What India holds for the future of Shudras: A book of essays explores new paths for the ‘caste’ An excerpt from Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s essay ‘Shudras and Democratic India’, part of the volume ‘The Shudras: Vision for a New Path’. A 1908 photograph of a Shudra wedding couple. | Internet Archive Book Images / Public domain Vedic society was pastoral. When the agrarian economy of the Harappan civilisation disappeared, a mere cattle economy took its place in the Rig Vedic period. It needs common sense to realise that without an advanced cattle and agrarian economy, Harappans could not have built such sprawling cities. In the Vedic period, there was no urban civilisation. It was a pastoral economy coupled with the division of society into graded varnas.