UPSC Mains 2018 Sociology Optional Question Papers with Model Answers
All 56 questions of the 2018 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 2018 Sociology Paper I
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Sociology: The Discipline · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Sociology and Common Sense
The focal point of Sociology rests on interaction. How do you distinguish it from common sense?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समाजशास्त्र का फोकस बिन्दु अन्योन्यक्रिया पर आधारित है। आप इसको सामान्य बुद्धि से किस प्रकार प्रभेदित करते हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(a)
Approach: Explain why interaction is sociology's focal point (Weber's social action, Simmel's sociation, Mead and Blumer), then distinguish the sociological study of interaction from common-sense understanding, with an Indian example.
Sociology's focus on interaction comes from Weber's definition of social action as action oriented to others, Simmel's idea of sociation, and the symbolic interactionism of Mead and Blumer, for whom society is built through meaningful interaction.
Everyone interacts daily and holds common-sense ideas about it, so how does sociology differ?
Concepts: sociology uses precise tools such as status, role, norm and Goffman's dramaturgy of front and back stage, while common sense describes interaction loosely.
Method: sociology observes systematically and compares across groups; common sense generalises from personal experience. Garfinkel's breaching experiments exposed hidden rules that common sense takes for granted.
Structure: sociology links interaction to structure. In India, interaction between castes once followed rules of purity and pollution, as Dumont and Srinivas showed, though common sense treated these rules as natural.
Thus sociology studies the same interactions common sense knows, but makes their hidden patterns visible and explains them.Q1(b) · Sociology as Science · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Fact, Value, Objectivity and Non-positivist Methodologies
Distinguish between fact and value in Weber's Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
वेबर की प्रोटेस्टैन्ट आचारनीति और पूँजीवाद की आत्मा के बीच तथ्य और मूल्य में भेद कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(b)
Approach: Distinguish fact and value as Weber handled them in the Protestant Ethic: value relevance in choosing the problem, values of actors treated as facts, and value freedom in analysis, noting the debate and an Indian link.
For Weber a fact is an empirically demonstrable statement about what is, while a value is a judgement of what ought to be. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05) he kept the two apart.
Values entered first through value relevance: he chose modern rational capitalism because it was of supreme significance for his own culture. Second, the values of the actors, such as the Calvinist idea of the calling, predestination and worldly asceticism, were treated as facts to be understood, not judged. The facts included statistics, compiled by Martin Offenbacher, on Protestant predominance among business leaders in Baden, and Benjamin Franklin's maxims illustrating the spirit.
In analysis he stayed value-free: he did not praise or blame Protestantism, denied that the Reformation alone created capitalism, and said his closing remarks on the iron cage entered the sphere of value judgements.
His The Religion of India applied the same method to Hindu ethics, though Milton Singer's Madras study later questioned its conclusions.Q1(c) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 10 marks≈ 7 min
George Herbert Mead: Self and Identity
Do you think 'I' and 'Me' are central terms in Mead's work?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या आपके विचार में मीड के कार्य में 'आई' और 'मी' केन्द्रीय शब्द हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(c)
Approach: Explain 'I' and 'me', show why they are central (self as process, social control and creativity), and note other central concepts and criticism.
Yes, the 'I' and the 'me' are central to George Herbert Mead's theory of the self in Mind, Self and Society (1934), because they explain how the self is both social and creative.
The 'me' is the organised set of attitudes of others which one assumes: the community's norms within the person, the basis of social control. The 'I' is the response of the organism to these attitudes: spontaneous, unpredictable and the source of novelty. The self is the ongoing conversation between the two.
This makes the self a process, not a thing, and explains both conformity (the 'me') and individuality and social change (the 'I'). An Indian woman who accepts family duties (me) yet chooses a career (I) illustrates this.
Yet they rest on other central terms: significant symbol, role-taking, play and game stages and the generalised other. Still, the I–me dialectic is the core of Mead's answer to how society and individual are linked.Q1(d) · Stratification and Mobility · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Equality, Inequality, Hierarchy, Exclusion, Poverty and Deprivation
What is the difference between natural and social inequality? Give examples from caste and class dimensions.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
प्राकृतिक और सामाजिक असमता के बीच क्या विभेद है? जाति और वर्ग विमाओं से उदाहरण दीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(d)
Approach: Distinguish natural from social inequality using Rousseau and Béteille, then illustrate how caste and class turn differences into social inequality.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1755) distinguished natural inequality of age, health, strength and mind, established by nature, from social (moral or political) inequality of wealth, honour and power, established by convention.
Natural inequality is individual and given; social inequality is group-based, persistent and justified by ideology. André Béteille notes that societies select some natural differences, such as sex or skin colour, and attach social value to them.
Caste: the claim that Brahmins are naturally pure and untouchables naturally polluting is a social ranking presented as natural. Ghurye showed hereditary occupation and endogamy fixing it by birth, and Ambedkar exposed it as man-made graded inequality.
Class: income gaps seem to reflect talent, as Davis and Moore suggest, but Marx traced them to ownership of the means of production and Bourdieu to inherited cultural capital, as when professionals' children dominate entrance examinations through coaching.
Inequality that looks natural is thus usually social, and therefore open to change through law, education and redistribution.Q1(e) · Systems of Kinship · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Patriarchy, Sexual Division of Labour and Contemporary Trends
What are the new forms of family in developed societies? Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विकसित समाजों में परिवार के नवीन स्वरूप क्या-क्या हैं? चर्चा कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q1(e)
Approach: List and briefly explain the new family forms in developed societies with the sociologists who described them, and add a line on the debate over whether diversity means decline.
Developed societies show what Rhona and Robert Rapoport (1982) called family diversity, as the 'cereal packet' nuclear family of a breadwinner husband and housewife declines.
Cohabiting couples live together without marriage, often before or instead of it. Lone-parent families, mostly mother-headed, have grown with divorce and births outside marriage. Reconstituted families are formed when divorced partners remarry and bring children from earlier unions.
Same-sex families have grown since the Netherlands legalised same-sex marriage in 2001; Jeffrey Weeks called such networks 'families of choice'. Living apart together couples keep separate homes, and single-person households have risen sharply.
Julia Brannen's beanpole family has many generations but few members in each, and migration creates transnational families.
Postmodernists such as Judith Stacey welcome this diversity, while the New Right sees it as decline. Giddens's 'pure relationship' explains the shift as a move towards choice-based intimacy.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Sociology as Science · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Fact, Value, Objectivity and Non-positivist Methodologies
Is non-positivistic methodology scientific? Illustrate.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या अप्रत्यक्षवादी कार्यप्रणाली वैज्ञानिक है? सोदाहरण स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(a)
Approach: Define what makes inquiry scientific in a broad sense, show with examples how non-positivist methods meet those criteria, give the positivist objections, use Indian illustrations and conclude that they are scientific in a different sense.
Non-positivistic methodology includes Weber's verstehen, phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, grounded theory and feminist research. Whether it is scientific depends on how science is defined: as measurement and causal laws, or more broadly as systematic, empirical, public and self-correcting inquiry.
By the narrow positivist test, it falls short. Its findings are often qualitative, not easily quantified, hard to replicate and not generalisable; Popper's falsifiability is difficult to apply to an interpretation; and the researcher's subjectivity enters the data.
By the broader test, it is scientific. It is empirical, resting on long observation and recorded evidence. It is systematic: Weber required interpretations to be adequate at the level of meaning and of cause, and used comparison and ideal types; Glaser and Strauss (1967) gave grounded theory explicit procedures of theoretical sampling, coding and constant comparison; conversation analysis works on transcripts that others can recheck. It is self-correcting through reflexivity, triangulation and peer criticism.
Moreover, Kuhn and Feyerabend showed that natural science itself is not a single fixed method, and Bhaskar's realism allows the study of meanings as real causes. Peter Winch argued that social science needs its own standards of understanding rather than borrowed ones.
Indian sociology illustrates this. Srinivas's Rampura fieldwork produced concepts of dominant caste and Sanskritisation that later scholars tested and refined in other regions, and Béteille's Caste, Class and Power (1965) on Sripuram combined observation with systematic analysis of land and power.
Thus non-positivistic methodology is scientific in the sense of disciplined, evidence-based and open inquiry, though not in the narrow sense of law-finding. It is strongest when combined with quantitative methods.Q2(b) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Emile Durkheim: Suicide, and Religion and Society
Explain Durkheim's basic arguments on suicide. Can you analyse high suicide rates of contemporary Indian society with Durkheim's theory?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आत्महत्या पर दुर्खीम के आधारिक तर्कों की व्याख्या कीजिए। क्या आप समकालीन भारतीय समाज की उच्च आत्महत्या दरों का विश्लेषण दुर्खीम की थियोरी के द्वारा कर सकते हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(b)
Approach: Explain Durkheim’s argument in Suicide (social fact, integration and regulation, four types), then apply it to suicide patterns in India with NCRB data, noting where the theory fits and where it falls short.
In Suicide (1897), Durkheim argued that even the most personal act has social causes. Rejecting explanations from insanity, heredity, climate and imitation, he showed that suicide rates are stable and vary with two social forces: integration (bonds to groups) and regulation (control of desires by norms).
Four types: too little integration gives egoistic suicide (Protestants, the unmarried); too much gives altruistic suicide (soldiers, ritual sacrifice); too little regulation gives anomic suicide (economic crises and booms, divorce); too much gives fatalistic suicide (slaves, oppressive discipline).
