A rigid social ranking like caste survives because children absorb it early, long before they could question it. By the time they are adults, who may touch, eat with, or serve whom feels like plain common sense rather than a rule.
People of very different rank do not simply live apart; they depend on each other's work and interact daily, so the village functions as a single whole. Inequality and mutual reliance exist side by side.
Strangers who arrive to live in a close community meet years of awkwardness before they are welcomed. Acceptance comes from staying and sharing ordinary life, not from stated good intentions.
A self-contained village changes as roads, markets, schools and government reach further into it. Its social and economic life shifts in response to this growing outside pressure rather than from within.