The GP is free to suggest anything, but without statistical backing, it's merely that: a suggestion.

India has had the world's largest middle class emerge from poverty in the last three decades, and to somehow claim that economic (& social) upliftment has only benefitted the upper strata is mathematically false. If people were truly weighted down by caste,etc. this uplifted wouldn't be possible

Again, India still reels from literacy problems, and one's likely to see more inequity among the uneducated with regard to social strata.