UPSC Mains 2017 Sociology Optional Question Papers with Model Answers
All 56 questions of the 2017 Civil Services Main Examination, Sociology Paper I and Sociology Paper II, with marks and a suggested time per part. Solve each part on paper first, then open the model answer, or send it to answer-writing practice for evaluation.
UPSC Mains 2017 Sociology Paper I
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Sociology: The Discipline · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Modernity, Social Change in Europe and the Emergence of Sociology
Explain how sociology has emerged as a distinct discipline based on rationality and scientific temper.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
स्पष्ट कीजिए कि समाजशास्त्र किस प्रकार से तर्कबुद्धिवाद व वैज्ञानिक मिज़ाज पर आधारित एक सुस्पष्ट विषय के रूप में उभर कर आया है।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(a)
Approach: Explain how sociology claimed scientific status: positivism (Comte), social facts and Suicide (Durkheim), value-neutrality and ideal types (Weber), and the methods that followed, with an Indian reference to scientific temper.
Sociology emerged when Enlightenment rationality, the belief that reason and evidence should replace custom and faith, was applied to society.
Comte proposed positivism: society should be studied by observation, experiment and comparison, like the natural sciences, in the 'positive' stage of knowledge.
Durkheim gave the discipline its own subject matter, social facts, to be treated as things (The Rules of Sociological Method, 1895). His Suicide (1897) used statistics to show that suicide rates vary with social integration and regulation.
Weber added rigour through ideal types and value-neutrality, though he stressed interpretive understanding (Verstehen) rather than pure positivism.
Later surveys, sampling and fieldwork made sociology empirical. In India, Nehru's call for scientific temper, now a fundamental duty under Article 51A(h), and the field-based village studies of Srinivas reflect this spirit.
Interpretive and critical sociologists warn that society cannot be studied exactly like nature, yet rational method remains sociology's foundation.Q1(b) · Sociology as Science · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Positivism and Its Critique
Examine ethnomethodological and phenomenological perspectives as critique of positivism.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
प्रत्यक्षवाद की मीमांसा के रूप में नृजातिप्रणाली वैज्ञानिक और घटनावैज्ञानिक परिप्रेक्ष्यों का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)
Approach: Examine how phenomenology (Schutz, Berger and Luckmann) and ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, Cicourel, Atkinson) each criticise positivist assumptions, add an Indian illustration and note their own limits.
Positivism treats social facts as external things that can be measured. Phenomenology and ethnomethodology reject this, holding that social reality is built in the consciousness and practices of actors.
Phenomenology: Alfred Schutz, drawing on Husserl, showed that people make sense of the world through typifications and a taken-for-granted life-world. Berger and Luckmann (1966) explained how human products become objective through externalisation, objectivation and internalisation. So social facts are not given; they are constructed.
Ethnomethodology: Harold Garfinkel (1967) studied the methods members use to produce order, stressing indexicality and reflexivity, and used breaching experiments. He criticised the view of actors as cultural dopes. Cicourel showed that delinquency rates reflect police and court decisions, and Atkinson that coroners classify deaths as suicide using common-sense theories.
In India, whether a death is recorded as dowry death or accident depends on such everyday judgements.
Both critiques expose positivism's neglect of meaning, but they are faulted for ignoring structure and power and for limited generalisation.Q1(c) · Research Methods and Analysis · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Variables, Sampling, Hypothesis, Reliability and Validity
Illustrate with example the significance of variables in sociological research.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समाजशास्त्रीय अनुसंधान में चरों (वेरिएबल्स) के महत्व को, उदाहरण सहित, समझायें।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(c)
Approach: Define variables and their types briefly, then illustrate their significance through one worked Indian example (education and age at marriage) and Durkheim’s Suicide.
A variable is a measurable attribute that takes different values, such as caste, income or years of schooling. Variables are classified as independent (cause), dependent (effect), intervening and confounding.
Illustration: suppose a researcher asks whether women’s education delays marriage in India. ‘Women’s education’ (years of schooling) is the independent variable and ‘age at marriage’ the dependent variable. NFHS-5 (2019–21) shows that 23.3 percent of women aged 20–24 married before 18. Household wealth and caste are possible confounding variables, since richer families both educate daughters longer and marry them later; aspirations for employment may act as an intervening variable. Only by controlling the confounders can the researcher claim an effect of education.
Significance: variables turn concepts into measurable form, allow hypotheses to be stated and tested, enable causal analysis and comparison across groups and time, and guide sampling and statistical tools. Durkheim’s Suicide showed this by relating suicide rates to religion and family as indicators of integration.
However, meanings such as family honour need qualitative study alongside variables.Q1(d) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Talcott Parsons: Social System and Pattern Variables
Critically analyse Talcott Parsons' conception of 'Pattern Variables'.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
टैलकोट पार्सन्स के 'पैटर्न चरों' की संकल्पना का समालोचनात्मक विश्लेषण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(d)
Approach: Define the five pattern variables, show their uses, then critically analyse them with named critics and Indian evidence.
Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils (1951) proposed pattern variables as five dichotomies that define the choices an actor makes in orienting to others: affectivity–affective neutrality, diffuseness–specificity, particularism–universalism, ascription–achievement, and collectivity–self orientation.
They link the action theory to the social system: the same choices, institutionalised, define roles (a doctor is expected to be neutral, specific, universalistic and achievement-based; a mother the opposite). They also allow societies to be compared as traditional or modern.
Critically, the scheme has several weaknesses. It is a rigid binary; real roles combine both sides, as an Indian family doctor is both universalistic and personally known. Its traditional–modern contrast is ethnocentric, treating the West as the end point, a criticism made by Andre Gunder Frank and others of modernisation theory. Studies of India by Milton Singer and the Rudolphs show tradition modernising itself, and caste persisting in elections and matrimonial ads.
Thus pattern variables are a neat analytical tool, but they simplify change and must be applied with care.Q1(e) · Stratification and Mobility · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Equality, Inequality, Hierarchy, Exclusion, Poverty and Deprivation
Can we equate 'poverty' with 'poor living'? Elaborate your answer.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या हम 'गरीबी' को 'गरीब जीवन-निर्वाह' के बराबर मान सकते हैं? अपना विस्तृत उत्तर दीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(e)
Approach: Distinguish poverty (income, capability, relative deprivation) from poor living (living conditions), show where they overlap and where they diverge with examples, and conclude.
Poverty is usually the lack of income or resources for a minimum standard of life, measured by a poverty line. Poor living refers to actual conditions of life: bad housing, sanitation, health and environment.
They overlap: low income usually means poor housing and nutrition, and Peter Townsend defined poverty as inability to share the living conditions customary in a society. Amartya Sen's capability approach also judges poverty by what people can actually be and do.
But they are not identical. A well-paid migrant in a Mumbai slum may be above the poverty line yet live in overcrowded, unsafe conditions, while a tribal household in Odisha with little cash may have clean air, forest food and strong community support. Public provision can also improve living without raising income, as Kerala's health and education record showed.
Poverty and poor living should therefore not be equated; multidimensional measures such as NITI Aayog's MPI capture living conditions better than income lines.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Sociology: The Discipline · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Scope of Sociology and Comparison with Other Social Sciences
Discuss the changing equations of discipline of sociology with other social sciences.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समाजशास्त्र विषय के अन्य सामाजिक विज्ञानों के साथ बदलते हुए समीकरणों पर चर्चा कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(a)
Approach: Trace the changing equation in phases: classical claims of supremacy (Comte, Durkheim), the mid-twentieth-century division of labour and boundary-drawing (Parsons, specialisation), and the present blurring and borrowing (rational choice, historical turn, Gulbenkian report); include the Indian trajectory.
The relation between sociology and other social sciences has changed from claims of supremacy, to separation, to mutual borrowing.
Classical phase: Comte placed sociology at the top of a hierarchy of sciences as the 'queen' that would synthesise all knowledge. Durkheim gave it its own subject, social facts, and argued that psychology could not explain suicide rates, while his journal L'Année sociologique reviewed economics, law and religion from a sociological angle.
Phase of specialisation: in the twentieth century disciplines drew firm boundaries. Simmel's formal school sought a separate field. Parsons treated economy and polity as subsystems of the social system, and Parsons and Smelser's Economy and Society (1956) linked economics to sociology on functionalist terms. Anthropology kept 'simple' societies, sociology industrial ones.
Phase of convergence: since the 1970s boundaries have blurred. Economics influenced sociology through rational choice (James Coleman, 1990), sociology entered economics through embeddedness (Granovetter) and social capital, history through historical sociology, and politics through political sociology. Wallerstein's Gulbenkian report (1996) called for 'opening' the social sciences.
Indian trajectory: Indian sociology combined Indology (Ghurye) with social anthropology (Srinivas, Dube) from the start. Later Marxist (A.R. Desai), subaltern and Dalit perspectives brought it close to history and politics, and development studies joined it to economics.
Flow chart: supremacy (Comte) → separation (formal school, Parsons) → convergence (economic, political, historical sociology; Gulbenkian 1996) → multidisciplinary social science
Thus the equation has moved from hierarchy to partnership; sociology now keeps its identity through its perspective on social relations while sharing methods and problems with other disciplines.Q2(b) · Sociology as Science · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Positivism and Its Critique
Examine the basic postulates of positivism and post-positivism.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
प्रत्यक्षवाद और उत्तर-प्रत्यक्षवाद के आधारिक अभ्युपगमों का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)
Approach: Set out the postulates of positivism and then of post-positivism (Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, critical realism), compare them, give Indian research illustrations, and conclude on where sociology stands today.
Positivism, founded by Comte and developed by Durkheim and the Vienna Circle, claims that only knowledge based on observation and logic is valid. Post-positivism keeps the goal of scientific knowledge but accepts that it is fallible, theory-laden and provisional.
The postulates of positivism are: the unity of science, so society can be studied like nature; only observable phenomena count; knowledge grows by induction and verification; social life follows causal laws; the researcher is objective and value-neutral; and quantification and prediction are the goals. Durkheim's rule to treat social facts as things and his use of statistics in Suicide (1897) illustrate them.
The postulates of post-positivism are: reality exists but is known only imperfectly (critical realism of Roy Bhaskar); theories can be falsified but never finally verified (Karl Popper); observation is shaped by paradigms (Thomas Kuhn) and research programmes (Imre Lakatos); objectivity is a regulative ideal achieved through criticism by the scientific community; and multiple methods are needed to approach truth (Denzin's triangulation).
Flow chart: positivism: observe → verify → law; post-positivism: conjecture → test → falsify or retain → revise, with many methods.
In India, NFHS and the National Sample Survey follow positivist survey logic. The poverty-line debate, in which the Tendulkar and Rangarajan methods gave 21.9 and 29.5 percent for 2011–12, shows the post-positivist point that results depend on definitions. Untouchability in Rural India (2006), combining survey data with qualitative accounts, shows mixed methods. The term post-positivism is also sometimes used broadly for interpretive and critical approaches that came after positivism.
Thus post-positivism refines rather than abandons positivism, and most present-day sociological research works within it.Q2(c) · Sociology as Science · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Fact, Value, Objectivity and Non-positivist Methodologies
Elaborate the main tenets of interpretative perspective in sociology.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समाजशास्त्र में व्याख्यात्मक परिप्रेक्ष्य के मुख्य सिद्धान्तों का विस्तृत विवेचन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(c)
Approach: Elaborate the main tenets of the interpretative perspective one by one with their thinkers (Weber, Mead, Blumer, Schutz, Garfinkel, Goffman), add an Indian illustration and a line of criticism.
The interpretative perspective holds that society is made through the meanings people give to their actions, so sociology must understand those meanings. It runs from Weber through Mead, Blumer, Schutz, Garfinkel and Goffman.
