of eastern Uttar Pradesh, North India, that the Kori caste, who were traditionally weavers, had become agricultural labourers, ploughmen, because industrialisation had made their prior role redundant.
Similarly, the Thakurs, who were traditionally warriors, were redundant, and he noted that in some cases occupations had been merged, an example being that the Badiga in an area of South India were by then both carpenters and blacksmiths.
[4] Thomas Beidelman has suggested that the rapid rise in the lower-caste population coupled with the division of lands held by the higher castes tipped a finely balanced, sometimes strained, but viable system of supply and demand into one that could not be sustained.
By fixing roles, it also sustained the incapable or inefficient and prevented people who might have an aptitude for other things from pursuing alternative lines of work - Man Singh Das notes that "cheap help is not always good help".
Furthermore, its relationship to the Hindu notion of ritual pollution meant that members of higher castes were extremely limited in their choices of occupation in an industrialised economy.