'Past or Present? Caste Discrimination in Urban India'
Since caste is not phenotypically ascriptive, identifying an individual's caste is relatively more difficult in anonymous urban settings than in traditional rural settings. Hence it is believed that caste discrimination is largely a rural phenomenon. Thus, rural-urban migration has been suggested as a way of escaping caste discrimination for members of stigmatized lower-ranked castes. Ashwini Deshpande examines evidence on caste disparities and discrimination in contemporary, formal-sector urban India, and comments on whether rural-urban migration could be one of the keys to eliminating caste discrimination.