Flow chart: integration low → egoistic, high → altruistic; regulation low → anomic, high → fatalistic
India: NCRB’s Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2023 recorded 1,71,418 suicides, a rate of 12.3 per lakh, with daily wage earners the largest group. Farmer suicides linked to debt and crop failure in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana can be read as anomic, from sudden loss, or fatalistic, from blocked futures; student suicides in coaching hubs such as Kota reflect intense pressure and weak integration away from family; migrant workers in cities face anomie; and historical sati, as at Deorala (1987), was altruistic.
Limits: family disputes and illness, major causes in NCRB data, need psychological and economic analysis too; Jack Douglas and J. Maxwell Atkinson warned that official statistics under-record suicide because of stigma; and the types overlap.
Conclusion: Durkheim’s theory explains much of the social pattern of Indian suicides and supports policy such as the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (2022), but must be combined with other approaches.Q2(c) · Stratification and Mobility · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Theories of Stratification: Functionalist, Marxist and Weberian
Evaluate if social stratification is functional for society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मूल्यांकन कीजिए कि क्या समाज के लिए सामाजिक स्तरीकरण प्रकार्यात्मक है।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q2(c)
Approach: Give the functionalist case (Davis and Moore), then evaluate it with Tumin's dysfunctions and conflict views, using an Indian example, and judge.
Davis and Moore (1945) argued that stratification is functional because unequal rewards motivate the most able to train for and fill the most important positions; Parsons added that ranking reflects shared values and so integrates society.
Evaluation: Melvin Tumin (1953) listed its dysfunctions. It limits the discovery of talent because the poor lack access to education; it creates hostility, suspicion and distrust; it makes unequal rewards hereditary, so they reflect inheritance rather than merit; and it weakens loyalty among those at the bottom. Marxists see it as serving the ruling class, and Dahrendorf links unequal authority to conflict.
Indian evidence: caste assigned positions by birth, wasting talent among Dalits, and produced conflict and movements; the dominance of coaching-backed urban students in entrance examinations suggests inherited advantage rather than function.
Stratification may be functional where positions are open and rewards follow skill, but rigid or hereditary inequality is largely dysfunctional for society as a whole.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Sociology: The Discipline · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Modernity, Social Change in Europe and the Emergence of Sociology
Does collapse of functionalism and bankruptcy of Marxism coincide with the rupture of modernity? Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या प्रकार्यवाद का ढेर होना और मार्क्सवाद का दिवालियापन आधुनिकता के विच्छेद के साथ संपाती है? विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(a)
Approach: Discuss whether the decline of the two grand theories (functionalism from the 1960s, Marxism after 1989) coincides with a break in modernity, using Lyotard, Giddens, Beck and Habermas; evaluate the premise that they 'collapsed' and add Indian reflections.
Functionalism (Parsons, Merton) and Marxism were the two grand theories of modern society. Both rested on modernity's faith in a single, scientific account of social order or of historical progress. The question asks whether their decline marks a 'rupture' of modernity itself.
Decline of functionalism: from the 1960s critics such as C. Wright Mills, Ralf Dahrendorf and Alvin Gouldner (The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, 1970) argued that it ignored conflict, power and change. Crisis of Marxism: the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989–91 weakened faith in its prediction of revolution and a planned economy.
The rupture argument: Jean-François Lyotard (1979) defined the postmodern condition as 'incredulity toward metanarratives', and both functionalism and Marxism are such metanarratives. Their decline, along with globalisation, consumerism and identity politics, thus appears to coincide with the end of modernity.
Counter-argument: Giddens and Ulrich Beck see not a rupture but late or reflexive modernity, a radicalisation of modern institutions. Habermas called modernity 'an unfinished project'. Neither theory has truly collapsed: Jeffrey Alexander developed neofunctionalism, and Marxist ideas survive in world-systems theory (Wallerstein) and critiques of neoliberal inequality.
Indian context: Indian sociology moved from structural-functional village studies (Srinivas, Dube) and Marxist analyses (A.R. Desai) towards subaltern, Dalit and feminist perspectives, yet caste, class and state remain central, suggesting continuity rather than rupture.
Hence the decline of grand theories coincides with a change in modernity, not its end; the decline is a loss of certainty, not bankruptcy, and sociology now combines these traditions with newer approaches.Q3(b) · Systems of Kinship · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Patriarchy, Sexual Division of Labour and Contemporary Trends
Define patriarchy. How does patriarchy manifest in interpersonal relations?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पितृतंत्र की परिभाषा दीजिए। अंतर्वैयक्तिक संबंधों में पितृतंत्र किस प्रकार अभिव्यक्त होता है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(b)
Approach: Give a precise definition of patriarchy (Weber, Millett, Walby), then show its manifestation in interpersonal relations (husband–wife, parent–child, in-laws, sexuality, violence, everyday interaction) with Indian studies and data, and conclude with change and resistance.
For Weber, patriarchalism was a form of traditional authority of the household head. Feminists widened the term: Kate Millett (Sexual Politics, 1970) saw all relations between the sexes as power-structured, and Sylvia Walby (1990) defined patriarchy as a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women.
Husband and wife: decision-making, control of money and mobility often rest with the husband. Kandiyoti's 'patriarchal bargain' shows wives accepting subordination for security, and the double burden of paid and domestic work falls on women (299 against 97 minutes of unpaid domestic work a day, Time Use Survey 2019).
Parents and children: son preference shapes care, feeding and schooling. Leela Dube (1988) showed that girls are raised as 'paraya dhan', trained in restraint and service, while sons are seen as permanent members of the lineage.
In-laws and generations: in the patrilocal joint family the new bride is subordinate to her mother-in-law, so patriarchy also works through older women.
Sexuality and honour: Uma Chakravarti's 'Brahmanical patriarchy' (1993) links control of women's sexuality to caste purity, visible in restrictions on choice of partner and honour crimes.
Violence: nearly three in ten ever-married women aged 18–49 reported spousal physical or sexual violence in NFHS-5 (2019–21), showing how coercion sustains everyday power.
Everyday interaction: R.W. Connell's 'hegemonic masculinity' explains how men are expected to be dominant and how men who deviate are mocked.
Interpersonal patriarchy is now contested through education, women's earnings and laws such as the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, but it changes slowly because it is learnt in intimate relationships.Q3(c) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Robert K. Merton: Functions, Conformity and Deviance, Reference Groups
What is the difference between anomie in Merton and Durkheim? Explain.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मर्टन और दुर्खीम के बीच अप्रतिमानता में क्या असमानता है? व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q3(c)
Approach: Compare Durkheim's and Merton's anomie on cause, nature of desires, social context and outcome, ideally in a short table described in a line.
Both used anomie to explain deviance as a social, not individual, product, but they differ.
For Durkheim (The Division of Labour in Society, 1893; Suicide, 1897), anomie is normlessness: a failure of moral regulation during rapid change, booms or crises, when society cannot limit human desires, which he saw as naturally boundless. It is acute and temporary, and it explains rising suicide rates and industrial conflict.
For Merton ('Social Structure and Anomie', 1938), anomie is a structural strain produced by the gap between culturally induced success goals and unequal access to legitimate means. It is chronic, built into stable but unequal societies, and it explains class-patterned deviance through five modes of adaptation.
Flow chart: Durkheim: rapid change → deregulation → limitless desires → anomic suicide; Merton: goals > means → strain → innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion.
In India, Durkheim's idea fits farm distress after market shocks; Merton's fits exam cheating and fraud among aspiring youth who lack legitimate means. Durkheim's view is moral and societal, concerned with the regulation of desire; Merton's is structural and differential, concerned with unequal opportunity.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Karl Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle
According to Marx, how are human beings alienated from their human potential and what does he suggest to change this?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मार्क्स के अनुसार मानव अपनी मानवीय संभाव्यता से किस प्रकार विसंबंधित होते हैं और इसका परिवर्तन करने के लिए वह क्या सुझाव देता है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(a)
Approach: Explain species-being and the four forms of alienation from human potential, then Marx’s remedy of abolishing private property through revolutionary praxis and communism, with an Indian example and criticism.
For Marx, human beings have a species-being: they realise their potential through free, conscious and creative labour, shaping nature and themselves together with others. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) he argued that capitalism turns this labour into a mere means of survival.
How alienation occurs: since the means of production are owned by capitalists and workers sell labour power for a wage, workers are alienated (i) from the product, which stands against them as an alien power; (ii) from the activity of labour, which is forced, not free; (iii) from species-being, as creative activity is reduced to physical existence; (iv) from other people, as relations become competitive. The division of labour and commodity fetishism deepen this.
Flow chart: private property → wage labour → loss of control over product and process → estrangement from species-being and others
Marx’s remedy: alienation is social, not natural, so it can be abolished. Workers must gain class consciousness and through revolutionary praxis overthrow private property; under communism the division of labour would be overcome, people could develop all-round abilities (The German Ideology), and distribution would follow the principle from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs (Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875).
India: repetitive assembly work at Manesar and gig work managed by algorithms show alienation, while producer cooperatives such as Amul suggest that control by producers can reduce it.