Its main tenets are: social action is meaningful, and Weber's verstehen grasps its subjective meaning; meanings arise in interaction and are modified through interpretation, as Blumer's three premises of symbolic interactionism state; social reality is constructed through typifications in everyday life (Schutz, Berger and Luckmann); actors are active and skilled, not cultural dopes (Garfinkel); the self is formed and performed in interaction (Mead, Goffman); and research should study the actor's view through participant observation, interviews and life histories.
In India, Srinivas's field view of caste in Rampura and S.C. Dube's study of Shamirpet followed these tenets by seeking villagers' own meanings.
Critics say the perspective neglects structure and power and gives low reliability, yet it remains central to understanding social life.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Emile Durkheim: Suicide, and Religion and Society
Discuss distinct sociological method adopted by Emile Durkheim in his study of 'suicide'.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
इमाईल दुर्खीम के द्वारा 'आत्महत्या' के अपने अध्ययन में अपनाई गई सुस्पष्ट समाजशास्त्रीय विधि की चर्चा कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)
Approach: Describe the steps of Durkheim’s method in Suicide: definition, use of statistics, elimination of extra-social causes, comparative method of concomitant variation, typology, and explanation by social facts; then evaluate it with critics and an Indian application.
Suicide (1897) was Durkheim’s demonstration that the rules of sociological method could explain even the most individual act. He chose a subject that seemed purely psychological to prove that social facts must be explained by other social facts.
Steps of the method: (i) objective definition: suicide as death resulting directly or indirectly from the victim’s own act, which he knows will produce this result; (ii) official statistics from several European countries, treating the suicide rate, not individual cases, as the social fact; (iii) elimination of extra-social explanations such as insanity, race, heredity, climate and imitation, by showing they do not vary with rates.
(iv) the comparative method of concomitant variation: rates were correlated with religion, marital status, family size, political crises and economic cycles, and he held some variables constant, an early form of multivariate analysis; (v) a typology, egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic, built from causes rather than motives; (vi) explanation by the social forces of integration and regulation.
Flow chart: definition → statistics → eliminate non-social causes → concomitant variation → types → causal explanation
Evaluation: the study became a model of positivist, quantitative sociology. But Jack Douglas (1967) argued that statistics reflect how officials and families define deaths, and J. Maxwell Atkinson (1978) studied how coroners categorise suicide; W.S. Robinson’s ecological fallacy (1950) warns against inferring individual behaviour from group rates; Halbwachs (1930) stressed rural-urban ways of life.
Indian application: NCRB data on occupation, gender and state are used in a similar way, though stigma leads to under-reporting.Q3(b) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Karl Marx: Historical Materialism and Mode of Production
Analyse Marxian conception of historical materialism as a critique of Hegelian dialectics.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
हेगेलीय द्वंद्वात्मक पद्धति की मीमांसा के रूप में ऐतिहासिक भौतिकवाद की मार्क्सवादी संकल्पना का विश्लेषण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(b)
Approach: Explain Hegel’s idealist dialectic, then analyse how Marx, via Feuerbach, inverted it into historical materialism, with its key claims, an Indian illustration and an assessment.
G.W.F. Hegel saw history as the self-unfolding of Spirit or Idea (Geist) through a dialectic: each stage contains contradictions that are overcome in a higher stage, so that consciousness and ideas drive history, culminating in the rational state.
Marx accepted the dialectical method but rejected its idealism. Drawing on Ludwig Feuerbach’s materialist critique of religion (The Essence of Christianity, 1841), he argued in The German Ideology (1845–46) that life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the afterword to Capital (1873) he wrote, in substance, that Hegel’s dialectic stood on its head and had to be turned right side up.
The materialist inversion: the starting point is real people producing their means of life; contradictions lie between forces and relations of production, not between ideas; their bearers are classes, so class struggle, not Spirit, moves history; and the Prussian state, for Hegel the realisation of reason, becomes for Marx an instrument of the ruling class.
Flow chart: Hegel: Idea → contradiction in thought → higher Idea; Marx: material production → class contradiction → new mode of production
Marx also criticised Feuerbach for a passive materialism: the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach (1845) says philosophers have only interpreted the world, while the point is to change it. Hence praxis joins theory and action.
Indian illustration and assessment: where Hegel read India as static, A.R. Desai explained Indian nationalism through the new classes created by colonial capitalism. Critics such as Weber and Popper call the inversion economic determinism, but it made sociology study material conditions.Q3(c) · Research Methods and Analysis · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
Examine epistemological foundations of qualitative methods of social research.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक अनुसंधान की गुणात्मक विधियों के ज्ञानमीमांसीय आधारों का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)
Approach: Explain the ontological and epistemological assumptions behind qualitative methods (Dilthey, Weber, Schutz, interactionism, ethnomethodology, social construction), contrast with positivism, and show the Indian application.
Epistemology concerns how we can know social reality. Qualitative methods rest on interpretivism, which holds that human action is meaningful and must be understood, not merely measured as positivism assumes.
Wilhelm Dilthey distinguished the human sciences, which seek understanding, from the natural sciences, which seek explanation. Weber built on this: sociology interprets social action through Verstehen, grasping the subjective meaning actors attach to action. Schutz’s phenomenology argued that people act on taken-for-granted common-sense knowledge, which the researcher must uncover. Mead and Blumer held that meanings arise and change in interaction, so the researcher must study them in natural settings. Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology studied how members produce everyday order, and Berger and Luckmann (1966) saw reality itself as socially constructed.
Hence knowledge is inductive, contextual and co-produced with participants, and the researcher must be reflexive about his or her position. In India, Srinivas’s ‘field view’ of caste and Berreman’s Sirkanda fieldwork reflect these foundations.
Positivists criticise this as subjective and unverifiable, which is why interpretivists stress validity, triangulation and transparency.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Stratification and Mobility · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Theories of Stratification: Functionalist, Marxist and Weberian
What is Weberian critique of Marxist notion of social stratification?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक स्तरीकरण के मार्क्सवादी अभिप्राय की वेबरीय समालोचना क्या है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(a)
Approach: Outline Marx's theory of stratification briefly, then set out Weber's critique point by point (multidimensionality, market and skills, middle class, status and party, class action, bureaucracy), test it on India, and evaluate.
For Marx, stratification is class division rooted in ownership or non-ownership of the means of production. Society polarises into bourgeoisie and proletariat, and class struggle is the motor of history. Max Weber accepted that property is a basic source of inequality but criticised Marx's economic determinism in several ways.
First, multidimensionality: inequality has three independent dimensions, class, status and party. Status honour and political power are not mere reflections of the economy; a Brahmin priest may be poor but honoured, a rich trader wealthy but of lower rank.
Second, market situation: class arises in the market, not only in production. Skills and educational credentials create distinct life chances, so there are many classes, not two.
Third, the middle class: instead of disappearing, the white-collar and professional middle class grows with bureaucracy and technology. Fourth, class action: a class is not a community; shared class position does not automatically produce consciousness or revolution, and people may act on status or religious lines. Fifth, the future: socialism would not end domination but deepen bureaucratisation, the 'iron cage'.
Flow chart: Marx: economy → class → struggle → revolution. Weber: class + status + party → many strata → closure → bureaucratic domination.
Indian experience supports Weber in part: caste as a status group cuts across class, and parties mobilise caste rather than class, as the rise of BSP and backward-caste parties shows. But Marxists such as Kathleen Gough and A.R. Desai showed how caste rank and land ownership coincide.
Weber's critique therefore refines rather than rejects Marx; neo-Weberians (Goldthorpe) and neo-Marxists (Wright) have since moved closer to each other.Q4(b) · Stratification and Mobility · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Dimensions of Stratification: Class, Status, Gender, Ethnicity and Race
Examine gender, ethnicity and race as major dimensions of social stratification.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक स्तरीकरण के मुख्य आयामों के रूप में लिंग, नृजातीयता और प्रजाति (रेस) का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)
Approach: Define stratification and take each dimension in turn (gender, ethnicity, race) with its theory, global and Indian examples, then show how they intersect and conclude.
Classical theories focused on class and status, but stratification is multidimensional: gender, ethnicity and race are ascribed bases on which wealth, power and prestige are unequally distributed.
Gender: the social construction of masculinity and femininity (Ann Oakley, 1972) ranks men above women. Sylvia Walby's patriarchy operates through paid work, household, state, violence, sexuality and culture. Joan Acker (1973) criticised stratification theory for ignoring women. In India, low female work participation, son preference reflected in skewed sex ratios, and dowry show gender stratification; NFHS-5 (2019–21) recorded a sex ratio at birth of 929 females per 1,000 males.
Ethnicity: groups sharing culture, language or origin are ranked when one controls the state and economy. Fredrik Barth (1969) showed that ethnic boundaries persist through interaction; Michael Hechter's internal colonialism explained ethnic inequality between core and periphery. In India, tribal groups' displacement and Northeastern ethnic conflicts illustrate this.
Race: socially constructed categories based on physical markers. Apartheid in South Africa (1948–1994) and Jim Crow segregation in the USA were explicit racial stratification; Oliver Cox (1948) argued racism arose with capitalist exploitation. Gerald Berreman compared caste with race in the American South, though Dumont rejected the comparison since caste rests on religious hierarchy.
Flow chart: Ascribed marker (sex, culture, colour) → social meaning and stereotypes → closure and discrimination → unequal life chances.
These dimensions intersect: Kimberlé Crenshaw showed that black women face distinct disadvantages. Unlike class, they are hard to change by individual effort, so law, affirmative action and recognition are needed alongside economic change.Q4(c) · Research Methods and Analysis · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Variables, Sampling, Hypothesis, Reliability and Validity
How can one resolve the issue of reliability and validity in the context of sociological research on inequality?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
असमता पर समाजशास्त्रीय अनुसंधान के संदर्भ में, विश्वसनीयता और प्रामाण्यता की समस्या को हम किस प्रकार से हल कर सकते हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)
Approach: Explain why reliability and validity are especially difficult in research on inequality (measuring caste, class, poverty, discrimination), then suggest ways to resolve them with Indian examples such as MPI and Thorat and Attewell’s study.
Reliability is the consistency of a measure and validity its accuracy in capturing what it claims to measure. Research on inequality faces both problems because income, caste and discrimination are sensitive, multidimensional and often hidden: respondents under-report income or deny untouchability, and a single indicator can mislead.
Resolving validity: use multiple indicators; NITI Aayog’s multidimensional poverty index (14.96 percent poor in 2019–21) captures health, education and living standards that an income line misses. Measure behaviour, not only attitudes: Thorat and Attewell’s 2007 study sent matched job applications with upper-caste, Dalit and Muslim names to private firms and found that Dalit and Muslim applicants received fewer calls, revealing discrimination that surveys would miss. Triangulate surveys with ethnography, as Untouchability in Rural India (2006) did.
Resolving reliability: standardised, pre-tested schedules, trained interviewers, matching interviewers’ identity where possible, and repeated panels such as IHDS (2004–05, 2011–12).
Combining both gives findings on inequality that are consistent as well as true.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Works and Economic Life · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Formal and Informal Organisation of Work
What do you understand by 'informalisation of labour'? Write your answer with special reference to India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'मजदूरों के अनौपचारीकरण' से आप क्या समझते हैं? भारत के विशेष संदर्भ में, अपना उत्तर लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(a)
Approach: Define informalisation of labour, then show its Indian forms (unorganised sector, contractualisation in the formal sector, home-based and gig work) with NCEUS data and Breman, Holmström and Harriss-White.
Informalisation of labour is the process by which work loses secure contracts, social security and legal protection, through both growth of unorganised enterprises and casualisation within formal ones.
