Model Answer:

The Indian Constitution’s policy of ‘protective discrimination’ has served as an instrument of social engineering for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. While catalyzing significant changes, the impact reveals a persistent gap between formal and substantive equality.

Political Empowerment

Constitutional provisions have democratized political space through:
– Reserved constituencies (Articles 330-332) ensuring proportional representation in Parliament and State Assemblies
– Panchayati Raj reservations (73rd/74th Amendments) enabling grassroots participation
– Emergence of assertive Dalit politics exemplified by BSP’s rise, challenging upper-caste hegemony
– Rise of SC/ST leaders to highest offices—K.R. Narayanan as President symbolizing political mainstreaming

However, Christophe Jaffrelot notes this often results in ‘tokenism’, where elected representatives remain dependent on party high commands rather than functioning as autonomous community voices.

Socio-Economic Advancement

Article 16(4) and 15(4) provisions have facilitated:
– Educational mobility: Literacy among SCs increased from 10% (1961) to 66% (2011); scholarships enabling higher education access
– Employment opportunities: Creation of educated middle class through public sector reservations, as observed by Andre Beteille
– Legal protection: Prevention of Atrocities Act (1989) and Protection of Civil Rights Act (1955) providing anti-discrimination framework
– Targeted schemes: Special Component Plan and Tribal Sub-Plan earmarking funds for development

Critical Limitations

Despite constitutional safeguards, structural challenges persist:

Economic Inequality: Benefits largely cornered by urban educated elite—the ‘creamy layer’—while rural majority remains landless and impoverished. Private sector exclusion and declining public employment further limit opportunities.

Social Discrimination: Ghanshyam Shah highlights continued prevalence of untouchability and caste atrocities. Manual scavenging persists despite prohibition; weak implementation undermines legislative intent.

Tribal Marginalization: STs face displacement through development projects, with Fifth and Sixth Schedule protections frequently violated, eroding cultural rights, traditional livelihoods, and forest access.

Conclusion: Constitutional provisions created a rights framework and enabled Dalit-Adivasi political consciousness. However, deep-rooted caste hierarchies persist. The transition from de jure to de facto equality requires comprehensive social reform beyond legal measures.

Model Answer:

While law has been instrumental in combating child labour, it has failed to abolish the practice due to deep-rooted socio-economic factors and implementation gaps.

Legal Framework and Limited Success

India’s legal architecture includes:
– Constitutional provisions: Article 24 prohibits hazardous employment; Article 21A ensures free education (6-14 years)
– Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016: Bans employment below 14 years, except in family enterprises
– Right to Education Act, 2009: Created positive obligation for universal schooling

These measures reduced formal sector child labour and increased school enrollment, yet 10.1 million children remain engaged in work (Census 2011).

Factors Behind Persistent Child Labour

Socio-Economic Compulsions:
– Poverty makes children’s income essential for family survival
– Structural inequalities perpetuate exploitation among marginalized communities

Implementation Deficits:
– Weak enforcement machinery, understaffed and often corrupt
– Vast informal sector (93% of workforce) escapes regulation
– CLPRAA’s “family enterprise” exemption legitimizes exploitation in agriculture, beedi-rolling, handicrafts

Cultural Normalization:
– Myron Weiner noted societal ambivalence toward child work
– Traditional occupations normalize children “learning family trade”
– Gender bias keeps girls engaged in domestic work

Conclusion: Law alone cannot transform entrenched socio-economic realities. Abolishing child labour requires comprehensive approach combining stringent enforcement with poverty alleviation, quality education, and fundamental shifts in societal norms.

Model Answer:

Internal labour migration, driven by agrarian distress and urban opportunities, forms the backbone of India’s informal sector. These migrants, termed “footloose labour” by Jan Breman, face multifaceted challenges perpetuating their vulnerability.

Economic Exploitation and Precarity

• Low wages and irregular payments: Migrants receive below-minimum wages with unpredictable payment schedules, making financial planning impossible.

• Job insecurity: Without formal contracts, they face arbitrary ‘hire and fire’ practices and extreme precarity.

• Debt bondage: Many fall into ‘neo-bondage’ (Breman) with contractors, as seen among brick kiln workers across states.

Social Exclusion and Deprivation

• Inadequate housing: Migrants inhabit overcrowded slums or worksites lacking clean water, sanitation, and basic amenities.