Criticism: Weber held that bureaucracy would alienate even under socialism, and the record of Soviet states bears this out; Blauner showed alienation varies with technology. Yet the idea of unrealised human potential remains a strong critique of modern work.Q4(b) · Stratification and Mobility · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Social Mobility: Open and Closed Systems, Types and Causes
Schooling does not ensure upward mobility of all members of the society. Discuss with reference to class societies.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
शिक्षा समाज के सभी सदस्यों की ऊर्ध्वमुखी गतिशीलता को सुनिश्चित नहीं करती है। वर्ग समाजों के संदर्भ में विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(b)
Approach: Explain the liberal promise that schooling ensures mobility, then show with conflict theory and studies (Bowles and Gintis, Bourdieu, Boudon, Willis, Goldthorpe) why it does not in class societies, add Indian evidence, and conclude on conditions under which schooling helps.
Liberal and functionalist theory sees schooling as the great equaliser of a meritocracy: Davis and Moore and Parsons argued that schools sort pupils by ability, and Blau and Duncan (1967) found education the main route to occupational attainment. Yet in class societies schooling does not ensure upward mobility for all.
Reproduction: Bowles and Gintis (1976) proposed a correspondence principle, by which schools mirror the hierarchy of capitalist work and teach obedience to working-class children. Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron argued that schools reward the cultural capital and habitus of dominant classes, turning inherited advantage into apparent merit.
Choices and culture: Raymond Boudon (1974) showed that even at equal ability, working-class pupils choose shorter, safer courses because costs and risks weigh more on them. Paul Willis's Learning to Labour (1977) found working-class 'lads' rejecting school culture and so entering manual jobs. Basil Bernstein linked restricted and elaborated language codes to school success.
Structural limits: when credentials expand faster than good jobs, degree inflation sets in, and Goldthorpe found that relative mobility chances by class origin changed little despite educational expansion.
India confirms this: a two-tier system of English-medium private schools and under-resourced government schools, costly coaching for entrance examinations, and ASER reports of weak learning in rural schools mean that children of the poor often finish school without mobility. Educated unemployment among youth shows that schooling without jobs does not lift.
Flow chart: Class origin → type and quality of school + cultural capital → credentials of unequal value → labour market networks → class reproduction.
Schooling promotes mobility only when quality is equalised and backed by jobs and supportive policies such as reservation and scholarships; otherwise it legitimises class inequality.Q4(c) · Religion and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Religion in Modern Society: Science, Secularisation, Revivalism and Fundamentalism
Discuss the challenges thrown by religious revivalism to a secular nation-state.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
धर्मनिरपेक्ष राष्ट्र-राज्य के लिए धार्मिक पुनरुद्धार-वृत्ति के द्वारा उत्पन्न चुनौतियों की विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q4(c)
Approach: Define revivalism and the secular nation-state, then list the specific challenges revivalism poses (to equal citizenship, state neutrality, law, minorities, public order) with Indian and world examples, and end with how the state can respond.
Religious revivalism is the renewed assertion of a faith as a return to its pure form. A secular nation-state bases citizenship on equal rights regardless of religion; India's version, in Rajeev Bhargava's term, keeps a 'principled distance' from all religions.
Challenges: first, revivalism can redefine the nation in religious terms, threatening equal citizenship of minorities. Second, it pressures the state to abandon neutrality, as in debates over religious symbols and conversion laws. Third, it can clash with constitutional rights, especially of women, as seen in resistance after the Sabarimala verdict (2018). Fourth, it can provoke communal violence, as after the Babri Masjid demolition (1992). Fifth, competitive revivalisms among communities feed one another. Globally, the Iranian Revolution (1979) turned a state theocratic.
T.N. Madan and Ashis Nandy argue that rigid secularism itself provoked revivalism, while Bhargava defends principled distance.
The state can respond by enforcing equal rights impartially and supporting interfaith dialogue.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Social Change in Modern Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Sociological Theories of Social Change
Is the theory of cultural lag valid in present times? Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या वर्तमान समय में सांस्कृतिक पश्चता की थियोरी वैध है? विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(a)
Approach: Define cultural lag (Ogburn, 1922), test its validity with present examples from technology and law, and note its criticism before giving a verdict.
William F. Ogburn (Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature, 1922) argued that material culture (technology) changes faster than adaptive non-material culture (laws, norms, values). The resulting gap, the cultural lag, produces social problems until norms catch up.
The idea remains strongly valid. Artificial intelligence, deepfakes and social media spread faster than regulation; in India the Digital Personal Data Protection Act came only in 2023, years after smartphone and UPI use exploded. Platform gig work and cyber-fraud show labour protections and policing lagging behind technology, while patriarchal attitudes lag behind women's education.
Critics call the theory technologically determinist; scholars of the social shaping of technology show that values also drive invention. Lag is also hard to measure.
Even so, as an orienting idea it is highly relevant in a period of rapid digital change, provided it is used with a two-way view of technology and society.Q5(b) · Politics and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Protest, Social Movements, Collective Action and Revolution
Are social movements primordial in means and progressive in agenda? Explain.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या सामाजिक आंदोलन कार्यसूची में प्रगतिशील और साधनों में आदिम होते हैं? व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(b)
Approach: Explain 'primordial means' (Geertz's primordial ties) and 'progressive agenda', show Indian movements that use caste, ethnic or religious identity for emancipatory goals, then counter-examples where both means and agenda are primordial, and conclude that it varies.
Clifford Geertz used primordial ties for attachments of kinship, caste, religion, language and ethnicity that feel given. Many movements mobilise through such ties while pursuing progressive goals of equality and rights.
In India, the SNDP Yogam, guided by Sree Narayana Guru, used Ezhava caste organisation to fight untouchability; Ambedkar's movement mobilised Mahars, and the mass conversion to Buddhism in 1956 used religion to reject caste; tribal movements such as the Jharkhand movement used ethnic identity to claim land, forest rights and statehood, achieved in 2000. Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph called this the 'modernity of tradition'.
But not all such movements are progressive. Myron Weiner's sons of the soil movements, such as the early Shiv Sena against South Indian migrants in Mumbai, and communal mobilisations are primordial in both means and agenda. Some modern movements, such as the RTI or environmental campaigns, use civic, not primordial, means.
So the claim holds for many emancipatory identity movements, but it is not a general law.Q5(c) · Sociology as Science · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Science, Scientific Method and Its Critique
Does scientific method make Sociology a science? Illustrate your answer with Durkheim's method.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या वैज्ञानिक विधि समाजशास्त्र को एक विज्ञान बना देती है? दुर्खीम की विधि के साथ अपने उत्तर को सोदाहरण स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(c)
Approach: Explain what Durkheim's method was and how it made sociology scientific, illustrate with Suicide and an Indian application, then note the critique that limits the claim.
A discipline becomes a science when it studies its subject through systematic, objective and testable procedures. Durkheim sought this status for sociology in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895).
He defined social facts as ways of acting, thinking and feeling that are external to individuals and constrain them. His rules were to treat social facts as things, discard prenotions, define the subject by external features, separate the normal from the pathological, and explain a social fact by preceding social facts. His tool was the comparative method of concomitant variation.
In Suicide (1897) he used official statistics to show that suicide rates vary with social integration and regulation, giving egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic types. Indian scholars use the same logic when they relate farmer suicides to debt and weakened social support.
However, Jack Douglas and J. Maxwell Atkinson showed that suicide statistics are built from coroners' interpretations, and Weber insisted on understanding meaning. So Durkheim's method makes sociology scientific in procedure, but not a science identical to physics.Q5(d) · Research Methods and Analysis · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative techniques of data collection with suitable examples from Indian society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय समाज से उपयुक्त उदाहरणों के साथ, डाटा एकत्रीकरण की मात्रात्मक और गुणात्मक तकनीकों के बीच विभेदन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(d)
Approach: Distinguish the two sets of techniques on a few clear criteria (nature of data, tools, sample, strengths), each with an Indian example, and close by noting their complementarity.
Quantitative techniques collect numerical, standardised data to measure and compare; qualitative techniques collect words, observations and narratives to understand meanings.
Flow chart: 2 × 2 contrast: Quantitative = structured schedule, large random sample, high reliability; Qualitative = observation or in-depth interview, small purposive sample, high validity.
Tools: quantitative work uses structured questionnaires, schedules, attitude scales and official records; the Census of India and NFHS-5 (2019–21) use enumerator-filled schedules across lakhs of households. Qualitative work uses participant observation, unstructured interviews, focus groups and life histories, as in Srinivas’s fieldwork in Rampura.
Sample and generalisation: quantitative surveys like PLFS use stratified multi-stage random samples to estimate national rates; qualitative studies use small purposive or snowball samples, such as interviews with manual scavengers or bonded labourers.
Researcher role and output: the quantitative researcher stays detached and produces tables and correlations, for example caste-wise literacy; the qualitative researcher builds rapport and produces thick description, for example Dalit women’s experience of humiliation.
Strengths: the first gives reliability and policy-ready figures; the second gives validity and depth. In practice Indian studies of caste or gender combine both.Q5(e) · Stratification and Mobility · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Social Mobility: Open and Closed Systems, Types and Causes
Is social mobility possible in closed systems of stratification? Illustrate from research work.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या सामाजिक गतिशीलता, स्तरीकरण की संवृत प्रणालियों में संभव है? अनुसंधान कार्य से सोदाहरण स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q5(e)
Approach: Answer yes, with limits: explain closed systems, then illustrate mobility in caste from research (Srinivas, Hardgrave, Lynch, Sinha, Pocock), and note its positional nature.
A closed system ascribes status by birth and restricts movement through endogamy and hereditary occupation, as in caste. Yet research shows mobility is possible, mainly at the level of groups.