In India the NCEUS (2007) estimated that about 92% of workers were informally employed in 2004–05 and that most new jobs in the organised sector were informal. Liberalisation after 1991 encouraged subcontracting, fixed-term and contract labour, even in public enterprises.
Mark Holmström described organised workers as a protected 'fortress' whose walls became porous, while Jan Breman's 'footloose labour' captures circular migrants moving between brick kilns, construction and agriculture. Barbara Harriss-White showed caste, gender and religion regulating this economy.
Informalisation is gendered, pushing women into home-based piece work, and new forms include an estimated 77 lakh gig workers in 2020–21 (NITI Aayog, 2022).
India's policy response includes e-Shram (2021) and the Code on Social Security, 2020, but informality remains the norm of Indian work.Q5(b) · Politics and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Nation, State, Citizenship, Democracy, Civil Society and Ideology
Discuss the changing interface between state and civil society in post-independent India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आज़ादी के बाद के भारत में राज्य और नागरिक समाज के बीच बदलते हुए आमना-सामना (इंटरफेस) पर चर्चा कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(b)
Approach: Trace the changing state–civil society interface in phases (Nehruvian partnership, Emergency and non-party formations, NGO expansion, rights-based laws, recent regulation), with thinkers such as Kothari, Sheth and Chatterjee.
The relation between the state and civil society in India has moved through cooperation, confrontation and regulation.
1950s–60s: Gandhian constructive workers and voluntary bodies largely cooperated with the developmental state in nation-building and community development. 1970s: the Emergency (1975–77) turned civil society towards confrontation; civil liberties groups such as the PUCL (1976) arose, and Rajni Kothari and D.L. Sheth described a non-party political process of grassroots movements outside parties.
1980s–90s: NGOs multiplied, often funded by the state or donors, and after liberalisation became partners in service delivery. 2000s: rights-based campaigns shaped the RTI Act 2005 and rural employment guarantee, and the anti-corruption movement of 2011 pressed for the Lokpal Act 2013.
Recent years: the state has tightened regulation of foreign funding through the FCRA amendments of 2020, while Partha Chatterjee's 'political society' of the poor negotiates directly with the state. The interface thus swings between partnership and contestation.Q5(c) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Emile Durkheim: Suicide, and Religion and Society
Give an assessment of Durkheimian notion of 'sacred' and 'profane' in sociology of religion.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
धर्म के समाजशास्त्र में, 'पवित्र' और 'लौकिक' के दुर्खेमीय अभिप्राय का एक आकलन प्रस्तुत कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(c)
Approach: Explain the dichotomy and its role in Durkheim’s theory, show its use in Indian sociology, then assess it with criticism.
In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), Durkheim made the division of the world into the sacred, things set apart and forbidden, surrounded by awe and taboo, and the profane, ordinary everyday things, the defining feature of religion. The sacred is not defined by gods but by its separation, and it represents the power of society.
Contribution: it moved the study of religion from belief in spirits to collective classification and ritual, and influenced Radcliffe-Brown, Mary Douglas on purity, and Indian sociology: Louis Dumont’s purity and pollution parallels it, and M.N. Srinivas used a structural-functional approach to Coorg ritual (1952).
Criticism: W.E.H. Stanner and E.E. Evans-Pritchard showed that many peoples, including Australian Aborigines, do not draw so sharp a line; in Hindu practice the sacred permeates the everyday, such as cooking, the hearth and the field; and the dichotomy ignores conflict.
Thus it is a useful analytical tool, but not a universal empirical divide.Q5(d) · Systems of Kinship · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Patriarchy, Sexual Division of Labour and Contemporary Trends
Examine 'patriarchal bargain' as gendered division of work in contemporary India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समकालीन भारत में लिंग पर आधारित श्रमविभाजन के रूप में 'पितृतंत्रात्मक सौदाकारी' का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(d)
Approach: Explain Kandiyoti's concept and apply it to the gendered division of work in India: women's acceptance of domestic work, purdah and withdrawal from paid work as status, the double burden, and change among working women.
Deniz Kandiyoti (1988) used patriarchal bargain for the strategies women adopt within patriarchal constraints to secure protection and future power, which often reproduce gender inequality.
Domestic work as the price of security: in classic patriarchy, young wives accept heavy domestic work and control by the mother-in-law, expecting authority later. Women still do most unpaid domestic work: about 299 minutes a day against 97 for men (Time Use Survey 2019).
Withdrawal from work as status: among upwardly mobile castes, keeping women out of field work and in seclusion became a mark of prestige, part of what Srinivas called Sanskritisation. Women may accept this for family honour.
Double burden: women entering paid work, including MGNREGA, where women have done more than half of the person-days, often accept a second shift at home rather than challenge men's role.
The concept shows women's agency within limits, but younger, educated women are renegotiating the bargain.Q5(e) · Social Change in Modern Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Agents of Social Change
Assess the role of mass media as an agent of social change.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक परिवर्तन के एक अभिकर्ता के रूप में, जनसंपर्कमाध्यम (मास मीडिया) की भूमिका का आकलन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(e)
Approach: Present media as an agent of change (McLuhan, Lerner, Habermas; Indian examples), then its limits (Herman and Chomsky, Rajagopal, misinformation), and give a balanced view.
Mass media, print, radio, television and now digital platforms, transmit information and images to large audiences. Marshall McLuhan (1964) argued that 'the medium is the message', and Daniel Lerner (1958) held that media create the empathy that modernisation requires.
In India, Robin Jeffrey's India's Newspaper Revolution (2000) showed regional-language newspapers drawing new readers into politics. The SITE experiment (1975–76) took educational television to villages; campaigns on immunisation, sanitation and girls' education used media widely; and social media amplified the 2012 anti-rape protests and Dalit voices.
However, Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model argues that media manufacture consent for elites. Arvind Rajagopal (Politics after Television, 2001) linked the televised Ramayana (1987–88) to Hindu nationalist mobilisation. Fake news, echo chambers and commercial ownership can reinforce prejudice.
Media are thus powerful but double-edged agents: they promote change when access is wide and ownership diverse.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Works and Economic Life · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Social Organisation of Work: Slave, Feudal and Industrial Societies
Trace the changing nature of organisation of work in capitalist society over the years.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पूंजीवादी समाज में, गत वर्षों में श्रम के संगठन की परिवर्तनशील प्रकृति की रूपरेखा प्रस्तुत कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(a)
Approach: Trace stages chronologically: putting-out and early factory, Taylorism and Fordism, post-Fordist flexibility, service work and platforms, with a thinker for each stage (Marx, Thompson, Taylor, Braverman, Piore and Sabel, Atkinson, Bell, Srnicek) and an Indian parallel.
Capitalism has always rested on wage labour and profit, but its organisation of work has changed with technology, markets and class struggle, each stage answering the previous stage's problems of control and profit.
Early capitalism: the putting-out system gave raw materials to rural households; then the factory brought workers under one roof, separating home from work. Marx saw labour power become a commodity, and E.P. Thompson showed clock time replacing task-oriented rhythms.
Taylorism and Fordism: Taylor's scientific management (1911) separated planning from doing, and Ford's assembly line (1913) added mass production and high wages. Braverman (1974) called this the degradation of work through deskilling; Blauner (1964) found alienation highest on assembly lines.
Post-Fordism: after the 1970s crisis, Piore and Sabel (1984) described flexible specialisation and multi-skilled teams inspired by Japanese lean production. John Atkinson's flexible firm (1984) split a secure core from a temporary periphery, and David Harvey called this flexible accumulation.
Service and platform work: Daniel Bell (1973) predicted knowledge workers, Hochschild (1983) identified emotional labour, and Sennett (1998) argued flexibility corrodes commitment. Since the 2010s apps organise dispersed workers through algorithms (Srnicek, 2017), creating Standing's precariat.
India layers these stages: jobber-recruited Bombay mills (Chandavarkar), the Maruti assembly line, contract workers in factories, IT and BPO work, and an estimated 77 lakh gig workers in 2020–21 (NITI Aayog, 2022), all within a mainly informal economy.
Flow chart: putting-out → factory → Taylorism/Fordism → post-Fordist flexible firm → services → platforms.
The trend is from direct, collective control to flexible, individualised and digital control; security has declined even as skills and technology advanced.Q6(b) · Politics and Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Protest, Social Movements, Collective Action and Revolution
What is new in 'new social movements'? Elaborate your answer with special reference to India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'नव सामाजिक आंदोलनों' में नया क्या है? भारत के विशेष संदर्भ में, इसके उत्तर को विस्तारपूर्वक स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(b)
Approach: State the NSM thesis and what is 'new' (issues, actors, values, organisation, identity), then examine Indian movements against it (Chipko, NBA, women's, Dalit, farmers), bringing in Omvedt, Shah and Guha, and evaluate the newness critically.
The term new social movements was used by Alain Touraine, Alberto Melucci, Claus Offe and Jürgen Habermas for movements that emerged in Western societies from the 1960s: student, feminist, environmental, peace and gay rights movements.
What is new: (1) Issues: identity, culture, autonomy and quality of life rather than class and wages. (2) Actors: the educated new middle class rather than the industrial working class. (3) Values: post-material, in Inglehart's sense. (4) Organisation: decentralised, networked and non-hierarchical rather than party-led. (5) Aim: to defend civil society and the 'lifeworld' from state and market, not to capture state power. Melucci stressed that they produce new collective identities.
Indian application: from the 1970s India saw movements that were new in issue and form: Chipko (1973), the women's movement against dowry and rape in the late 1970s and 1980s, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (from 1985), the Dalit Panthers (1972) and the Shetkari Sanghatana of Sharad Joshi. Gail Omvedt (Reinventing Revolution, 1993) called them new social movements because they challenged both state-led development and old left parties.
Differences from the Western model: Indian movements are rooted in survival and livelihood: Chipko and the NBA concerned forest rights and displacement, which Guha and Martínez-Alier call the environmentalism of the poor. Their actors are peasants, tribals, Dalits and women, not only the middle class. Ghanshyam Shah noted that identity and material demands go together.
What is new in India is the shift from party-led class politics to autonomous, issue- and identity-based mobilisation; but the material base remains central, so Indian NSMs are better described as a blend of old and new.Q6(c) · Politics and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Theories of Power, Power Elite, Bureaucracy, Pressure Groups and Parties
Examine the dynamics of pressure groups in multi-party political system.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
बहुदलीय राजनीतिक प्रणाली में, दबाव गुटों की गत्यात्मकता की जांच कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(c)
Approach: Explain how pressure groups behave in a multi-party system (multiple access points, partisan affiliations, shifting alliances, coalition bargaining) with Indian examples, and note the risks.
Pressure groups seek to influence policy without contesting power. In a multi-party system such as India's, their dynamics differ from a two-party system because power is fragmented across many parties, coalitions and states.
First, groups gain many access points and can shift support between parties, raising their bargaining power, especially in coalition governments after 1989, when small parties carried sectional demands into the cabinet. Second, many groups are tied to parties: trade union federations such as INTUC, CITU and BMS, and student wings, act as party arms, which splits groups along party lines.
Third, regional and caste groups bargain with state parties; the Rudolphs showed how caste associations became political actors, and some, like the Vanniyar Sangam, turned into parties. Fourth, non-party groups such as the Bharatiya Kisan Union keep distance from all parties to pressure whichever is in power, as in the 2020–21 farmers' protest.
The risk is fragmentation and populist competition, but multiplicity also gives weaker groups more chances to be heard.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Systems of Kinship · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Patriarchy, Sexual Division of Labour and Contemporary Trends
Examine the relationship between the contemporary trends in marriage and changing forms of family.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विवाह में समकालीन प्रवृत्तियों व परिवार के बदलते रूपों के बीच सम्बंध का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(a)
Approach: Examine the two-way link: describe contemporary trends in marriage (age, choice, divorce, cohabitation, same-sex unions, dowry, endogamy) and show how each reshapes family forms, with theory and Indian evidence.