• Denial of entitlements: Without local identity documents, they cannot access PDS rations, healthcare, or education, limiting their capabilities (Amartya Sen).

• Cultural alienation: They face discrimination based on regional, linguistic, and caste identities.

Absence of Social Security

• No safety nets: Excluded from provident funds, ESI health insurance, and pensions.

• Hazardous conditions: Work without safety equipment or injury compensation, treated as Marx’s disposable ‘reserve army of labour’.

• Political voicelessness: Being disenfranchised in host states, they lack collective bargaining power.

Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic exposed these structural vulnerabilities when millions walked home. Urgent interventions—portable social security, universal documentation, and enforced labour protections—are essential for India’s invisible workforce.

Model Answer:

Political mobilization in Independent India has historically drawn from deep-seated social structures. While traditional bases persist, their nature has undergone substantial transformation over seven decades.

Traditional Bases (1947-1980s)

Caste Politics:
Rajni Kothari’s concept of “politicisation of caste” dominated early decades. Dominant castes (Reddys, Marathas, Jats) controlled regional politics while Scheduled Castes formed vote banks through reservation politics and Ambedkarite movements.

Religion and Region:
Religious identities shaped communal politics, with secular parties consolidating minority votes. Linguistic reorganization (1950s-60s) spawned regional parties like DMK, AIADMK, and Akali Dal, mobilizing through linguistic-cultural identity.

Contemporary Transformations

Fragmentation and Assertion:
– Post-Mandal, monolithic caste blocs fragmented into sub-caste mobilizations (MBCs, Mahadalits, Pasmanda Muslims)
– OBC consolidation through parties like SP, RJD, BSP created new equations
– Christophe Jaffrelot’s “Silent Revolution” through backward caste assertion

New Mobilization Patterns:
– Labharthi Politics: Beneficiary class emerged around welfare schemes (PM-KISAN, Ujjwala, cash transfers), transcending traditional identities
– Gender: Women courted as decisive voting bloc through targeted schemes (Ladli Behna, free bus travel)
– Aspirational Politics: Urban youth mobilized on employment, governance, anti-corruption
– Issue-based Movements: Environmental (Chipko, Narmada), farmers’ protests (2020-21) created new coalitions

Conclusion: Contemporary mobilization reflects multi-layered reality—from identity assertion to development-centric politics, marking India’s democratic deepening beyond primordial loyalties.

Model Answer:

Village industries, once integral to India’s self-sufficient rural economy, have witnessed precipitous decline due to multiple interconnected factors spanning colonial exploitation to contemporary market dynamics.

Colonial De-industrialization

• Unfair Competition: Manchester textiles flooded Indian markets through one-way free trade policy—heavy duties on Indian exports but duty-free British imports
• Railway Exploitation: Transport network primarily extracted raw materials and distributed British goods, undermining local producers
• Loss of Patronage: Collapse of princely states eliminated traditional support for skilled artisans

Post-Independence Policy Neglect

• Planning Bias: Nehru-Mahalanobis model prioritized capital-intensive heavy industries, marginalizing village industries in development planning
• Unequal Competition: Traditional artisans faced competition from modern small-scale industries with superior access to technology and institutional credit

Structural Transformations

• Jajmani System Breakdown: Disintegration of reciprocal economic relationships between artisan castes and land-owning patrons, as documented by William Wiser
• Market Exploitation: Dependence on middlemen due to lack of direct access to markets, credit, and quality raw materials

Socio-Cultural Shifts

• Changing Preferences: Consumer shift toward mass-produced goods—plastic replacing earthenware, machine textiles replacing handloom
• Skill Erosion: Low social status and meager incomes discourage younger generations from learning traditional crafts

Conclusion:

The decline represents both economic marginalization and cultural loss, necessitating comprehensive policy intervention to preserve these industries’ economic and heritage value.

Model Answer:

The transfer of land from cultivating to non-cultivating owners represents a fundamental process of de-peasantization that is restructuring India’s socio-economic fabric and accelerating societal transformation.