M.N. Srinivas's concept of Sanskritisation, developed in Religion and Society among the Coorgs (1952), showed lower castes adopting the customs of higher castes and claiming higher rank over a generation or two. Robert Hardgrave's The Nadars of Tamilnad (1969) traced a toddy-tapping caste rising through trade, education and caste associations. Owen Lynch (1969) showed the Jatavs of Agra seeking mobility first through Sanskritisation and then through Buddhism and politics. Surajit Sinha described tribes claiming Rajput status, and David Pocock studied the Patidars of Gujarat rising through land and wealth.
Individual mobility also occurs through education, reservation and urban jobs, creating Dalit middle classes.
However, Srinivas stressed that such mobility brings positional rather than structural change: castes move within the hierarchy, which itself persists.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Works and Economic Life · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Social Organisation of Work: Slave, Feudal and Industrial Societies
Discuss the nature of social organisation of work in capitalist society with reference to the 'Limits of the working day'.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पूँजीवादी समाज में कार्य के सामाजिक संगठन की प्रकृति की विवेचना 'कार्य-दिवस की सीमाओं' के संदर्भ में कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(a)
Approach: Explain Marx's chapter 'The Working-Day' in Capital Vol. I: labour power, surplus value, absolute and relative surplus value, struggle over the working day and the Factory Acts; then apply it to Indian working hours and recent debates.
In Capital, Volume I (1867), Marx's chapter 'The Working-Day' shows that the length of work under capitalism is not natural but the outcome of class struggle. The capitalist buys the worker's labour power for a day and seeks to use it as long as possible.
The day has two parts: necessary labour time, in which the worker reproduces the value of his wage, and surplus labour time, which yields surplus value. Lengthening the day raises absolute surplus value; intensifying work with machines raises relative surplus value. The upper limit is set by the body and by social and moral norms.
Using British factory inspectors' reports, Marx described children and adults working 12 to 16 hours. Between the equal rights of buyer and seller, 'force decides', so workers' agitation produced the Factory Acts, including the Ten Hours Act of 1847.
Once the day was limited, capital turned to intensification: Taylorism, which Braverman linked to relative surplus value, along with shifts, overtime and clock discipline (E.P. Thompson). The eight-hour day became the central demand of labour movements, marked by May Day.
In India the Factories Act, 1948 fixed a 48-hour week, and the OSH Code, 2020 keeps an eight-hour day. Yet the frontier is contested: Tamil Nadu put on hold its 2023 amendment allowing 12-hour shifts after union protests, and N.R. Narayana Murthy's 2023 call for a 70-hour week sparked debate.
In the informal sector, about nine-tenths of the workforce, brick-kiln workers, domestic workers and gig riders often work 12 hours or more without limits, as Jan Breman's studies show.
Marx's insight stands: the working day remains a frontier of conflict between capital and labour, now stretched by 'always-on' digital work.Q6(b) · Systems of Kinship · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Family, Household and Marriage: Types and Forms
Distinguish between family and household with reference to the concept of development of the household.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
कुटुम्ब विकास की संकल्पना के संदर्भ में परिवार और कुटुम्ब में विभेदन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(b)
Approach: Define family and household and distinguish them on residence, kitchen, kinship and function; then explain the developmental cycle of the household (Fortes, Goody) and apply it to India through A.M. Shah, I.P. Desai and Kolenda.
The family is a kinship group bound by marriage, descent or adoption, with mutual rights and duties (Murdock, 1949). The household is a residential and economic unit: the Census of India defines it as a group of persons who normally live together and take meals from a common kitchen.
Distinctions: (i) a household may include non-kin such as servants or lodgers, while a family may span several households; (ii) the household rests on co-residence and commensality, the family on kinship; (iii) the family is a legal and ritual unit, the household a unit of daily consumption; (iv) a person living alone forms a household, not a family.
A.M. Shah (The Household Dimension of the Family in India, 1973) argued that confusing the two led scholars to conclude wrongly that the Indian joint family was breaking up, when they had only counted nuclear households.
Developmental cycle: Meyer Fortes, introducing Jack Goody (ed.), The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups (1958), showed that domestic groups pass through phases of expansion, dispersion (fission) and replacement.
Applied to India, a joint household splits when brothers partition, and each new nuclear household later grows into a joint household when sons marry. So a census snapshot showing many nuclear households may only capture one stage of the cycle.
I.P. Desai (1964) in Mahuva found that households living separately often remained functionally joint through shared property and obligations, and Pauline Kolenda (1968) found jointness varying by region and caste.
Flow chart: Couple → expansion (children) → joint household (married sons) → fission (partition) → new nuclear households → expansion again.
Household composition thus changes over the life course while the family as a network of obligations persists; migration-created 'split households' (husband in the Gulf, wife in Kerala) confirm Shah's point.Q6(c) · Research Methods and Analysis · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
Explain with examples, the explanatory and exploratory designs of social research.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
सामाजिक अनुसंधान के व्याख्यात्मक और अन्वेषणात्मक डिज़ाइनों की उदाहरणों सहित व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q6(c)
Approach: Define research design, explain exploratory and explanatory designs (Selltiz and colleagues’ classification) with their purpose, method and an Indian example each, and show how they connect.
A research design is the plan that links a research question to data collection and analysis. Selltiz, Jahoda, Deutsch and Cook (Research Methods in Social Relations, 1959) classified designs as exploratory (formulative), descriptive and hypothesis-testing (explanatory or experimental).
Exploratory design is used when a topic is new or little understood. Its aim is to gain familiarity, clarify concepts and formulate hypotheses, not to test them. It is flexible and uses literature review, interviews with experienced persons, case studies and observation. Example: early studies of app-based delivery workers in Indian cities explored their working conditions before structured surveys.
Explanatory design seeks cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It states a hypothesis, defines independent and dependent variables, controls other factors and uses surveys or experiments. Durkheim’s Suicide (1897) explained suicide rates by social integration. In India, one may test whether women’s schooling raises age at marriage using NFHS-5 data, controlling for caste and wealth.
Flow chart: Exploratory (questions, concepts, hypotheses) → Descriptive (how much, how widespread) → Explanatory (why: testing causes).
The two are stages of one cycle: exploration yields hypotheses that explanation tests, and puzzling results call for fresh exploration.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Sociological Thinkers: Parsons, Merton and Mead · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Talcott Parsons: Social System and Pattern Variables
How can Parsons' AGIL framework be used to analyse key problems in a society? Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समाज में मुख्य समस्याओं का विश्लेषण करने में पार्सन्स के 'ए.जी.आई.एल.' ढाँचे का किस प्रकार उपयोग किया जा सकता है? विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(a)
Approach: Explain AGIL and the subsystems that meet each need, then show how it can diagnose problems (functional failure, strain between subsystems) with Indian examples; end with limits.
Talcott Parsons argued that every social system must solve four functional problems to survive, summarised as AGIL (developed with Robert Bales and Neil Smelser in the 1950s).
Adaptation is securing resources from the environment and distributing them, done chiefly by the economy. Goal attainment is setting priorities and mobilising resources for collective goals, done by the polity. Integration is coordinating parts and managing conflict, done by law, courts and community. Latency (pattern maintenance and tension management) is transmitting values and motivation, done by family, education and religion.
Flow chart: problem in society → identify which function is failing (A, G, I or L) → locate the subsystem responsible → examine strain with other subsystems → suggest reform.
Used this way, AGIL becomes a diagnostic tool. Unemployment and agrarian distress in India are failures of adaptation; the gap between degrees and jobs shows strain between the latency (education) and adaptation (economy) subsystems. Policy paralysis or poor implementation of welfare schemes is a problem of goal attainment. Communal riots, caste atrocities and pending court cases signal weak integration. Rising family breakdown, drug abuse among youth in Punjab, or erosion of civic values point to problems of latency.
Parsons also saw subsystems exchanging inputs through media (money, power, influence, value commitment), so a problem in one spreads to others: farm distress (A) leads to agitations (I) and pressure on policy (G).
The framework has limits. Critics such as Dahrendorf note that it hides power and treats problems as malfunctions rather than as conflicts of interest; Mills found it too abstract. Marxists would see unemployment as built into capitalism, not a mere functional failure.
Still, AGIL gives a checklist for a systematic analysis of social problems, which can be combined with conflict theory for a full picture.Q7(b) · Works and Economic Life · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Labour and Society
What is labour commitment? Discuss it with reference to studies of manufacturing industry.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
श्रमिक वचनबद्धता क्या है? विनिर्माण उद्योग के अध्ययनों के उल्लेख के साथ इसकी विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(b)
Approach: Define labour commitment (Kerr and colleagues, Moore and Feldman), present the 'uncommitted Indian worker' thesis (Myers) and the studies that challenged it (Morris, Lambert, Sheth, Holmström, Chandavarkar), then a critical conclusion.
Labour commitment refers to the extent to which workers accept the norms of industrial life, such as regular attendance, time-discipline, permanent residence near the factory and dependence on wage work, and give up ties to land and village. The idea came from modernisation theorists such as Clark Kerr and colleagues (Industrialism and Industrial Man, 1960) and from Wilbert Moore and Arnold Feldman's edited volume Labor Commitment and Social Change in Developing Areas (1960).
The uncommitted-worker thesis: Charles Myers (Labor Problems in the Industrialization of India, 1958) and colonial reports argued that Indian factory workers were uncommitted, citing high absenteeism, turnover and periodic return to villages, and blamed their caste and rural ties.