Marriage and family are interdependent institutions: the rules of marriage decide who forms a family and how it is organised, so changes in marriage reshape family forms.
Later marriage and fewer children: child marriage among women aged 20–24 fell to 23.3% and the total fertility rate to 2.0 (NFHS-5, 2019–21). Smaller, child-centred nuclear families and Julia Brannen's 'beanpole' structure result. Fewer siblings also mean fewer collateral kin.
Choice and companionate marriage: Giddens's 'pure relationship' and Uberoi's study of 'love-cum-arranged' marriages show emotional intimacy gaining importance; this supports the conjugal bond over the parent–son bond, encouraging neo-local residence.
Divorce and remarriage: the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 allowed divorce and Shilpa Sailesh (2023) recognised irretrievable breakdown; rising divorce produces lone-parent and reconstituted families.
Cohabitation and same-sex unions: protection of live-ins (D. Velusamy, 2010) and decriminalisation of same-sex relations (Navtej Singh Johar, 2018) make non-marital households more visible, though same-sex marriage was not recognised (Supriyo Chakraborty, 2023).
Dual-career marriages: educated wives in paid work push families towards Young and Willmott's 'symmetrical family', though Hochschild's second shift persists.
Continuities: caste endogamy (about 5% inter-caste marriages, IHDS 2011–12) and dowry keep the family a caste-bound unit, and A.M. Shah shows that nuclear households remain embedded in joint obligations.
Hence the family is becoming more conjugal, smaller and more diverse because marriage is becoming later, chosen and dissoluble, but in India these changes coexist with strong kinship control.Q7(b) · Systems of Kinship · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Lineage and Descent
Discuss the regional variations of kinship system in Indian society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय समाज में, नातेदारी प्रणाली की प्रादेशिक भिन्नताओं पर चर्चा कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(b)
Approach: Use Karve's four zones as the frame, add descent-based variation (patrilineal versus matrilineal Nayar, Khasi, Garo), religious and tribal variation, and theoretical readings (Dumont, Trautmann), and end with contemporary convergence.
Kinship in India varies by region, language, religion and descent rule. Irawati Karve (Kinship Organisation in India, 1953) mapped four kinship zones, which remain the standard frame.
Northern zone: patrilineal, with caste endogamy combined with gotra and village exogamy (the four-gotra rule among many castes), hypergamy that makes wife-givers inferior, and a bride married into a distant, unfamiliar family.
Southern zone: Dravidian kinship prefers cross-cousin and uncle–niece marriage, so marriage renews old ties. Louis Dumont (1957) argued that South Indian terminology expresses alliance as a relation inherited across generations, and Thomas Trautmann (Dravidian Kinship, 1981) analysed the system historically.
Central and eastern zones: the central zone (Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan) mixes features, for example cross-cousin marriage among Marathas; the eastern zone has Austro-Asiatic tribal patterns with totemic clan exogamy, as among the Munda and Oraon.
Descent variation: matrilineal systems existed among the Nayar of Kerala (tharavad under the karanavar), the Bunts of coastal Karnataka, the Muslims of Lakshadweep (Leela Dube, Matriliny and Islam, 1969), and the Khasi and Garo of Meghalaya, where the youngest daughter (Khasi) or a chosen daughter (Garo) inherits.
Religious variation: many Muslim communities permit parallel-cousin marriage, which Hindu North India forbids; Christian and Sikh kinship largely follow regional patterns.
Convergence: the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (sapinda rules), the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975, the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, migration and urban education are making practice more bilateral and nuclear across regions.
Regional diversity, therefore, is a key reason why there is no single 'Indian kinship system', as Patricia Uberoi's edited volume (1993) shows.Q7(c) · Religion and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Religion in Modern Society: Science, Secularisation, Revivalism and Fundamentalism
Problematise the concept of secularism in the present context.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वर्तमान संदर्भ में, धर्म-निरपेक्षता की संकल्पना में समस्याओं का विश्लेषण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(c)
Approach: 'Problematise' asks you to show the tensions within the concept. Define Western and Indian secularism, then raise the debates (Madan, Nandy, Bhargava, Chatterjee) and present-day controversies, and conclude on what secularism can mean today.
Secularism is the principle governing the relation of state and religion. The Western model separates the two strictly, as in French laïcité, while the Indian model, written into the Preamble by the 42nd Amendment (1976) and held part of the basic structure in S.R. Bommai (1994), allows the state to engage with all religions equally.
Problems: T.N. Madan argued that secularism, a product of Christian history, is unsuited to South Asia, where religion is a totalising life-world. Ashis Nandy claimed that the secular state weakened faith-based tolerance. Partha Chatterjee noted that intervening in some religions but not others invites charges of bias. Rajeev Bhargava defended Indian secularism as 'principled distance', allowing intervention for equality, as in temple entry.
Present context: debates over a Uniform Civil Code, conversion laws, hijab bans and religious symbols in public life show that the line between state and religion is contested.
Secularism today is best understood as equal citizenship and freedom of conscience rather than the absence of religion.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Social Change in Modern Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Sociological Theories of Social Change
Examine any two theories of social change in detail.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक परिवर्तन की किन्हीं दो थियोरियों का विस्तारपूर्वक परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(a)
Approach: Choose two contrasting theories (Marxian conflict theory and Parsonian functionalist-evolutionary theory), explain each in detail with criticism and Indian application, and end with a comparative judgement.
Theories of social change differ on whether change is orderly adjustment or a product of contradiction. Two classic contrasting theories are Marx's conflict theory and Parsons's functionalist-evolutionary theory.
Marx's historical materialism: the economic base (forces and relations of production) shapes the superstructure of law, politics and ideas. As forces of production develop, they come into contradiction with existing relations of production; class struggle between owners and non-owners resolves the contradiction through revolution, moving society from primitive communism through slavery, feudalism and capitalism towards socialism. Change is thus dialectical, conflictual and rooted in material life. Critics such as Weber argued that ideas, like the Protestant ethic, also cause change, and Dahrendorf held that conflict is over authority, not only property. Predicted proletarian revolutions in advanced capitalism did not occur. In India, A.R. Desai used this lens to show how colonial and post-colonial capitalism created new classes, and agrarian struggles like Telangana (1946–51) reflect class conflict.
Parsons's functionalist theory: society is a system that tends to equilibrium; change is gradual adjustment to strain. In Societies (1966) he describes structural differentiation, adaptive upgrading, inclusion and value generalisation, with evolutionary universals such as bureaucracy, markets and democracy. Smelser applied it to the Industrial Revolution. Critics including Mills and Dahrendorf called it conservative, unable to explain revolutions, and ethnocentric. In India, it explains the differentiation of work and family and the rise of specialised institutions after independence.
Flow chart: Marx: contradiction → class struggle → revolution → new mode of production; Parsons: strain → differentiation → integration → new equilibrium.
The two are complementary: Parsons explains gradual institutional change, Marx explains structural transformation through conflict, and Indian change displays both.Q8(b) · Social Change in Modern Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Education, Science, Technology and Social Change
Critically analyse the role of science and technology in bringing about social change.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक परिवर्तन को उत्पन्न करने में विज्ञान व प्रौद्योगिकी की भूमिका का समालोचनात्मक विश्लेषण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(b)
Approach: Contrast technological determinism (Marx's hand-mill, Ogburn, McLuhan) with the social shaping view (Winner, Merton, Kuhn), illustrate positive and negative changes in India, and conclude with mutual shaping.
Science is systematic knowledge of the natural and social world, and technology its practical application. Sociologists debate whether they drive social change or are themselves shaped by society.
Technological determinism: Marx wrote that the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord and the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist. Ogburn saw invention as the main source of change and described cultural lag; McLuhan argued that media change perception itself. Castells's network society shows how information technology restructures economy and identity.
Social shaping: Robert Merton traced the growth of English science to Puritan values (1938) and described the norms of science; Thomas Kuhn showed that science advances through paradigm shifts influenced by scientific communities. Langdon Winner argued that artifacts have politics. Technology thus reflects interests and values.
Indian illustrations: the Green Revolution raised food output but widened gaps between rich and poor farmers and regions; the SITE experiment (1975–76) and television spread information; mobile phones and UPI (2016) transformed markets, welfare delivery and migrant remittances; ultrasound enabled sex-selective abortion, leading to the PCPNDT Act, 1994. Chandrayaan-3's landing (2023) became a source of national pride and scientific aspiration.
Negative effects: Beck's risk society points to manufactured risks, as in the Bhopal gas tragedy (1984); automation threatens jobs; and the digital divide reproduces inequality by gender, caste and region.
Flow chart: science and technology → new production, communication, values → social change → new needs and interests → new technology.
Most sociologists now hold that technology and society shape each other; science and technology are powerful agents of change whose direction depends on access, regulation and social choices.Q8(c) · Religion and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Types of Religious Practices: Animism, Monism, Pluralism, Sects and Cults
Elaborate on various types of religious practices prevalent in Indian society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय समाज में प्रचलित विभिन्न प्रकारों की धार्मिक रीतियों का विस्तृत वर्णन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(c)
Approach: Survey the main types of religious practice in India (animism and totemism, polytheism and monism, sects and bhakti, syncretism and pluralism, guru movements) using Srinivas, Redfield and Marriott, in a compact classified answer.
Indian society contains almost every type of religious practice that sociologists classify, often coexisting within one community.
Animism and totemism: tribes such as the Munda, Ho and Santhal worship bongas and keep sacred groves (sarna), and clans carry totemic names with exogamy.
Polytheism and monism: popular Hinduism worships many gods and village deities, while Advaita Vedanta holds that Brahman alone is real. Redfield's great and little traditions and McKim Marriott's study of Kishangarhi (universalisation and parochialisation) show how these levels interact; Srinivas identified all-India, regional and local Hinduism among the Coorgs.
Monotheism and sects: Islam, Christianity and Sikhism are monotheistic; bhakti panths, Lingayats and deras form sects around gurus.
Syncretism and pluralism: Sufi dargahs and Shirdi Sai Baba draw devotees across faiths.
Modern forms: guru movements and the Brahma Kumaris, studied by Lawrence Babb, and televised rituals show religion adapting to modern life.
UPSC Mains 2017 Sociology Paper II
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Perspectives on the Study of Indian Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Structural Functionalism: M. N. Srinivas
Write a critique of the structural and functional perspective used by M.N. Srinivas in the understanding of Indian society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय समाज को समझने में एम.एन. श्रीनिवास के द्वारा इस्तेमाल किए गए संरचनात्मक एवं प्रकार्यात्मक परिप्रेक्ष्य की एक समालोचना लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(a)
Approach: Briefly state Srinivas's structural-functional perspective, then critique it with named critics, and end with its lasting value.
M.N. Srinivas, trained under A.R. Radcliffe-Brown at Oxford, studied Indian society through structural-functionalism: institutions such as caste, the jajmani system and the village are parts of a whole that maintain social order. His field-view, based on long fieldwork in Rampura, replaced the book-view.
The critique has several strands. A.R. Desai and other Marxists argued that it presents inequality as harmony and hides exploitation in land and labour relations. Kathleen Gough's Tanjore work showed caste conflict where functionalism saw integration. Its focus on single villages, says Béteille among others, made it hard to generalise to India as a whole.
Dalit scholars note that the view from the dominant caste's courtyard missed the voice of the untouchables, and Yogendra Singh observed that the approach explains stability better than change. Sanskritisation itself was faulted for treating upper-caste culture as the model.
