In what ways do class and caste intersect and overlap in shaping social structure ? (Answer in 150 words)

- In what ways do class and caste intersect and overlap in shaping social structure ? (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Caste and class are separate principles of ranking that in India have neither replaced nor ignored each other.

Body

1. Distinct bases of ranking: Caste ranks by birth on a ritual scale of purity and pollution — Dumont's encompassing opposition — and is closed; class ranks by market position, which is achieved and formally open. Weber treated caste as the extreme case of a status group.
2. Where they intersect: Beteille's Sripuram found ritual status, economic class and political power once fused and now dissociated — Brahmins without land, Non-Brahmin cultivators with it. Caste also supplies the credit, contacts and information through which class advantage is pursued.
3. Where they overlap and reinforce: The correlation nevertheless survives. Landlessness and manual labour remain concentrated among Dalits and Adivasis, ownership among the dominant castes, and endogamy keeps property inside the group across generations.
4. What this does to structure: Cleavages overlap without coinciding, so mobility is usually collective — a caste rising together — rather than individual.

Conclusion
Class has not dissolved caste; the two now form a single structure of advantage.