Studies that challenged it: Morris David Morris (The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India, 1965), studying Bombay cotton mills, found that instability arose from employers' policies such as the jobber and badli (substitute) systems, not from workers' attitudes; where jobs were secure, workers stayed. Richard Lambert's study of Poona factories (1963) found workers keen on permanent jobs. N.R. Sheth (1968) showed that caste and kinship ties in a Gujarat factory coexisted with stable industrial work, and Mark Holmström's Bangalore study (1976) found workers valued a permanent factory job as a 'citadel' of security. Rajnarayan Chandavarkar argued that village links were a rational safety net in an insecure labour market.
Critique: the concept was ethnocentric, treating Western factory norms as universal and tradition as an obstacle, as Yogendra Singh and others noted of modernisation theory. Commitment depends on job security, wages and housing.
Today, with contract and gig work, it is employers who show low commitment to workers, so the question is better framed as mutual commitment within the employment relationship.Q7(c) · Politics and Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Theories of Power, Power Elite, Bureaucracy, Pressure Groups and Parties
What, according to Pareto, are the basic characteristics of elites? Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
परेटो के अनुसार आभिजात्यों के बुनियादी अभिलक्षण क्या-क्या हैं? विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q7(c)
Approach: State Pareto's definition of the elite and list its characteristics (unequal ability, governing and non-governing elite, residues, lions and foxes, circulation), with a brief criticism and example.
For Vilfredo Pareto (The Mind and Society, 1916), the elite consists of those who score highest in their field of activity, whether law, business, chess or crime. Society is always divided into a small elite and the masses.
Characteristics: first, elites rest on unequal natural qualities, not on property as Marx held. Second, the elite is split into a governing elite, which directly or indirectly rules, and a non-governing elite of able people outside power. Third, elite behaviour is driven by non-logical sentiments he called residues, especially the residue of combinations (cunning) and of persistence of aggregates (force and tradition).
Fourth, governing elites are therefore of two types, foxes and lions. Fifth, elites are not permanent: they degenerate and are replaced in a circulation of elites.
Critics such as C. Wright Mills shifted attention from personal qualities to institutional positions, and Marxists see elites as expressions of class. Yet the idea helps explain how new regional leaders in India rise into the governing elite.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Sociology: The Discipline · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Sociology and Common Sense
"The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relationship between the two in a society." — C.W. Mills. Explain.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
"समाजशास्त्रीय कल्पना हमें इतिहास और जीवनचरित को और समाज में दोनों के बीच संबंध को समझने में समर्थ बनाती है।" — सी.डब्ल्यू. मिल्स। व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(a)
Approach: Explain Mills' concept: the sociological imagination, history and biography, personal troubles and public issues, his critique of grand theory and abstracted empiricism; give Indian illustrations and a brief criticism.
C. Wright Mills, in The Sociological Imagination (1959), described the sociological imagination as a quality of mind that lets individuals understand their own experience by locating it in the larger history of their society. Individual lives (biography) are shaped by social structure and historical change, and in turn people's choices make history.
Personal troubles and public issues: Mills distinguished troubles, which arise within an individual's character and immediate relations, from issues, which concern the institutions of a society. When one person is unemployed, it is a trouble; when millions are, it is an issue rooted in the economy.
Three questions: Mills said this imagination asks what the structure of a society is, where it stands in history, and what kinds of people prevail in it.
Critique of sociology: Mills used the idea to criticise Parsons' 'grand theory' as too abstract and Lazarsfeld-style 'abstracted empiricism' as data without meaning; sociology should connect structure and individual lives.
Indian illustrations: a farmer's indebtedness looks like personal failure, but it reflects agrarian distress, market volatility and land fragmentation. A young person's unemployment reflects jobless growth and informality. A woman's withdrawal from paid work reflects patriarchal norms of household honour and care.
Flow chart: biography (personal trouble) ↔ social structure and history (public issue) → sociological imagination links the two
Assessment: the idea anticipates Giddens' structure-agency link and remains a key reason for studying sociology, though critics note that Mills gave little systematic method. Thus the sociological imagination turns private experiences into public understanding and makes sociology relevant to democratic life.Q8(b) · Religion and Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Types of Religious Practices: Animism, Monism, Pluralism, Sects and Cults
What are sects? Discuss their role in multi-religious societies with empirical examples.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पंथ क्या हैं? आनुभविक उदाहरणों सहित बहु-धर्मीय समाजों में उनकी भूमिका की विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(b)
Approach: Define sects using the church–sect typology (Weber, Troeltsch, Niebuhr, Wilson), then discuss their role in multi-religious societies, positive and negative, with empirical examples from India and elsewhere, and conclude.
For Weber, a church is a compulsory association into which one is born, while a sect is a voluntary association of the religiously qualified. Ernst Troeltsch (1912) described sects as small, exclusive, egalitarian groups that reject the world and draw on the lower classes. H. Richard Niebuhr argued that sects tend to become denominations within a generation, while Bryan Wilson showed that some persist as established sects and classified them by response to the world.
Role in multi-religious societies:
First, protest and equality: Weber noted that sects offer the disprivileged a theodicy of disprivilege. In India the Lingayats of Basava, the Kabirpanth and the Ravidasi panth rejected caste ritual, and today deras such as Dera Sachkhand Ballan give Dalits dignity, as Ronki Ram has shown.
Second, bridging faiths: syncretic sects such as the Kabirpanth and followers of Sufi orders draw Hindus and Muslims alike, sustaining pluralism.
Third, new religions: sects may become separate faiths, as Sikhism grew from a panth and the Ravidassia religion was declared in 2010, adding to diversity.
Fourth, conflict: sects can sharpen boundaries, as in the 2007 clashes between Dera Sacha Sauda followers and Sikh groups in Punjab and the violence in Panchkula after its head's conviction in 2017. Sectarian divisions within religions, such as Shia–Sunni conflict in West Asia or the Ahmadiyya's exclusion in Pakistan, show their divisive side.
Thus sects are carriers of protest, pluralism and religious innovation, but their exclusiveness can also fuel conflict in plural societies.Q8(c) · Sociological Thinkers: Marx and Durkheim · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Emile Durkheim: Suicide, and Religion and Society
In what way did Durkheim perceive religion as functional to society?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
दुर्खीम ने किस तरीके से धर्म को समाज के लिए प्रकार्यात्मक के रूप में अनुभव किया था?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper I, Q8(c)
Approach: Explain the functions Durkheim saw in religion (integration, discipline, revitalisation, euphoria, cognition) with Indian examples, and note the criticism briefly.
For Durkheim, religion is functional because it binds individuals into a moral community. In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) he argued that in worshipping the sacred, symbolised by the totem, people actually worship their own society.
Functions: (i) cohesive: shared beliefs and rites create solidarity; (ii) disciplinary: taboos and ascetic rites train self-control and respect for rules; (iii) revitalising: periodic rituals produce collective effervescence that renews shared values; (iv) euphoric: rites of mourning console people and restore confidence; (v) cognitive: religion provided the first categories of thought, such as time and space.
Indian examples: the Pandharpur wari, Durga Puja and the Kumbh renew collective sentiment, and M.N. Srinivas’s study of the Coorgs (1952) showed ritual reinforcing group structure.
Criticism: Marx saw religion as ideology, and communal conflict shows that religion can also be dysfunctional.
UPSC Mains 2018 Sociology Paper II
Question 1 (50 marks)
Q1(a) · Perspectives on the Study of Indian Society · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Indology: G. S. Ghurye
Write a note on G. S. Ghurye's Indological perspective of understanding Indian society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय समाज को समझने का जी० एस० घूर्ये के भारतविद्याई परिप्रेक्ष्य पर एक टिप्पणी लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(a)
Approach: Define the Indological perspective, show how Ghurye applied it to caste, tribes and religion, and end with a balanced assessment.
The Indological perspective understands Indian society through its classical texts, languages and history. G.S. Ghurye (1893–1983), trained under W.H.R. Rivers at Cambridge, made it the founding approach of Indian sociology at Bombay.
On caste, Ghurye used the Vedas and Dharmashastras to show its Indo-Aryan origin and its six features, from segmental division to endogamy. On tribes, in The Aborigines So-Called and Their Future (1943) he called them ‘backward Hindus’ who had long been absorbed into Hindu society. On religion, Indian Sadhus (1953) showed ascetics as carriers of cultural unity.
His central theme was the cultural unity of India, carried by Sanskrit traditions across regions. He also used census data and fieldwork, so his Indology was not purely textual.
Critics point to a static, upper-caste and Hindu-centred picture: Srinivas preferred the field-view, Desai the material base, and Elwin rejected the tribal-as-Hindu thesis. Still, Ghurye's perspective gave Indian sociology historical depth, and it is best used today together with fieldwork and data.Q1(b) · Rural and Agrarian Social Structure · 10 marks≈ 7 min
The Idea of the Indian Village and Village Studies
Give a critical analysis of Andre Beteille's study of Tanjore village.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
आन्द्रे बेतेइ के तंजौर गाँव के अध्ययन का समालोचनात्मक विश्लेषण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(b)
Approach: Summarise Béteille's Caste, Class and Power (1965) on Sripuram: its argument on cumulative to dispersed inequality, then give a critical assessment.
André Béteille's Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (1965) studied Sripuram in Tamil Nadu, using Weber's three dimensions of caste (status), class and power.