Yet Srinivas was not a rigid functionalist: his concepts of Sanskritisation, Westernisation and dominant caste are about change. His legacy is the fieldwork tradition and empirically grounded concepts that Indian sociology still uses.Q1(b) · Caste System · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Features of the Caste System and Caste Change
Which is more significant, the principle of 'hierarchy' or the principle of 'difference', in intercaste relations in the present day?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वर्तमान समय में अंतर्जातीय संबंधों में 'सोपान' के सिद्धांत या 'विभेद' के सिद्धांत में से कौनसा अधिक महत्त्वपूर्ण है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(b)
Approach: Explain the two principles (Dumont's hierarchy; Gupta's difference/discrete castes), show with present-day examples where each operates, and judge which is more significant today.
The principle of hierarchy, stressed by Louis Dumont, ranks castes on a single scale of purity and impurity. The principle of difference, stressed by Dipankar Gupta in Interrogating Caste (2000), sees castes as discrete groups, each with its own pride and its own view of rank, competing rather than accepting one order.
Today difference appears more significant in public life. Castes mobilise as political blocs, demand reservations and celebrate their own heroes, such as Dalit commemoration of Bhima Koregaon. Few castes now accept a lower rank; each claims honour.
Yet hierarchy has not gone. Untouchability, honour killings over inter-caste marriage and atrocities on Dalits show ranked relations persisting, especially in villages and marriage.
So difference is more significant in politics and public life, where castes compete as equals, while hierarchy survives in the intimate spheres of marriage, food and ritual, especially in villages. Both principles must be read together to understand intercaste relations today.Q1(c) · Kinship, Family and Religion in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Religious Communities and Problems of Religious Minorities
What are the distinct features of Islam as practised in India, and how have they changed over time?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में इस्लाम का जिस प्रकार आचरण किया जाता है, उसके सुस्पष्ट अभिलक्षण क्या हैं, और समय के साथ उनमें किस प्रकार परिवर्तन आया है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(c)
Approach: Describe the distinct features of Indian Islam (syncretic Sufi traditions, local customs, caste-like stratification, regional diversity) with Imtiaz Ahmad, and show how they have changed (reformist movements, Islamisation, Pasmanda assertion, legal reform).
Islam in India, followed by 14.2% of the population in Census 2011, has distinct features shaped by its long encounter with Indian society. Imtiaz Ahmad's Ritual and Religion among Muslims in India (1981) showed that Indian Muslims combine Islamic scripture with local practices.
Its distinct features include Sufi traditions, with shrines such as Ajmer Sharif and Nizamuddin visited by people of all faiths; local customs in marriage, dress and festivals shared with neighbours; caste-like divisions of Ashraf, Ajlaf and Arzal; and regional diversity, from Malayali Mappilas to Bengali and Kashmiri Muslims.
These have changed. Reformist movements such as Deoband (1866), the Ahl-i-Hadith and the Tablighi Jamaat (1926) promoted scriptural Islam over shrine practices, a process scholars call Islamisation. The Pasmanda movement asserts the rights of backward Muslims, and the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act 2019, after the Shayara Bano judgment (2017), ended instant triple talaq.
Indian Islam thus remains plural, though reformist and identity pressures are reshaping it.Q1(d) · Caste System · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Untouchability: Forms and Perspectives
How have the struggles against untouchability changed their forms and perspectives from Gandhian to Ambedkarite positions?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
अस्पृश्यता के विरुद्ध संघर्ष, गाँधीवादी से अंबेडकरवादी स्थितियों तक, अपने रूपों एवं परिप्रेक्ष्यों में किस प्रकार परिवर्तित हुए हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(d)
Approach: Contrast the Gandhian position (moral reform, change of heart, Harijan uplift within Hinduism) with the Ambedkarite one (rights, self-respect, law, political power, conversion), and show how later struggles moved to the latter.
The struggle against untouchability shifted from a Gandhian approach of moral reform from above to an Ambedkarite approach of rights and self-assertion from below.
Gandhi saw untouchability as a sin of caste Hindus to be removed by a change of heart. His methods were temple entry, the Harijan Sevak Sangh (1932) and the dignity of scavenging work, while keeping varna and Hinduism. Ambedkar saw it as a product of the caste system itself and sought education, organisation and agitation, legal rights, separate political representation and finally conversion to Buddhism in 1956.
After independence the Ambedkarite position prevailed: the Dalit Panthers (1972), Kanshi Ram's BSP (1984), the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (1989) and today's Dalit organisations stress self-respect, rights and political power rather than charity.
The change marks a move from treating Dalits as objects of reform to recognising them as agents of their own liberation.Q1(e) · Rural and Agrarian Transformation in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Green Revolution and Changing Modes of Production
Write a short note on 'changing means of production and increased rural poverty.'
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'उत्पादन के परिवर्तनशील साधन और बढ़ी हुई ग्रामीण ग़रीबी' पर एक संक्षिप्त टिप्पणी लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(e)
Approach: Write a short note linking changes in the means of production (technology, capital, markets, holdings) to rural poverty, with theory and data, and a balanced ending.
For Marx, changes in the means of production reshape class relations; in Indian agriculture, the shift from bullocks, family labour and own seed to tractors, tubewells, hybrid seed and purchased chemicals has changed who gains and who loses.
Mechanisation and capital-intensive farming displaced attached and women labourers, turning them into casual or migrant workers, as Jan Breman's studies of south Gujarat show. Rising input costs and dependence on markets pushed small and marginal farmers, who hold 86% of holdings (Agriculture Census 2015–16), into debt; the NSS 77th round (2019) found about half of agricultural households indebted.
Bt cotton and price shocks have been linked to distress and suicides in Vidarbha. The mode-of-production debate (Patnaik, Rudra, Bhaduri) explained this as capitalist farming growing on a semi-feudal base.
Yet poverty overall fell with higher wages and non-farm work; the poverty that remains is concentrated among the landless, tenants and rain-fed farmers.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Impact of Colonial Rule on Indian Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Protests, Movements and Social Reforms in the Colonial Period
The main objectives of socio-religious movements during the colonial rule in India were reforming and synthesizing Hinduism. Write on any two such important movements.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में औपनिवेशिक शासन के दौरान सामाजिक-धार्मिक आंदोलनों के मुख्य उद्देश्य हिन्दू धर्म का सुधार करना और उसका संश्लेषीकरण थे। ऐसे किन्हीं दो महत्त्वपूर्ण आंदोलनों पर लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(a)
Approach: Briefly state the reform-and-synthesis aim of colonial socio-religious movements, then write on two movements (Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj) with founders, ideas and impact, and end with an evaluation.
Nineteenth-century socio-religious movements arose from the encounter with Western rationalism, Christian missionary criticism and colonial rule. Their aim was to reform Hinduism by removing practices such as idolatry, sati and caste rigidity, and to synthesise it with reason and modern values while asserting its dignity. The Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj show two routes to this goal.
The Brahmo Samaj, founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1828 in Calcutta, preached monotheism based on the Upanishads, rejected idol worship and priestly ritual, and drew on Christian ethics and Islamic monotheism. Roy campaigned against sati, leading to the Regulation of 1829, and for women's property rights and English education. Under Debendranath Tagore and Keshab Chandra Sen it supported widow remarriage, inter-caste marriage and the Native Marriage Act of 1872.
The Arya Samaj, founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati in Bombay in 1875 and strongest in Punjab, called for a return to the Vedas, which it saw as rational and monotheistic. In Satyarth Prakash (1875) Dayanand rejected idolatry, polytheism, child marriage and birth-based caste, accepting varna by merit. It spread education through DAV schools from 1886 and Gurukuls, and its shuddhi campaign reconverted people to Hinduism.
Flow chart: Western and missionary challenge → Brahmo Samaj: rational synthesis with Western and Upanishadic ideas; Arya Samaj: revivalist return to the Vedas → reform of women's status, caste, education → middle-class self-confidence and nationalism.
Both movements were largely urban, upper-caste and middle-class, and Charles Heimsath and others note their limited reach among the masses. The Arya Samaj's shuddhi campaign also sharpened communal boundaries. Yet together with movements such as the Ramakrishna Mission (1897), they reformed social practice, built schools and gave Indians the confidence that fed nationalism.Q2(b) · Impact of Colonial Rule on Indian Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Modernisation of Indian Tradition
Discuss Yogendra Singh's thesis on Modernisation of Indian Tradition, and evaluate its applicability in the present day context.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय परंपरा के आधुनिकीकरण पर योगेन्द्र सिंह के शोध-प्रबंध पर चर्चा कीजिए, और वर्तमान समय के संदर्भ में उसकी अनुप्रयोज्यता का मूल्यांकन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(b)
Approach: Two parts: explain Singh's thesis (value themes, sources and levels of change, selective modernisation), then evaluate its applicability today with examples of globalisation, digital change, identity politics and revivalism.
Yogendra Singh's Modernization of Indian Tradition (1973) argued that Indian tradition, built on the value themes of hierarchy, holism, continuity and transcendence, changes through modernisation, which brings values of equality, individualism, historicity and rationality.
He classified change as orthogenetic (internal, such as Sanskritisation) or heterogenetic (external, such as Islam and Westernisation), at the cultural level of the little and great traditions and at the structural level of micro and macro institutions. He concluded that India modernises selectively, with traditions adapting rather than breaking, and that strains appear where structural change is faster than cultural change.
The thesis applies well today. Matrimonial apps help families find matches within caste, showing endogamy using modern tools. Religious festivals and pilgrimages are organised through social media and online booking. Caste associations act as pressure groups for reservation, and joint families still run many business houses. Singh's own later book, Culture Change in India: Identity and Globalization (2000), extended the framework to globalisation.
Its applicability has limits. Globalisation is not simply heterogenetic: it produces hybrid forms and new identity movements. Religious revivalism and communal mobilisation show that tradition can be used against modern values. Dalit assertion and feminist movements challenge tradition rather than adapt it. And the market, digital media and migration create changes that the categories of little and great tradition capture only partly.
Flow chart: Tradition (hierarchy, holism) + modern forces (education, market, democracy, digital media) → adaptation (caste associations, matrimonial apps) or conflict (revivalism, assertion) → selective modernisation.
The thesis therefore remains a sound starting point, but today it must be combined with theories of globalisation, identity and power.Q2(c) · Caste System · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Features of the Caste System and Caste Change
What are the changes in the cultural and structural aspects of the caste system since independence?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
स्वतंत्रता प्राप्ति से अब तक, जाति व्यवस्था के सांस्कृतिक और संरचनात्मक पहलुओं में क्या-क्या परिवर्तन आए हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(c)
Approach: Separate cultural changes (ritual, purity, Sanskritisation, identity) and structural changes (occupation, jajmani, politics, reservations, dominant castes, endogamy) since 1947, with examples.
Following Yogendra Singh's distinction, changes in caste since independence can be divided into cultural changes, in values and rituals, and structural changes, in relations and institutions.
Culturally, rules of purity and commensality have weakened in cities and public places. Sanskritisation continued, but alongside de-Sanskritisation and pride in non-Brahmin identities. Dalits increasingly reject Hindu hierarchy through Ambedkarite Buddhism and assertion.
Structurally, the jajmani system has given way to cash wages; caste and occupation are less linked. Land reform and the Green Revolution raised dominant peasant castes, and reservations created a Dalit and OBC middle class. Caste has become a political resource through associations and parties.