Transformation in Agrarian Class Structure

Daniel Thorner’s framework illustrates this shift clearly:
• The ‘Kisan’ (owner-cultivator) class is shrinking as farmers lose land to moneylenders, corporations, and urban investors
• Former landowners become ‘Mazdur’ (landless agricultural laborers), marking their proletarianization
• New absentee landlords emerge with purely commercial interests, exemplified by developers acquiring agricultural land around Delhi-NCR for speculation

Socio-Economic Consequences

This ownership shift triggers cascading changes:
• Distress migration intensifies as landless farmers seek non-agricultural work, creating what Jan Breman calls “footloose labour” in urban informal sectors
• Contract farming emerges in Punjab and Maharashtra, transforming independent producers into dependent workers for corporations
• Rural inequality widens as wealth concentrates among non-cultivating owners while former cultivators face poverty

Political Mobilization

Land transfers have sparked new forms of resistance:
• Movements in Singur and Nandigram against forced acquisition for SEZs demonstrate shifting rural politics from traditional patronage to resource-based conflicts
• These struggles represent broader contestation over development models

Conclusion: The transfer from cultivators to non-cultivators fundamentally restructures India’s class hierarchy, fuels migration patterns, and creates new arenas of socio-political conflict, thereby transforming the very nature of Indian society.

Model Answer:

Kinship and G.P. Murdock’s Contributions

Kinship is a fundamental social institution organizing human relationships through networks of rights and obligations based on blood (consanguinity), marriage (affinity), and adoption. This cultural construct defines social groups, governs inheritance and succession, and shapes individual status and roles within society.

G.P. Murdock’s Key Contributions

1. Cross-Cultural Comparative Method
Murdock revolutionized kinship studies through systematic comparison of hundreds of societies in his landmark work ‘Social Structure’ (1949). Using the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), he moved beyond single-case studies to identify universal patterns in social organization.

2. Statistical Analysis
He pioneered applying statistical methods to establish correlations between social phenomena. Notably, he demonstrated strong relationships between descent rules (e.g., patrilineal) and post-marital residence patterns (e.g., patrilocal), revealing functional interconnections.

3. Kinship Classification Systems
Murdock refined and popularized the classification of kinship terminology systems—Eskimo, Iroquois, Hawaiian, Crow, Omaha, and Sudanese. This standardized typology enabled anthropologists to compare how cultures categorize relatives, reflecting underlying social structures.

4. Nuclear Family Universality
He argued that the nuclear family exists universally as society’s fundamental unit, serving four essential functions: sexual regulation, reproduction, economic cooperation, and socialization.

5. Incest Taboo Analysis
Murdock identified universal incest taboos and their variations across cultures, contributing to understanding social regulation of sexuality.

6. Ethnographic Atlas
He created the comprehensive Ethnographic Atlas coding cultural traits of 1,267 societies, providing invaluable data for comparative research.

Conclusion: Murdock’s empirical and positivist approach transformed kinship from descriptive ethnography to scientific analysis, establishing a robust framework for structural-functionalist understanding of social institutions globally.

Model Answer:

Industrial Class Structure as a Function of Indian Social Structure

The statement that India’s industrial class structure is a function of its traditional social structure holds substantial validity. Modern class formation did not emerge in a vacuum but was deeply shaped by pre-existing caste hierarchies, creating what sociologists term a “superimposition” of class upon caste.

Caste-Class Overlap in Industrial Hierarchy

The translation of caste hierarchy into class positions, what Andre Beteille calls “cumulative inequality,” is evident across industrial sectors:

– Capitalist Class: Traditional merchant castes (Vaishya Varnas) like Banias and Marwaris leveraged their historical trade expertise and accumulated capital to dominate industrial entrepreneurship
– Professional-Managerial Class: Upper castes, particularly Brahmins with educational monopoly, transitioned into white-collar positions, validating Milton Singer’s observation about traditional social capital determining modern opportunities
– Working Class: Shudras and Dalits, historically landless and resource-deprived, concentrated in manual and unorganized sector employment, reflecting M.N. Srinivas’s concept of “dominant caste” extending to industrial contexts

Mechanisms of Social Reproduction

– Network-Based Recruitment: Job information flows through caste-kinship channels, as Mark Granovetter’s network theory reveals when applied to Indian contexts
– Cultural Capital Transmission: English education and urban exposure, concentrated among upper castes, become industrial prerequisites—what Bourdieu would identify as inherited advantages
– Segmented Labor Markets: Jan Breman’s fieldwork demonstrates how contractors recruit workers from specific castes, perpetuating occupational segregation
– Community Credit Systems: Traditional banking networks (Chettiars, Marwari hundis) operate along caste lines, restricting capital access for lower castes

Industrial Dynamics and Limited Mobility

While caste provides foundational structure, industrialization introduces selective transformative elements:

– IT sector creates merit-based opportunities but shows subtle caste networking in career progression, as Carol Upadhya’s studies reveal
– Reservation policies facilitate Dalit middle-class emergence, though glass ceilings persist in private sector
– Trade unionization often follows caste lines, limiting cross-caste worker solidarity

Conclusion: India’s industrial class structure fundamentally reflects its social structure, with caste determining access to capital, education, and networks. While industrialization introduces new dynamics, class formation remains inseparable from traditional hierarchies.

