Breaking down the question
The question makes a claim and asks the candidate to explain the mechanism behind it: hierarchical relations in our society are influenced by social mobility. The phrase "in our society" invites primary reference to the Indian setting, where the caste hierarchy has long been treated as the archetype of a closed, ascriptive order. The task is to show how movement of individuals and groups within and between strata reshapes those hierarchical relations.
Two key terms must be handled with care. Hierarchy refers to the ranked ordering of statuses, pre-eminently the caste order but also class and other gradations. Social mobility refers to the movement of individuals or groups from one position in the stratification system to another. The connective "influenced by" requires the candidate to demonstrate causation — to explain how mobility loosens, reproduces or reconfigures hierarchy rather than merely to define the two concepts.
The conceptual groundwork is developed in the note on social mobility.
How to approach it
Open by distinguishing types of mobility — vertical and horizontal, individual and group, intergenerational and intragenerational — and by noting the classical view of caste as a closed system permitting little mobility. Then complicate that view: even a nominally closed hierarchy accommodates real movement, and that movement acts back upon the hierarchy.
Build the body around mechanisms. Show how Srinivas's concept of Sanskritisation allows lower castes to raise their ritual and social standing, adjusting positions within the hierarchy without abolishing it. Then bring in the modern forces — education, occupational diversification, urbanisation, market economy, reservation and democratic politics — that generate class mobility, produce status inconsistency, and gradually transform the caste order into a more class-like and negotiable one. Conclude with a balanced judgement: mobility reshapes and softens hierarchy but has not dissolved it.
Model answer
Stratification systems arrange individuals and groups in a ranked hierarchy of status, wealth and power. Social mobility is the movement of persons or groups between positions in that hierarchy. It may be vertical, involving a rise or fall in rank, or horizontal, involving a shift without change of rank; it may be achieved by individuals or by whole groups; and it may occur within a lifetime or across generations. Pitirim Sorokin, who systematised the study of mobility, saw every stratified society as containing channels through which such movement flows. The proposition that hierarchical relations are influenced by mobility means that the ranked order is not fixed and inert but is continually acted upon, adjusted and reshaped by the movement occurring within it.
In the Indian context this relationship is especially instructive, because caste has classically been treated as the very model of a closed hierarchy based on birth, ritual purity and hereditary occupation. On the older view, mobility was virtually excluded: one's rank was ascribed and permanent. Yet closer study reveals that the caste hierarchy has always accommodated movement, and that this movement continually influences hierarchical relations.
The most important mechanism of positional mobility within the traditional order is what M. N. Srinivas termed Sanskritisation — the process by which a lower caste adopts the customs, rituals, diet and lifestyle of a higher, "twice-born" caste in order to claim a superior position in the local hierarchy over a generation or two. Sanskritisation does not overturn the hierarchy; on the contrary, it accepts its scale of values. But it does rearrange positions within that hierarchy and keeps the ranking of castes an object of contest and negotiation rather than a settled fact. The hierarchy is thus influenced from within, its rankings periodically challenged and revised by the upward striving of mobile groups.
Modern forces have intensified and diversified this influence. The spread of Western education, new occupations, industrialisation and urbanisation have opened channels of achievement-based mobility that cut across ritual rank. A person of low caste who acquires education and a professional post attains a class position that may sit uneasily with inherited ritual status, producing what sociologists call status inconsistency. As such inconsistencies multiply, the neat correspondence between caste rank and life-chances weakens, and hierarchical relations become more fluid and negotiable.
The market economy and the growth of a cash nexus have loosened the old jajmani ties that bound lower castes to hereditary service, giving them room for occupational and economic mobility. Democratic politics, universal adult franchise and the mobilisation of numerically large lower and backward castes have converted ritual subordinates into powerful electoral blocs, generating a striking mobility of power that reorders relations of dominance. The policy of reservation in education and employment has provided a further institutional channel for group mobility, enabling historically subordinated communities to enter positions of respect and authority once closed to them.
The cumulative effect of these processes is that the caste hierarchy has increasingly taken on the features of a more open, class-like system. Positions are no longer settled solely by birth; they are influenced by education, occupation, wealth and political power, all of which are subject to mobility. The rigidity of the traditional order has given way to a more negotiable structure in which groups actively bargain over their standing.
It would be an exaggeration, however, to conclude that mobility has abolished hierarchy. Caste identities remain socially and politically salient, discrimination persists, and mobility is unevenly distributed, so that some groups rise while others remain excluded. What the evidence shows is not the disappearance of hierarchy but its transformation: mobility softens, reshapes and complicates hierarchical relations, converting a closed order of ascribed rank into a more dynamic and contested one. Hierarchy and mobility are therefore not opposites but interacting forces, the second continually working upon and reconfiguring the first.
Examiner's perspective
This question rewards candidates who explain a mechanism rather than merely define terms. The examiner wants to see how mobility acts upon hierarchy, and the Indian material — Sanskritisation, status inconsistency, the effects of education, market, democratic politics and reservation — provides the ideal vehicle for that demonstration. Srinivas is almost indispensable here.
Strong scripts organise the answer around distinct channels of influence and sustain the causal argument throughout, closing with a balanced verdict that hierarchy is transformed rather than dissolved. The common weaknesses are writing a general essay on mobility with no explicit link to hierarchy, or asserting that caste has simply vanished. A mature answer holds the two concepts together and shows their continuous interaction.