Yet endogamy persists, and NCRB data on atrocities show that hierarchy still matters. Caste has thus changed in form, from ritual rank to political identity, while continuing as a basis of marriage and community.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Rural and Agrarian Transformation in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Green Revolution and Changing Modes of Production
Indebtedness is one of the serious issues leading to farmers' suicides. Discuss reasons and suggest solutions.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
ऋणग्रस्तता किसानों को आत्महत्या तक पहुँचाने वाले चिंताजनक मुद्दों में से एक है। कारणों पर चर्चा कीजिए और समाधानों को सुझाइए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(a)
Approach: Discuss reasons for indebtedness leading to suicide (economic, institutional, social, and Durkheim's lens) with data, then give layered solutions; conclude.
NCRB's Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2022 recorded 11,290 suicides among farmers and agricultural labourers, concentrated in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Field studies consistently name indebtedness as the leading cause; the NSS 77th round (2019) found about half of agricultural households in debt.
Reasons: (i) Rising costs and falling returns: purchased seed (Bt cotton), fertiliser and pesticides, with volatile prices and crop failure in rain-fed areas. (ii) Institutional gaps: small, tenant and women farmers lack land titles, so they borrow from moneylenders and input dealers at high interest, the interlocked markets Amit Bhaduri described. (iii) Climate risk: droughts and unseasonal rains with weak insurance. (iv) Social pressure: expenditure on dowry, weddings, health and education, and loss of honour when debts become public. (v) Weakening support: nuclear households and the decline of village reciprocity; Durkheim would read this as anomic suicide in a period of rapid change, and as egoistic where the farmer faces risk alone.
Solutions: extend institutional credit to tenants through land leasing laws and Kisan Credit Cards; make crop insurance (PMFBY, 2016) fast and fair; assure remunerative prices and procurement for more crops; promote low-cost natural farming, irrigation and crop diversification; offer debt relief with reform rather than one-off waivers; provide income support (PM-KISAN), rural employment and health insurance; and build counselling and community support, as Maharashtra's Vasantrao Naik mission attempted.
Farmer suicide is thus a social fact rooted in the agrarian structure, and solutions must change the conditions of farming, not merely the size of the loan.Q3(b) · Kinship, Family and Religion in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Family, Marriage and Household in India
Clarify the distinction between 'household' and 'family' and evaluate whether joint families have completely disintegrated.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'घर' और 'परिवार' के बीच विभेद को सुस्पष्ट कीजिए और मूल्यांकन कीजिए कि संयुक्त परिवार पूर्णतः विघटित हो गए हैं अथवा नहीं।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(b)
Approach: Clarify household vs family (A.M. Shah), then evaluate whether joint families have completely disintegrated using evidence for and against (Census and NFHS data, Desai, Shah, Kolenda, urban adaptation), and conclude.
A household is a co-resident unit sharing a dwelling and usually a kitchen, while a family is a group related by kinship, marriage and obligations that may extend across several households. A.M. Shah's The Household Dimension of the Family in India (1973) insisted that the two must not be confused.
This distinction is essential for judging whether joint families have disintegrated. Census and survey data count households, and they show that most households are nuclear or small, with NFHS-5 (2019–21) reporting a mean household size of about 4.4 and fertility at 2.0. Urban migration, wage employment and women's work have encouraged separate residence.
Yet joint families have not completely disintegrated. Shah showed that small households were common even before industrialisation and that households move through a cycle of joint and nuclear phases. I.P. Desai's Mahuva study found high functional jointness: separate households share property, rituals, decisions and support. Pauline Kolenda found joint living more common among landowning castes in the North, and family businesses from Marwari firms to small shops still run on joint lines.
Flow chart: Household data → mostly nuclear residence; family data → joint obligations, shared property and rituals, support networks → joint family transformed, not disintegrated.
New forms also show adaptation: elderly parents moving in with children in cities, grandparents raising children of working couples, and transnational families linked by remittances. Laws such as the Senior Citizens Act (2007) recognise these obligations.
Joint families have therefore changed from joint households to joint networks; what has declined is co-residence, not the joint family as a system of obligations.Q3(c) · Kinship, Family and Religion in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Lineage, Descent and Kinship Systems in India
Compare the North Indian Kinship System with the South Indian Kinship System.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
उत्तर भारतीय नातेदारी व्यवस्था की दक्षिण भारतीय नातेदारी व्यवस्था के साथ तुलना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(c)
Approach: Compare the two systems on exogamy rules, cross-cousin marriage, terminology, hierarchy between affines, women's position and change.
Irawati Karve's Kinship Organisation in India (1953) remains the basis for comparing the North Indian and South Indian kinship systems.
On marriage rules, the North prohibits marriage within the gotra and with near kin on both sides and often within the village, while the South prescribes cross-cousin and uncle–niece marriage. On terminology, northern kin terms are descriptive and separate blood kin from affines, while Dravidian terms classify cross cousins as potential spouses, as Dumont showed. On hierarchy, the North makes wife-givers inferior through kanyadan and hypergamy; the South has more equal, repeated exchanges.
For women, the northern bride is a stranger in her husband's home, while the southern bride often marries into a familiar family and keeps closer natal ties.
Both systems are changing as consanguineous marriage declines in the South and dowry spreads across regions.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Politics and Society in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Political Parties, Pressure Groups and Elites
Explain the concepts of 'dominant caste' and 'vote bank', giving examples from specific regions.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विशिष्ट प्रदेशों से उदाहरण प्रस्तुत करते हुए, 'प्रमुख जाति' और 'वोट बैंक' की संकल्पनाओं को स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(a)
Approach: Explain both concepts precisely (Srinivas), give regional examples of each (Karnataka, UP, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra), show how they connect, and note recent changes.
Dominant caste, a concept M.N. Srinivas developed from his study of Rampura (1955), is a caste that is numerically strong in a village or region, owns a large share of land and wields economic and political power; Western education, administrative jobs and ritual rank add to dominance. In Rampura, the peasant Okkaligas, not the Brahmins, were dominant.
Regional examples: Vokkaligas (Okkaligas) and Lingayats in Karnataka; Jats in Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Punjab; Marathas in Maharashtra; Patidars in Gujarat; Reddys and Kammas in Andhra Pradesh; Yadavs in parts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh after the 1970s. Their dominance rests on land, cooperatives and local institutions, and they shape village justice and panchayats.
Vote bank, a term also used by Srinivas, refers to a bloc of voters who vote together on the instruction of leaders or according to group loyalty, usually caste or community. Examples include the Yadav–Muslim ('MY') base of the RJD in Bihar and the SP in Uttar Pradesh; the Jatav base of the BSP; the KHAM coalition (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) built by the Congress in Gujarat in the 1980s; and the Lingayat vote in Karnataka.
Connection: in early elections dominant castes delivered the votes of dependent castes through patron–client ties, so vote banks were vertical. As lower castes became politically conscious, vote banks became horizontal, with each caste voting as a bloc for its own leaders.
Recent change: economic diversification, welfare politics, Hindutva's cross-caste appeal and the assertion of non-dominant OBCs and Dalits have loosened rigid vote banks, while quota agitations by Jats, Patidars and Marathas show that dominant castes feel their dominance slipping. Both concepts remain useful but must be applied with attention to change.Q4(b) · Tribal Communities in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Colonial Policies and Tribes
What is the nature of religious change among tribal communities? Illustrate with two examples from colonial and post independence times.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
जनजातीय समुदायों में धर्म परिवर्तन की प्रकृति क्या है? औपनिवेशिक समय और स्वातंत्र्योत्तर समय से दो उदाहरण देते हुए स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(b)
Approach: Explain the nature of religious change among tribes (Christianisation, Hinduisation, revitalisation movements, assertion of tribal religions), with one colonial and one post-independence example each, and sociological explanations.
Tribal religions in India were traditionally centred on nature, ancestors, clan deities and village spirits, often described as animism or, in Jharkhand, Sarna worship of the sacred grove. Religious change among tribes has taken three main forms: conversion to Christianity, absorption into Hinduism, and revitalisation or assertion of indigenous faith.
In the colonial period, Christianisation spread among the Mundas and Oraons of Chotanagpur and the Nagas, Mizos and Khasis of the North-East. Missions brought schools, hospitals and literacy in tribal languages, and some converts sought protection from landlords. At the same time, revitalisation movements arose. Birsa Munda founded a new faith in the 1890s, rejecting both Christianity and landlord exploitation, and the Tana Bhagat movement among the Oraons (from 1914) adopted vegetarianism and rejected spirits while resisting rent and forced labour.
After independence, two opposing trends grew. Hinduisation spread through Sanskritisation and the work of Hindu organisations among tribes of central and western India, while Christian growth continued in the North-East, where Nagaland and Mizoram are now Christian-majority states. In reaction, tribes asserted their own religion: the demand for a separate Sarna religion code in the census in Jharkhand, and the Donyi-Polo revival in Arunachal Pradesh and Seng Khasi in Meghalaya.
Flow chart: Traditional tribal faith → colonial missions and exploitation → Christianisation and revitalisation (Birsa, Tana Bhagat) → after 1947: Hinduisation, continued Christian growth → assertion of indigenous religion (Sarna code, Donyi-Polo).
Sociologically, religious change reflects contact, exploitation and identity. K.S. Singh saw many tribal movements as combining religious reform with agrarian protest, while Anthony Wallace's idea of revitalisation explains how stressed societies create new faiths. Conversion has also divided communities, as tensions between Christian and Sarna tribals in Jharkhand show. Religious change among tribes is thus both cultural adaptation and a form of political assertion.Q4(c) · Industrialisation and Urbanisation in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Slums and Urban Deprivation
Compare the pressing problems of a dalit poor family living in an urban slum with a similar type of family living in a rural setting.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
शहरी गंदी बस्ती में रह रहे दलित ग़रीब परिवार की मुख्य समस्याओं की, ग्रामीण परिवेश में रह रहे समान प्रकार के परिवार की समस्याओं के साथ तुलना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(c)
Approach: Compare in parallel: for urban slum and rural Dalit poor families, compare livelihood, housing and services, caste discrimination, social support, and State access; note what is common.
A poor Dalit family faces deprivation in both settings, but the form of its problems differs.
Livelihood: in the village it depends on agricultural wage labour for landowners, often of the dominant caste, with seasonal unemployment; in the slum it works in informal jobs such as construction, sanitation and domestic work, with daily uncertainty. Housing and services: in the village, a hut in a segregated hamlet (the cheri or wada) with limited water; in the city, congested housing without tenure, toilets or drainage, and the constant threat of eviction. Caste: in the village, open untouchability, restrictions on wells and temples, and violence if the family asserts itself, as NCRB atrocity data show; in the city, caste is subtler, seen in rental discrimination and in sanitation work, though anonymity gives some freedom, as Ambedkar hoped.
Owen Lynch's Agra study shows urban Dalits turning to politics for mobility.
Both families share landlessness, insecure work and dependence on the State, so land, housing and dignity of labour are needed in both.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Violence against Women and Caste Conflicts
What are the reasons for the escalation of violence against women in the public domain?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सार्वजनिक क्षेत्र में महिलाओं के विरुद्ध हिंसा में वृद्धि के क्या कारण हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(a)
Approach: Give reasons for escalating violence in the public domain: women's growing presence and backlash, urbanisation and anonymity, masculinity and unemployment, media and technology, poor infrastructure and policing, with examples.
Violence against women in the public domain, harassment on streets and transport, stalking, assault and rape, has drawn attention since the Delhi gang rape of December 2012.
Reasons: (i) Women's growing presence in public space through education and work challenges the patriarchal idea that public space belongs to men, and some men respond with violence, a form of backlash. (ii) Urbanisation and anonymity: migration creates large populations of young, single men in cities with weak community controls, as Louis Wirth's idea of urban anonymity suggests. (iii) Masculinity and unemployment: frustrated, educated but jobless young men, whom Craig Jeffrey describes, may assert dominance through harassment. (iv) Media and technology: objectification in films and online pornography, and cyber-stalking. (v) Poor infrastructure: unlit streets, unsafe transport and lack of public toilets. (vi) Weak deterrence: police insensitivity and slow justice.