Model Answer:

Pioneer of Village Studies in India

M.N. Srinivas is widely regarded as the pioneer of systematic, field-based village studies in India. His work marked a significant shift from the Indological ‘book view’ to empirical understanding of Indian society, treating villages as social microcosms for studying national complexities.

Major Contributors and Their Contributions

M.N. Srinivas: Structural-Functionalist Pioneer
Through his study of Rampura village in The Remembered Village, Srinivas provided structural-functionalist perspective on village dynamics:
– Sanskritization: Process by which lower castes emulate upper caste rituals to improve social standing
– Dominant Caste: Concept describing land-owning caste with numerical strength and political power controlling village life
– Westernization: Analysis of changes brought by British rule in technology, institutions, and ideology
– Focused on social mobility within existing caste structure

S.C. Dube: Multi-dimensional Approach
In Indian Village (Shamirpet study), Dube offered holistic analysis examining villages from multiple angles:
– Six-fold Factors: Analyzed social structure, economic organization, ritual practices, political factions, kinship, and leadership
– Multiple Traditions: Highlighted co-existence of classical, regional, and local traditions
– Provided comprehensive ethnography without rigid theoretical framework
– Emphasized technological change and modernization impact

A.R. Desai: Marxist Perspective
In Rural Sociology in India, Desai applied historical-dialectical approach challenging harmonious village notion:
– Class Conflict: Argued villages were sites of economic inequality and exploitation
– Impact of Capitalism: Focused on colonial transformation leading to land alienation and peasant pauperization
– Analyzed external historical forces reshaping rural economy
– Emphasized structural contradictions over cultural continuities

Distinct Approaches

Theoretical Frameworks: Srinivas employed structural-functionalism focusing on integration; Dube adopted descriptive, multi-faceted ethnography; Desai used Marxist analysis emphasizing conflict.

Methodological Focus: Srinivas prioritized participant observation and indigenous concepts; Dube combined empirical description with comparative analysis; Desai emphasized historical-materialist interpretation.

Change Perspective: Srinivas saw change through cultural processes; Dube through modernization; Desai through class struggle and capitalism.

These diverse approaches enriched understanding of Indian villages, revealing their complex social, economic, and cultural dimensions.

Model Answer:

Indian New Middle Class: Features and Distinctions

The Indian new middle class emerged post-1991 economic liberalization, shaped by globalization and market-driven economy, possessing distinct characteristics that differentiate it from the pre-liberalization old middle class.

Main Features of the New Middle Class

As analyzed by sociologists like Pavan Varma and Leela Fernandes, this class exhibits:

• Economic Base: Predominantly employed in private sector—IT, finance, media, telecommunications—unlike old middle class’s public sector dependence

• Consumption Culture: Characterized by aspirational consumption, brand consciousness, and credit-financed lifestyle (EMIs), marking shift from saving to spending culture

• Global Outlook: Cosmopolitan, individualistic orientation with English as primary professional language, prioritizing personal achievement over collective values

• Urban Concentration: Overwhelmingly urban phenomenon, concentrated in metropolitan and Tier-II cities where service economy thrives

Distinctions from Old Middle Class

The contrasts are fundamental:

• Economic Ethos: Old middle class valued frugality and job security; new middle class embraces risk-taking and investment

• Employment Pattern: Shift from government ‘babus’ and traditional professions to MNCs and globalized services

• Social Orientation: Transformation from community-caste networks and joint families to merit-based, nuclear family structures

• Political Ideology: Evolution from socialist welfare-state alignment to pragmatic focus on governance and economic growth

Conclusion: While the old middle class was state-created, the new middle class is market-produced—its identity forged through consumption choices and global aspirations rather than traditional social moorings.