He found that in the past these were cumulative: Brahmins held ritual rank, land and power together. With land sales, education, new occupations and adult franchise, they became dispersed. Brahmins moved to towns, non-Brahmins bought land, and non-Brahmin parties and leaders took over the village panchayat. The relationship between caste, class and power thus changed from congruence to separation, though caste still influenced both.
The study was praised for its Weberian multi-dimensional method. Critics note that Sripuram, a Brahmin-dominated village, may not represent India; that Adi-Dravida labourers received less attention; and that Kathleen Gough found sharper class conflict in nearby Tanjore villages.
Still, it remains the best account of how democracy and markets separated caste from class and power.Q1(c) · Politics and Society in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Nation, Democracy and Citizenship in India
Media is the fourth pillar of democracy. Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
मीडिया लोकतन्त्र का चौथा स्तम्भ है। विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(c)
Approach: Discuss the media's role as the fourth pillar with Habermas's public sphere, Indian examples of its democratic role, and the threats to it (ownership, paid news, regulation).
The media is called the fourth pillar of democracy, after the legislature, executive and judiciary, because it informs citizens and holds power to account; Jürgen Habermas saw a free press as the core of the public sphere where citizens form opinion through rational debate.
In India, the press played a nationalist role from Tilak's Kesari to Gandhi's Young India; after independence it exposed scandals (Bofors, 2G), resisted the Emergency censorship of 1975–77, and gave voice to movements such as RTI and the anti-corruption campaign. Robin Jeffrey showed how the regional-language newspaper revolution drew rural and lower-caste readers into politics, and social media now amplifies citizen voices.
Threats exist: concentrated corporate ownership and dependence on advertising, which Herman and Chomsky called the 'manufacturing of consent'; paid news; polarised television; misinformation; and pressure on journalists, as India's low rank in press-freedom indices suggests.
The media remains a pillar only when it is independent, plural and accountable.Q1(d) · Social Classes in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Middle Classes in India
Write a note on the changing roles of middle-class women in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में मध्यवर्गीय महिलाओं की परिवर्तित हो रही भूमिकाओं पर एक टिप्पणी लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(d)
Approach: Write a note on changing roles: from homemaker to earner and professional, in family decisions, public life and consumption, while noting the double burden and limits.
Roles of middle-class women in India have changed significantly since independence, especially after 1991.
Earlier, the ideal middle-class woman was a homemaker, and paid work was acceptable mainly in teaching or nursing. Today, with higher education, middle-class women work in IT, banking, medicine, law, media, the civil services and entrepreneurship. They take part in family decisions on money, children's education and property; NFHS-5 (2019–21) found that 88.7% of currently married women participate in major household decisions. They are visible in civil society, politics and consumer markets.
Yet change is partial. Women carry a double burden of job and housework, and many leave work after marriage or childbirth.
Middle-class women's roles have thus widened from domestic to public, though gender equality at home lags behind. Sharing of care work by men and workplace support such as creches will decide how far this change goes.Q1(e) · Kinship, Family and Religion in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Religious Communities and Problems of Religious Minorities
Discuss the growth of religious sects in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में धार्मिक पन्थों की संवृद्धि की विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q1(e)
Approach: Define sect (Weber, Troeltsch), describe the growth of sects in India historically and today with examples, and explain the reasons for their growth.
A sect, in the typology of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch, is a smaller religious group that breaks away from a larger tradition, demands strong commitment, and often protests against established authority.
India has a long history of sects. Buddhism and Jainism arose against Vedic ritualism; Bhakti produced the Virashaivas of Basava, the Kabirpanthis, the Ravidasis and the Varkaris. In modern times, groups such as the Radhasoami Satsang (1861), the Swaminarayan movement, ISKCON (1966), the Brahma Kumaris and many guru-led organisations have grown, along with deras in Punjab such as Dera Sacha Sauda, which attract many Dalits, as Surinder Jodhka has shown.
They grow because they offer status and dignity to lower castes, community and support to urban migrants facing anomie, simplified spirituality, and welfare services.
Sects thus show religion adapting to social change, though some face scandals over leaders' conduct.
Question 2 (50 marks)
Q2(a) · Perspectives on the Study of Indian Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Marxist Sociology: A. R. Desai
Analyze A. R. Desai's views on India's path of development.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत के विकास के पथ पर ए० आर० देसाई के विचारों का विश्लेषण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(a)
Approach: Explain Desai's thesis that India followed a capitalist path of development after 1947 (from State and Society in India and India's Path of Development), its effects on classes, then evaluate it.
A.R. Desai analysed independent India's development from a Marxist perspective, mainly in State and Society in India: Essays in Dissent (1975) and India's Path of Development: A Marxist Approach (1984). His central claim was that despite the language of socialism, the Indian state chose a capitalist path of development.
He argued that the mixed economy, planning and the public sector built infrastructure and protected markets for big Indian capital, as envisaged in the Bombay Plan of 1944. In agriculture, land reforms abolished zamindari but left ceilings weak, so a class of rich peasants and capitalist farmers emerged, strengthened later by the Green Revolution, while sharecroppers and landless labourers remained poor.
For Desai the state was not neutral: it served the propertied classes, and its welfare measures were limited concessions. Growing inequality, unemployment, peasant and tribal unrest and repression of dissent, which he documented in his studies of democratic rights and peasant struggles, were the result.
Flow chart: Bourgeois-led independence → mixed economy serving big capital → partial land reform and Green Revolution → rich farmers and corporate growth → inequality and mass struggles.
Later events lend partial support: the liberalisation of 1991 openly embraced the market, and the 2020–21 farmers' protest showed the power of the landowning peasantry. Critics, however, say Desai underrated the real gains of democracy, reservations, welfare schemes and poverty decline, and reduced caste and region to class. Yogendra Singh and Rudolph and Rudolph saw a more plural state.
Desai's analysis remains a valuable critical lens on who gains from development, even if it must be balanced with the democratic and welfare side of the Indian state.Q2(b) · Impact of Colonial Rule on Indian Society · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Protests, Movements and Social Reforms in the Colonial Period
Examine sociological dynamics of Champaran Peasant Movement in colonial India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
औपनिवेशिक भारत में चम्पारण किसान आन्दोलन की समाजशास्त्रीय गत्यात्मकता का परीक्षण कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(b)
Approach: Describe the Champaran movement of 1917 and examine its sociological dynamics: agrarian structure (planters, tinkathia), class composition of peasants, leadership and mobilisation, the method of satyagraha, outcomes and interpretations.
The Champaran movement of 1917 in north Bihar was Gandhi's first satyagraha in India. Peasants protested against European indigo planters who forced them under the tinkathia system to grow indigo on three kathas of every bigha (3/20 of their land) and imposed illegal dues.
The agrarian structure was the root. Planters held leases from zamindars such as the Bettiah Raj and acted as landlords. When synthetic dyes made indigo unprofitable after 1900, they demanded higher rents and compensation (sharahbeshi and tawan) to release peasants from indigo, intensifying exploitation.
The movement's social base was mixed. Studies by Jacques Pouchepadass and Stephen Henningham show that rich and middle peasants of castes such as Bhumihars, Rajputs and Kurmis led local resistance, with figures such as Raj Kumar Shukla inviting Gandhi, while poorer tenants joined. Local lawyers such as Rajendra Prasad and Braj Kishore Prasad recorded thousands of peasant statements.
Gandhi's method mattered. He defied an order to leave the district, used non-violent civil disobedience and careful documentation, and won a place on an official enquiry committee. The Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918 abolished tinkathia and refunded part of the illegal dues.
Flow chart: Indigo crisis → higher planter exactions → local peasant leaders → Gandhi's satyagraha and evidence-gathering → enquiry committee → Agrarian Act 1918 → planters leave; Gandhi emerges as a mass leader.
Sociologically, Champaran linked peasant grievance with nationalism and created a new rural leadership. Marxist scholars note that it targeted foreign planters rather than Indian zamindars, keeping the agrarian order intact, a pattern Desai saw in Gandhian mobilisation as a whole.Q2(c) · Rural and Agrarian Transformation in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Green Revolution and Changing Modes of Production
How do the recommendations of Swaminathan Commission (2004–2006) ensure food and nutrition security for the Indian masses?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
स्वामीनाथन आयोग (2004–2006) की सिफारिशें किस प्रकार भारतीय जनता के लिए भोजन एवं पोषण की सुरक्षा को सुनिश्चित करती हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q2(c)
Approach: Explain the Commission and how its recommendations address food and nutrition security (production, access, absorption), with a note on what was implemented.
The National Commission on Farmers, chaired by M.S. Swaminathan, submitted five reports between 2004 and 2006; it treated farmers' welfare and food and nutrition security as linked.
Production (availability): it recommended land reform and distribution of ceiling-surplus land, assured irrigation, credit at low interest, crop insurance, and a minimum support price at least 50% above the weighted average cost of production, so that farmers keep producing food. Access: it proposed a universal public distribution system and food-for-work and community grain banks, so that the poor can buy or receive food.
Absorption (nutrition): it stressed clean drinking water, sanitation, primary health care and nutrition programmes for women and children, recognising that food becomes nutrition only in a healthy body. It also recommended recognising women farmers.
Many ideas entered the National Policy for Farmers (2007) and the National Food Security Act 2013, though the C2-plus-50% MSP demand remains a farmers' movement issue.