Shilpa Phadke and co-authors (Why Loiter?, 2011) argue that restricting women in the name of safety is the wrong answer.
The solution is safer cities, more women in public life, gender education and prompt justice.Q5(b) · Visions of Social Change in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Education and Social Change in India
Write a note on Education and Equality in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में शिक्षा और समता पर एक टिप्पणी लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(b)
Approach: Write a note on the two-way link: education as an equaliser (functionalist, constitutional measures) and as a reproducer of inequality (conflict view, Indian data), with a short conclusion.
In India, where caste once denied learning to Shudras, Dalits and women, education has been seen as the main route to equality; the Phules' school for girls (1848) and Ambedkar's call 'Educate, Agitate, Organise' express this hope.
Education as equaliser: Parsons saw schools allocating roles by achievement, and the Constitution backs this with Articles 21A, 46 and 15(5), the RTE Act 2009 (including 25% seats in private schools for disadvantaged children), reservation in higher education and mid-day meals. Literacy rose from 18% in 1951 to 73% in 2011, and female GER in higher education now exceeds the male rate (AISHE 2023–24).
Education as reproducer: Bourdieu and Bowles and Gintis argue that schools convert class advantage into credentials; in India, English-medium private schools for the rich and weak government schools for the poor form two tracks, ASER 2024 shows a learning crisis, and Dalit students face discrimination on campuses. Muslims and STs remain below average (Sachar Committee, 2006).
Education thus promotes equality only when access is matched by quality and dignity for all.Q5(c) · Visions of Social Change in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Constitution, Law and Social Change
Give an account of the problems relating to the "creamy layer".
हिंदी में प्रश्न
"नवोन्नत वर्ग" (क्रीमी लेयर) से संबंधित समस्याओं का विवरण दीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(c)
Approach: Give an account of problems: define creamy layer (Indra Sawhney), then list its problems (criteria, income ceiling, salary rule, SC/ST extension, implementation) and conclude.
The creamy layer is the socially and economically advanced section of the backward classes that is excluded from OBC reservation; it was mandated by the Supreme Court in Indra Sawhney (1992), and the income ceiling has been ₹8 lakh a year since 2017.
Problems: first, the income limit is revised irregularly and excludes agricultural income, so rich landowning OBCs often stay inside while salaried families are excluded. Second, rules on counting salary and on equivalence of posts are disputed. Third, many reserved seats go unfilled because 'non-creamy' candidates lack schooling, showing that exclusion without capacity-building is hollow.
A further debate is whether creamy layer should apply to SCs and STs: Jarnail Singh (2018) allowed it for promotions, and in Davinder Singh (2024) some judges suggested it, but critics argue that untouchability, not income, defines SC disadvantage.
Sociologically, the creamy layer reflects what Srinivas and later scholars saw as a new elite within backward castes; periodic review, sub-classification (the Rohini Commission, 2017–2023) and better schooling can make reservation reach the most deprived.Q5(d) · Industrialisation and Urbanisation in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Working Class, Informal Sector and Child Labour
Do you agree that the issue of child labour raises questions about and beyond the informal sector? Give reasons.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या आप सहमत हैं कि बाल श्रम का मुद्दा अनौपचारिक क्षेत्रक के संबंध में और उसके आगे भी प्रश्नों को जन्म देता है? कारण बताइए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(d)
Approach: Agree with reasons: show child labour's link to the informal sector, then why it goes beyond it (caste, gender, family, schooling, State, global chains).
Yes. Child labour is concentrated in the informal sector: agriculture, home-based work, small workshops, brick kilns, dhabas and domestic service, where there are no contracts, inspections or unions.
But it raises questions beyond the informal sector. It is a question of caste and class, since most working children are Dalit, Adivasi or from poor Muslim and OBC families; of gender, as girls do unpaid domestic and care work that statistics miss; of the family, which treats children's labour as a household resource; of schooling, since Myron Weiner (1991) argued that the State's failure to enforce compulsory education, rooted in elite beliefs about hierarchy, kept children at work; and of global supply chains, as carpets, garments and cotton seed for export have used child labour.
It also tests the welfare State's capacity, from the RTE Act 2009 to the 2016 amendment.
Hence ending child labour requires social, educational and political change, not just formalising work.Q5(e) · Population Dynamics · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Emerging Issues: Ageing, Sex Ratio, Mortality and Reproductive Health
What are the emerging concerns on women's reproductive health?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
महिलाओं के प्रजनन स्वास्थ्य पर उभरते हुए सरोकार क्या हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(e)
Approach: Discuss emerging concerns in women's reproductive health beyond the classic ones: anaemia and nutrition, adolescent health, contraceptive burden, abortion access, ART and surrogacy, NCDs and cancers, menstrual health, with data.
Reproductive health, defined at the Cairo conference (1994), includes safe motherhood and the freedom to decide whether and when to have children. As maternal mortality falls (MMR 88 in SRS 2020–22), new concerns are emerging.
Anaemia and nutrition: 57% of women aged 15–49 were anaemic in NFHS-5 (2019–21), worse than in NFHS-4. Adolescent health: 23.3% of women aged 20–24 married before 18, with risks of early pregnancy. Contraceptive burden: female sterilisation (37.9%) dominates and male participation is negligible. Abortion access: the MTP (Amendment) Act 2021 extended limits to 24 weeks for special categories, but unsafe abortions and stigma persist, especially for unmarried women. Assisted reproduction: exploitation of poor women in commercial surrogacy led to the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act 2021 and the ART Act 2021. Cancers and lifestyle diseases: cervical and breast cancer, PCOS and infertility. Menstrual health: hygiene, stigma and unnecessary hysterectomies among poor women.
These concerns reflect gender inequality and a health system focused on fertility control rather than women's well-being.
A rights-based, life-cycle approach to women's health is needed.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Crisis of Development: Displacement, Environment and Sustainability
Discuss some of the striking issues of development induced imbalances that need urgent attention.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विकास प्रेरित असंतुलनों के कुछ ऐसे असाधारण मुद्दों, जिन पर तुरंत ध्यान देने की आवश्यकता है, पर चर्चा कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(a)
Approach: Discuss the striking development-induced imbalances needing urgent attention (regional, rural–urban and sectoral, income and wealth, social group, gender, environmental), with data and theory, and suggest priorities.
Rapid growth since 1991 has made India one of the world's largest economies, but it has produced development-induced imbalances, uneven gains across regions, sectors and social groups, which Gunnar Myrdal's idea of 'cumulative causation' and backwash effects helps explain: growth poles attract capital and labour from lagging areas.
Regional imbalance: Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have the highest shares of multidimensional poverty, while Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu have the lowest (NITI Aayog MPI); per-capita incomes vary several-fold between states, driving migration. Sectoral and rural–urban imbalance: agriculture employs about 46% of workers (PLFS 2023–24) but produces under one-fifth of output, so rural incomes lag; manufacturing has not absorbed labour, a pattern Dani Rodrik calls premature deindustrialisation.
Income and wealth: the World Inequality Lab (2024) estimated that the top 1% held about 22.6% of national income and 40.1% of wealth in 2022–23. Social groups: SCs, STs and Muslims lag in assets, education and formal jobs, as the Sachar Committee (2006) showed. Gender: female labour force participation was only 40.0% (PLFS 2025), and NFHS-5 found 57% of women anaemic. Environment: costs of growth, such as pollution, displacement and depletion, fall on the poor and tribal regions, while benefits flow to cities.
Urgent priorities: job-rich manufacturing and rural non-farm work; investment in health, nutrition and schooling in lagging states (as the Aspirational Districts Programme, 2018, attempts); land and forest rights and fair rehabilitation; progressive taxation and universal social protection; women's employment and care infrastructure; and environmental regulation that protects the vulnerable.
Development will be sustainable only if it reduces these imbalances; otherwise, as Myrdal warned, inequality will cumulate and threaten social cohesion.Q6(b) · Industrialisation and Urbanisation in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Modern Industry and the Growth of Urban Settlements
Examine the impact of heritage tourism on urban socio-spatial patterns in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में विरासत पर्यटन के शहरी सामाजिक-स्थानिक प्रारूपों पर प्रभाव का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(b)
Approach: Examine the impact: define heritage tourism and socio-spatial patterns, then show effects on land use, displacement and gentrification, livelihoods, identity and segregation, with Indian cases and theory (Urry, Lefebvre), and conclude.
Heritage tourism is travel to experience historic monuments, old city cores and living cultural traditions; socio-spatial patterns are the way social groups, activities and power are arranged in urban space. India promotes heritage tourism through HRIDAY (2015) for 12 heritage cities, PRASAD for pilgrimage sites and Swadesh Darshan, and UNESCO has listed Ahmedabad (2017) and Jaipur (2019) as World Heritage Cities.
Land use and gentrification: heritage zones attract hotels, cafés and souvenir shops, and land values rise, so old residents and low-rent users are pushed out; the old city becomes a stage for visitors, which John Urry called the 'tourist gaze' (1990). The Kashi Vishwanath Corridor in Varanasi (2021) demolished hundreds of houses and small shrines around the temple, changing the lived lanes of the old city, and redevelopment in Ayodhya and around other temples shows similar effects.
Displacement and exclusion: at Hampi, houses and shops in the bazaar were cleared in 2011 to protect the World Heritage Site; street vendors, informal guides and boatmen face regulation and eviction in favour of formal businesses. Lefebvre's 'right to the city' raises the question of whose city heritage planning serves.
Livelihoods and identity: positively, tourism creates jobs for artisans, guides and homestays, revives crafts (Jaipur's block printing), and gives communities pride and resources to conserve old neighbourhoods, as in the pols of Ahmedabad. But it can freeze living culture into a commodity and favour a selective, often majoritarian, version of history.
Heritage tourism therefore reorganises urban space around consumption and image; inclusive conservation that keeps residents, protects informal livelihoods and involves communities is needed so that heritage remains a lived space, not only a spectacle.Q6(c) · Population Dynamics · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Emerging Issues: Ageing, Sex Ratio, Mortality and Reproductive Health
What are the causes and solutions for the low female sex-ratio in the DEMARU States of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and Gujarat?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पंजाब, हरियाणा, हिमाचल और गुजरात के 'डेमारू' राज्यों में निम्न स्त्री-पुरुष अनुपात के क्या-क्या कारण और हल हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(c)
Approach: Give causes and solutions for low female sex ratio in the four 'DEMARU' states, with 2011 child sex ratio data, social causes (son preference, dowry, prosperity and technology) and multi-level solutions.
DEMARU is a term coined by demographer Ashish Bose for states where daughters are eliminated through sex selection. In Census 2011 the child sex ratio was 846 in Punjab, 834 in Haryana, 890 in Gujarat and 909 in Himachal Pradesh, against the national 918.
Causes: strong son preference in patrilineal, land-owning communities; dowry and rising wedding costs; the 'prosperity effect', as relatively rich and educated families in these states could afford ultrasound and sex-selective abortion; the small-family norm, which, combined with son preference, intensified elimination of second and third daughters, as Monica Das Gupta showed in Punjab; and weak enforcement of the PCPNDT Act 1994 against doctors and clinics.
Solutions: strict enforcement of the PCPNDT Act with sting operations and registration of machines, as Haryana did after 2015; Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (launched at Panipat in 2015) and Ladli-type cash incentives; equal inheritance and action against dowry; women's education and employment; and community campaigns.
