Development Initiatives and Changing Social Stratification : The Case of Western Odisha, India

Social stratification refers to the hierarchical arrangement of individual and groups in society according to certain important attributes which are decided by the concerned society. Development by itself is an evolutionary process but of late this process is initiated by governments, NGOs, professionals, media and sometimes stray individuals. In this paper we have tried to understand the impact of state-sponsored developmental initiatives in the form of formal legislations, industrial urbanization and agricultural modernization on different segments of the populace in western Odisha, India. Besides the use of published sources and folklores, the study has used data collected first hand from six different types of villages to underhand the changing pattern of stratification in a spatio-temporal context. It was found that despite the communication revolution and post-independent development initiatives the cultural rigidity is very much there and there has not been much of structural differentiation as well