Question 3 (50 marks)
Q3(a) · Caste System · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Features of the Caste System and Caste Change
What do you understand by discrete castes and muddled hierarchies? Substantiate your answer with suitable illustrations.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विविक्त जातियों और संभ्रमित सोपानों से आप क्या समझते हैं? अपने उत्तर को उपयुक्त उदाहरणों के द्वारा पुष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(a)
Approach: Explain Dipankar Gupta's concepts (from ‘Continuous Hierarchies and Discrete Castes’ 1984 and Interrogating Caste 2000): castes as discrete groups with their own origin myths and multiple, contested hierarchies; illustrate; contrast with Dumont; evaluate.
The ideas of discrete castes and multiple or muddled hierarchies come from Dipankar Gupta, first in his essay ‘Continuous Hierarchies and Discrete Castes’ (1984) and later in Interrogating Caste (2000). They challenge Louis Dumont's view of caste as a single, agreed hierarchy based on purity.
Discrete castes means that each caste is a distinct, bounded group with its own identity, origin myth and sense of honour. Castes are not points on one continuous ladder but separate units. Many castes claim a glorious origin: Jats and Yadavs claim Kshatriya descent, the Nadars of Tamil Nadu claimed to be ancient rulers, and several Dalit groups trace descent from kings or from the original inhabitants of the land.
Muddled hierarchies follow from this. Since each caste places itself high, there is no single agreed order but many competing hierarchies. A caste's rank differs depending on who is asked, and in the middle range ranks are ambiguous and disputed. Gupta argues that what holds is not consensus on hierarchy but power: dominant castes enforce their version.
Flow chart: Dumont: one hierarchy of purity, accepted by all. Gupta: discrete castes → each with own origin myth and honour → multiple competing hierarchies → order maintained by power, not consensus.
Present-day illustrations are many. Politics shows castes acting as separate blocs with their own pride, such as the Marathas, Jats and Patidars demanding OBC status while also claiming high status. Dalit movements celebrate their own icons and histories instead of seeking a place in the Brahmanical order. Earlier, the 1901 census saw many castes petitioning for higher rank, showing how contested the order was.
Critics note that Gupta may understate how strongly purity norms still operate, as untouchability shows. Still, his concepts explain caste as identity and competition better than the single-ladder model.Q3(b) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Crisis of Development: Displacement, Environment and Sustainability
Discuss development-induced displacement in the context of tribal uprising in India. Substantiate your answer with any one detailed illustration from India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में जनजातीय विद्रोह के संदर्भ में, विकास-प्रेरित विस्थापन पर चर्चा कीजिए। भारत से सम्बन्धित किसी एक विस्तृत उदाहरण के द्वारा अपने उत्तर को पुष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(b)
Approach: Discuss development-induced displacement as a cause of tribal uprisings (structural reasons, theory), then give one detailed illustration (Narmada, Niyamgiri, or Jharkhand/Koel Karo), and conclude with lessons.
Development-induced displacement has fallen disproportionately on tribals: Walter Fernandes estimated that about 40% of the roughly 6 crore people displaced or affected between 1947 and 2004 were tribals, though they are about 8.6% of the population. Because tribal life is tied to land, forest and community, displacement destroys not only livelihood but identity, which explains why it has often produced uprisings.
Why displacement leads to uprisings: tribal regions hold most of India's minerals, forests and dam sites; land was taken under the Land Acquisition Act 1894 without recognising customary and community rights; compensation went only to titleholders; rehabilitation was poor; and outsiders (dikus) gained jobs. Michael Cernea's risks of landlessness, joblessness and social disarticulation, and relative deprivation (Gurr), explain the resulting anger, while the Maoist insurgency drew on such grievances in central India.
Detailed illustration: Niyamgiri (Odisha). The Dongria Kondh, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group, live on the Niyamgiri hills, which they regard as the abode of their god Niyam Raja. In the 2000s, a bauxite mining project linked to Vedanta's alumina refinery at Lanjigarh threatened their forests and streams. The Dongria, supported by activists and international campaigns, mobilised through protests, rallies and legal action. In April 2013 the Supreme Court held that gram sabhas must decide under the Forest Rights Act 2006 whether the mining affected their religious and community rights; all twelve chosen gram sabhas rejected the project, and the Ministry of Environment rejected forest clearance in 2014.
Niyamgiri shows a non-violent, rights-based uprising that combined identity, ecology and law; elsewhere, as at Kalinganagar (2006), where police firing killed tribal protesters, displacement led to violence.
The lesson is that tribal consent through PESA 1996 and the Forest Rights Act, fair benefit-sharing and respect for cultural rights can turn conflict into partnership.Q3(c) · Kinship, Family and Religion in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Family, Marriage and Household in India
Illustrate the importance of 'Kanyadan' and 'Kulabadhu' in changing institutions of marriage and family.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
विवाह एवं परिवार की परिवर्तित हो रही संस्थाओं में 'कन्यादान' एवं 'कुलवधू' के महत्त्व की उदाहरण सहित विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q3(c)
Approach: Explain kanyadan (gift of a virgin, wife-givers' inferiority, one-way gifts) and kulabadhu (bride of the lineage, honour and control), and how both are changing with education, law and choice.
Kanyadan, the ‘gift of a virgin’, is the central rite of Hindu marriage in North India. The father gives his daughter as a religious gift without expecting a return, gaining merit. As Thomas Trautmann and others note, it makes wife-givers ritually inferior to wife-takers and makes gifts flow one way, which has fed dowry.
The kulabadhu (kulavadhu) is the bride of the lineage, who becomes a member of her husband's kul and carries its honour. The ideal demands chastity, modesty, obedience and service to in-laws, and links family honour to controlling women's sexuality and mobility.
Both ideas are changing. Educated, earning women question being ‘given away’, some couples drop kanyadan, and daughters now inherit equally under the 2005 amendment. Yet dowry persists despite the 1961 Act, and the kulabadhu ideal still shapes expectations of brides.
Their slow erosion marks the shift of marriage from a gift between families towards a partnership of individuals.
Question 4 (50 marks)
Q4(a) · Social Classes in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Middle Classes in India
How has the New Economic Policy (1991) affected the lifestyle and life-chances of new middle class in India?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नव आर्थिक नीति (1991) ने किस प्रकार भारत में नवीन मध्यवर्ग की जीवन-शैली एवं जीवन-अवसरों को प्रभावित किया है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(a)
Approach: Using Weber's lifestyle and life chances, explain how the NEP 1991 changed the new middle class: jobs and incomes (IT, services), consumption and lifestyle, education and mobility, values; then its downsides (insecurity, inequality, debt, stress), and conclude.
Max Weber linked class with life chances, the opportunities a person has in the market, and status groups with lifestyle. The New Economic Policy of 1991, with liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, transformed both for India's new middle class.
Life chances improved for many. The IT and IT-enabled services boom in cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune, private banking, telecom and multinational firms created well-paid jobs for English-educated graduates. Private engineering and management colleges multiplied, and global mobility for study and work increased. Income growth and easier credit allowed home ownership and savings in markets.
Lifestyle changed as well. Leela Fernandes, in India's New Middle Class (2006), and Pavan Varma, in The Great Indian Middle Class (1998), describe a shift from the Nehruvian middle class's values of thrift and public service towards consumption, brands, malls, cars and foreign holidays. Nuclear families, later marriage, dual-income couples and a culture of individual achievement became common.
Flow chart: NEP 1991 → IT, services, private sector jobs → higher incomes and credit → consumer lifestyle, nuclear families, global mobility → but job insecurity, debt, stress and exclusion of the poor.
There were costs. Private-sector jobs brought insecurity, long hours and stress, and the decline of public-sector employment narrowed secure routes for the lower middle class. Life chances remained unequal: access to English education and urban networks favoured upper castes, as Satish Deshpande notes, and rising inequality separated the middle class from the poor.
The NEP thus expanded and enriched the new middle class and changed its lifestyle, but made its life chances more market-dependent and unequal.Q4(b) · Kinship, Family and Religion in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Religious Communities and Problems of Religious Minorities
Write a critical narrative on the concerns of religious minorities in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में धार्मिक अल्पसंख्यकों की चिन्ताओं पर एक समालोचनात्मक लेख लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(b)
Approach: Write a critical narrative: identify minorities and constitutional safeguards, present their concerns (security, socio-economic, identity and law, representation, conversion and citizenship debates), present the counter-arguments (rights, schemes, debates on appeasement), and conclude.
India's religious minorities, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis, together made up about 20% of the population in Census 2011. The Constitution protects them through Articles 25–30, the right to freedom of religion and to run educational institutions. Yet minorities have voiced several concerns, which must be examined critically.
The first concern is security. Communal riots, targeted violence and, more recently, mob lynchings over cattle have created fear; the Supreme Court in Tehseen Poonawalla v. Union of India (2018) issued guidelines against lynching. The second is socio-economic exclusion: the Sachar Committee (2006) found Muslims lagging in education, formal jobs, credit and government employment, and the Ranganath Misra Commission (2007) recommended reservations for minorities.
The third concerns identity and law. Debates on a uniform civil code, anti-conversion laws in several states, and controversies over places of worship are seen by many minorities as threats to religious freedom, while others view them as reform. The fourth is representation: Muslims are under-represented in Parliament, state legislatures, the police and the judiciary relative to their population share. Christians and Sikhs also raise concerns, such as attacks on churches and the memory of 1984.
Flow chart: Constitutional safeguards → concerns: security, socio-economic exclusion, identity and law, representation → counter-view: rights, schemes, reform of personal law → need for trust, inclusion and rule of law.