Haryana's sex ratio at birth improved after 2015, showing that combined legal and social action works.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Social Movements in Modern India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Women's Movement
Despite gains from the women's movement and state policy of women empowerment, gender equality is far from achieved. Identify two major challenges that prevent this goal from being reached.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
महिलाओं के आंदोलन के और महिला सशक्तिकरण की राजकीय नीति से अभिलाभों के बावजूद स्त्री-पुरुष समानता उपलब्धि से बहुत दूर है। ऐसी दो प्रमुख चुनौतियों की पहचान कीजिए, जो इस लक्ष्य तक पहुँचने में बाधक हैं।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(a)
Approach: Acknowledge gains briefly, then identify and analyse two major challenges in depth (for example, patriarchal family norms and son preference; women's economic dependence and unpaid care), each with theory, data and examples, and suggest ways forward.
The women's movement and State policy have brought real gains: laws against dowry, domestic violence and harassment, one-third and more reservation in panchayats, rising female education (female higher-education GER above male in AISHE 2023–24) and schemes such as Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (2015). Yet gender equality remains distant. Two major challenges stand out.
Challenge 1: patriarchal family and kinship norms. Patrilocal residence, patrilineal inheritance and dowry make daughters 'paraya dhan', which produces son preference; NFHS-5 (2019–21) recorded a sex ratio at birth of 929 girls per 1,000 boys, and NCRB recorded about 4.41 lakh crimes against women in 2024, with cruelty by husband or relatives the largest category. Leela Dube showed how socialisation in the natal family prepares girls for subordination, and Bina Agarwal found that daughters rarely claim land despite the 2005 amendment. Laws cannot easily reach the private sphere, which Sylvia Walby calls private patriarchy.
Challenge 2: economic dependence and the burden of unpaid care. Female labour force participation was only 40.0% in PLFS 2025, much of it unpaid family work, and the Time Use Survey 2024 found women spending far more time than men on unpaid domestic and care work. Occupational segregation, the wage gap, lack of safe transport and childcare, and the 'marriage penalty' keep women out of paid work. Without income, women's bargaining power within the household stays low, as Amartya Sen's model of 'cooperative conflict' explains.
Way forward: change norms through education and men's involvement, enforce equal inheritance, invest in childcare, safe transport and women-friendly jobs, and recognise and redistribute care work.
Gender equality therefore requires transforming family and economy together; law and policy are necessary but cannot by themselves remove deep-rooted patriarchy.Q7(b) · Politics and Society in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Nation, Democracy and Citizenship in India
To what extent does nation building depend on strengthening of pluralities in Indian society?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
राष्ट्र-निर्माण किस सीमा तक भारतीय समाज में अनेकताओं के दृढ़ीकरण पर निर्भर करता है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(b)
Approach: To what extent: define nation building and pluralities, show how recognising pluralities strengthened the nation (language, federalism, tribal autonomy, minority rights) and where limits lie (fragmentation, need for common citizenship); conclude 'to a large extent, with a shared civic core'.
Nation building creates shared identity and loyalty among diverse groups; pluralities are India's many languages, religions, castes, tribes and regional cultures. Two models compete: assimilation into one culture, or unity through recognition of diversity, which Nehru called 'unity in diversity'.
Strengthening pluralities built the nation: the linguistic reorganisation of states (1956) was feared to break India but in fact defused linguistic separatism and deepened loyalty, as Paul Brass and others argue; the three-language formula and the Eighth Schedule (22 languages) gave recognition; the Sixth Schedule and autonomous councils (for example in Mizoram after the 1986 accord and the Bodoland Territorial Council, 2003) turned insurgency into participation; Articles 25–30 assured religious minorities; and federalism and reservations gave regions and lower castes a stake in the State. T.K. Oommen argues that India is best understood as a multi-national State in which nations and ethnies coexist.
Failures of recognition weakened it: the imposition of Hindi provoked the Tamil anti-Hindi agitation (1965); neglect of the North-East and Kashmir fuelled insurgencies; and communal violence against minorities eroded trust.
Limits: pluralities alone can fragment if they become exclusive, as in nativist 'sons of the soil' movements described by Myron Weiner; a common civic core of constitutional values, equal citizenship and shared development is also needed.
Nation building in India therefore depends to a large extent on strengthening pluralities, provided recognition is joined with equal citizenship and fraternity, which Ambedkar saw as the foundation of nationhood.Q7(c) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Ethnic Conflicts, Communalism and Religious Revivalism
Explain the issues relating to ethnicity and sub-ethnicity.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नृजातीयता और उप-नृजातीयता से संबंधित मुद्दों को स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(c)
Approach: Explain ethnicity and sub-ethnicity (Barth, Brass), give examples of sub-ethnic divisions within ethnic groups in India, and the issues they raise (autonomy within autonomy, competition, conflict).
Ethnicity is a collective identity based on belief in common descent, culture and territory (Weber; Barth on boundaries); sub-ethnicity refers to smaller identities within a larger ethnic group, based on tribe, clan, dialect or region, which may assert themselves against the larger group.
Indian examples: within the Naga identity, tribes such as the Angami, Ao, Sumi and Konyak have distinct interests, and factions of the NSCN have divided along such lines; in Assam, the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Council (2003) provoked demands from non-Bodo groups within it, and Karbi and Dimasa groups seek their own councils; in Meghalaya, Khasi and Garo identities compete; the Kuki-Zo umbrella includes many sub-groups; and Gorkha identity coexists with Lepcha and Bhutia assertion in Darjeeling.
Issues: demands for 'autonomy within autonomy', competition over jobs, land and reservation within the same broad category, fragmentation of movements, and inter-group violence. Paul Brass's instrumentalist view explains how elites mobilise sub-identities for power.
Accommodation through nested councils and fair sharing of benefits helps manage such divisions.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Ethnic Conflicts, Communalism and Religious Revivalism
What is Cultural Revivalism? Give some examples from performing arts, language dissemination and arts and crafts in recent times.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'सांस्कृतिक पुनरुज्जीवनवाद' से क्या तात्पर्य है? हाल ही के समय में अभिनयी कलाओं, भाषा प्रसारण तथा कला और शिल्प से कुछ उदाहरण प्रस्तुत कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(a)
Approach: Define cultural revivalism (Wallace's revitalisation, Hobsbawm's invented tradition), then give examples from performing arts, language and arts and crafts in recent times, with the role of State and market, and assess its meaning (identity, commodification, politics).
Cultural revivalism is the conscious effort to restore, reinterpret and promote cultural traditions seen as declining or threatened. Anthony F.C. Wallace (1956) described 'revitalisation movements' as deliberate efforts to construct a more satisfying culture, and Eric Hobsbawm's idea of the 'invention of tradition' (1983) reminds us that revived traditions are often reshaped for present needs, including identity and politics.
Performing arts: in the twentieth century Rukmini Devi Arundale's Kalakshetra (1936) revived and reshaped Bharatanatyam, and Vallathol's Kerala Kalamandalam (1930) did the same for Kathakali. Recently, folk and ritual forms such as Theyyam, Chhau, Yakshagana and Gotipua have gained new audiences through festivals, tourism and the Sangeet Natak Akademi; UNESCO's inscription of Kolkata's Durga Puja (2021) and Gujarat's Garba (2023) as intangible heritage has boosted their status.
Language dissemination: the 'classical language' status, first given to Tamil (2004), was extended in October 2024 to Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese and Bengali, taking the total to eleven; NEP 2020 encourages mother-tongue education and Sanskrit and Indian languages; tribal languages such as Santali (Ol Chiki script, in the Eighth Schedule since 2003) see revival through literature and digital tools, and the Bhashini platform uses AI for Indian languages.
Arts and crafts: Geographical Indication tags for products such as Madhubani painting, Channapatna toys and Banarasi saris; National Handloom Day (7 August, since 2015); One District One Product; and PM Vishwakarma (2023) for traditional artisans, along with e-commerce and design schools, have revived crafts.
Assessment: revivalism strengthens identity and livelihoods and resists cultural homogenisation, but it can commodify culture for tourism, freeze living traditions, privilege elite versions over folk and Dalit forms, and be used for majoritarian politics; inclusive, community-led revival is therefore the most sustainable.Q8(b) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Poverty, Deprivation and Inequalities
What, according to you, are the two fundamental axes of social discrimination in Indian society? Are they changing?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आपके विचार में, भारतीय समाज में सामाजिक भेदभाव के दो मौलिक अक्ष कौन-से हैं? क्या वे बदल रहे हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(b)
Approach: Identify caste and gender (patriarchy) as the two fundamental axes, explain each with theory and data, show their intersection, then assess whether they are changing (yes in form, persistent in substance); conclude.
In my view, the two fundamental axes of social discrimination in Indian society are caste and gender. Both are ascriptive, assigned at birth, and both organise the division of labour, access to resources and dignity; other inequalities of class, region and religion are often refracted through them.
Caste: Ghurye listed hierarchy, restrictions on commensality, endogamy and hereditary occupation as its features; Dumont saw purity and pollution as its organising principle, and Ambedkar called it 'graded inequality'. Its effects persist: NCRB recorded 55,698 crimes against SCs in 2024, inter-caste marriages are only about 5% of marriages (IHDS), and SCs and STs hold a much smaller share of assets than their population share (NSS AIDIS, 2019).
Gender: patriarchy, which Sylvia Walby defines as a system of social structures through which men dominate and exploit women, operates through patrilineal inheritance, dowry, control of sexuality and the sexual division of labour. NFHS-5 (2019–21) found 29.3% of ever-married women had faced spousal violence, the sex ratio at birth was 929, and female labour force participation was 40.0% in PLFS 2025. Uma Chakravarti's concept of 'brahmanical patriarchy' shows how caste purity depends on controlling women, so the two axes intersect, and Dalit women face both, as Kimberlé Crenshaw's idea of intersectionality suggests.
Are they changing? Yes, in form: untouchability in public spaces has declined, reservation has created Dalit and OBC middle classes, women's education and political representation have risen, and laws from the 1989 Atrocities Act to the Women's Reservation Act 2023 have strengthened rights. Caste is shifting from ritual hierarchy to political identity (Kothari), and women increasingly claim public space. But in substance they persist through endogamy, occupational segregation, honour killings, dowry and violence, and new forms appear in urban housing markets, online spaces and the labour market.
The two axes are therefore changing more in their outward expression than in their deep structure; education, economic independence, inter-caste marriage and enforcement of law are needed to change them fundamentally.Q8(c) · Tribal Communities in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Tribes: Definitional Problems and Geographical Spread
Why have we started using another category of tribes called the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs)? Why are they so called?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या कारण है कि हमने 'विशेष रूप से दुर्बल जनजातीय समूह (पी.वी.टी.जी.)' नामक जनजातियों की अन्य श्रेणी का इस्तेमाल करना शुरू कर दिया है? उनको ऐसा क्यों कहा जाता है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(c)
Approach: Explain why the PVTG category was created (unequal development within STs), its origin (Dhebar Commission, 1975 list, 2006 renaming), criteria and examples, and current schemes.
Scheduled Tribes are not equally developed. Some groups remained far behind others, so the Dhebar Commission (1960–61) recommended special attention for the least developed. In 1975 the government identified Primitive Tribal Groups, renamed Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) in 2006; there are now 75 such groups.
They are so called because they meet four criteria of vulnerability: pre-agricultural technology such as hunting and gathering, very low literacy, a stagnant or declining population, and a subsistence economy. Examples are the Jarawa and Sentinelese of the Andamans, the Bonda of Odisha, the Baiga of Madhya Pradesh, the Birhor of Jharkhand and the Toda of the Nilgiris. Odisha has the largest number.
The separate category allows targeted protection, such as habitat rights under the Forest Rights Act 2006 and PM-JANMAN (2023) for housing, roads, water and health in PVTG habitations.
Critics object to the old label ‘primitive’ and to uneven listing across states, but the category recognises inequality within tribes.