A critical narrative must also note the other side. Minorities enjoy strong constitutional rights, run many educational institutions, and benefit from schemes such as the Prime Minister's 15-Point Programme and scholarships. Some argue that minority politics has encouraged vote-bank appeasement and slowed reforms such as the end of instant triple talaq. Internal inequalities of caste and gender within minorities are also often ignored.
The concerns of minorities are thus real in security, socio-economic status and representation; addressing them through the rule of law, inclusive development and dialogue strengthens Indian secularism and national integration.Q4(c) · Kinship, Family and Religion in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Gender and Sexuality: Transgender and LGBTQ Rights
Discuss the issues relating to the entitlement of transgender in Indian society.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारतीय समाज में हिजड़ा/किन्नर (ट्रांसजेन्डर) की हकदारी से सम्बन्धित मुद्दों की विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q4(c)
Approach: Discuss transgender entitlements: identity, legal recognition (NALSA 2014, Act 2019 and its 2026 amendment), and issues in education, work, health, housing, family, violence and representation, with data.
Transgender persons are those whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth, including India's hijra and kinnar communities. Census 2011 counted about 4.88 lakh persons under ‘others’, likely an undercount.
Their entitlements have expanded through law. In NALSA v. Union of India (2014) the Supreme Court recognised a ‘third gender’ and the right to self-identify gender, and directed welfare measures. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 banned discrimination in education, employment, health and housing. In 2025, in Jane Kaushik's case, the Court found the state had failed to enforce the Act.
Issues remain: family rejection, school dropout, exclusion from formal jobs that pushes many into begging or sex work, lack of gender-affirming health care, and violence. The 2026 amendment, which replaced self-identification with certification on a medical board's recommendation, has been criticised as contrary to NALSA.
Real entitlement needs social acceptance, inclusive education and implementation of welfare boards.
Question 5 (50 marks)
Q5(a) · Visions of Social Change in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Constitution, Law and Social Change
Elaborate the concept of constitutional morality as given by B. R. Ambedkar.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
बी० आर० अम्बेडकर द्वारा प्रस्तुत संवैधानिक नैतिकता की संकल्पना को सविस्तार प्रतिपादित कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(a)
Approach: Elaborate Ambedkar's concept: its source (Grote), his speech of 4 November 1948, its meaning, and its later use by the Supreme Court.
Ambedkar borrowed the term constitutional morality from the historian George Grote, who meant by it a paramount reverence for the forms of the constitution combined with freedom of criticism and self-restraint by those in power.
In the Constituent Assembly on 4 November 1948, Ambedkar argued that constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment and has to be cultivated, warning that democracy in India was only a top-dressing on a soil that was essentially undemocratic.
For Ambedkar, constitutional morality meant respect for the rule of law and institutions, respect for dissent, and above all the values of liberty, equality and fraternity against the social morality of caste. In his speech of 25 November 1949 he added that political democracy cannot last unless it rests on social democracy.
The Supreme Court used it in Navtej Singh Johar (2018) and Sabarimala (2018) to place constitutional values above popular or religious morality; critics fear judicial subjectivity. Sociologically, it is a call to make the Constitution a lived normative order, not a text.Q5(b) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Violence against Women and Caste Conflicts
Construct a sociological narrative on the increasing trend of child abuse in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में बाल उत्पीड़न की बढ़ती हुई प्रवृत्ति पर समाजशास्त्रीय विवेचन की रचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(b)
Approach: Construct a sociological narrative: forms and data, causes (family power, digital media, migration and urbanisation, institutional neglect, culture of silence), the legal response, and the sociological meaning (childhood, power).
Child abuse includes physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. A Ministry of Women and Child Development study (2007) found that more than half of the children surveyed reported some form of sexual abuse, and cases under the POCSO Act 2012 now number in tens of thousands each year (NCRB).
Narrative: the rising trend partly reflects better reporting after POCSO and awareness campaigns, but also real changes. Most abusers are known to the child, relatives, neighbours, teachers or caregivers, so the family and institutions, seen as safe, are sites of power over children, as feminist and childhood sociologists (Philippe Ariès on the social construction of childhood) help us see. Migration and urbanisation leave children unsupervised in slums and worksites; shelter homes have been scenes of abuse, as in Muzaffarpur (2018); and the internet has brought online grooming and child sexual abuse material. A culture of silence, family honour and the absence of sex education prevent disclosure. Corporal punishment and child labour reflect the low status of children.
The State responded with POCSO (amended 2019), the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, Childline (1098) and child-friendly courts.
Protecting children requires recognising them as rights-bearing persons rather than family property.Q5(c) · Social Movements in Modern India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Peasant and Farmers' Movements
Explain the dynamics of neo-farmers' movement in contemporary India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समकालीन भारत में नव्य किसान आन्दोलन की गत्यात्मकता को समझाइए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(c)
Approach: Explain the dynamics of the new farmers' movements: context, leaders, issues, ideology, social base, methods, and the scholarly debate on their class character.
The neo-farmers' (new farmers') movements arose in the late 1970s and 1980s among commercialised farmers after the Green Revolution: the Shetkari Sanghatana of Sharad Joshi in Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Kisan Union of Mahendra Singh Tikait in western Uttar Pradesh, and the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha of M.D. Nanjundaswamy.
Dynamics: their issues were remunerative prices, cheaper inputs and electricity, and loan waivers rather than land; Joshi's ideology of 'Bharat versus India' framed the rural sector as exploited by urban India through unfavourable terms of trade. They were non-party, mobilised through mass rallies, road blockades and refusal to pay dues, and drew on caste and clan networks (Jat khaps for the BKU). Later, the KRRS turned against multinational seeds and WTO policies.
Scholars debate their class character: D.N. Dhanagare and others saw rich-peasant interests, while Gail Omvedt saw a broad peasant movement against capitalist exploitation.
Their legacy lives on in the 2020–21 protest and the MSP demand.Q5(d) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Illiteracy and Disparities in Education
Assess the role of the State in promoting education of girl child.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
बालिका की शिक्षा के उन्नयन में राज्य की भूमिका का आकलन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(d)
Approach: Assess the State's role: constitutional basis, key schemes and their results (with data), then the limits and social barriers, and a judgement.
The State promotes girls' education under Articles 15(3), 21A and 46, viewing it as central to gender equality and development, as Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze stress.
Measures and results: Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (2004) give residential schooling to girls from disadvantaged groups; mid-day meals (PM POSHAN) raised girls' attendance; Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (2015) links education to the sex ratio; Sukanya Samriddhi (2015) encourages savings for daughters; state schemes such as Bihar's bicycle scheme for schoolgirls (2006) increased secondary enrolment, as studies by Karthik Muralidharan and Nishith Prakash showed; separate toilets under Swachh Vidyalaya (2014) reduced dropout; and NEP 2020 created a Gender Inclusion Fund. Female literacy rose from 8.9% in 1951 to 65.5% in 2011, and female GER in higher education (31.2%, AISHE 2023–24) now exceeds the male rate.
Limits: early marriage (23.3% of women aged 20–24 married before 18, NFHS-5), domestic work burdens, safety concerns, and gaps for Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim girls persist.
The State's role has been significant, but social norms must change for girls to convert schooling into autonomy.Q5(e) · Social Movements in Modern India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Women's Movement
Elaborate the 'Me Too' Movement and its impact in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
'मैं भी (मी टू)' आन्दोलन एवं भारत में उसके प्रभाव को सविस्तार स्पष्ट कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q5(e)
Approach: Elaborate the movement (origin, Indian wave, cases) and its impact (institutional, legal, cultural) with critiques.
#MeToo, a phrase first used by the American activist Tarana Burke in 2006, became a global online movement in October 2017 when women shared experiences of sexual harassment. In India, a 2017 list of academics by Raya Sarkar was followed in October 2018 by a wave of accusations in media, film and politics.
Impact: a Union minister, M.J. Akbar, resigned in October 2018, and in 2021 a Delhi court acquitted journalist Priya Ramani of his defamation charge, recognising a woman's right to speak even after decades. Media houses and firms set up or revived Internal Committees under the POSH Act 2013, and the Hema Committee report (released in 2024) exposed harassment in the Malayalam film industry. Culturally, it broke the silence and shame around harassment, shifting stigma from victim to perpetrator.
Critiques: it reached mainly urban, English-speaking, upper-caste women; due process concerns arose; and informal workers, whom POSH covers through Local Committees, remained largely outside it.
Question 6 (50 marks)
Q6(a) · Industrialisation and Urbanisation in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Modern Industry and the Growth of Urban Settlements
How do you relate the growth of development of metropolis and its impact on the mental and social life of people in India?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में महानगरों के विकास की संवृद्धि और भारत के लोगों के मानसिक एवं सामाजिक जीवन पर इसके प्रभाव को आप किस प्रकार सम्बद्ध करते हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(a)
Approach: Relate metropolitan growth to mental and social life: describe metropolitan growth with data, then use Simmel and Wirth for mental life and Indian evidence on stress, loneliness, family, gender, community and segregation; balance with positive effects and conclude.
India's metropolises have grown fast: Census 2011 counted 53 urban agglomerations with a million or more people, against 35 in 2001, with Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata among the world's largest urban regions.
Mental life: Georg Simmel ('The Metropolis and Mental Life', 1903) argued that the constant stimulation of the big city produces an intellectual, calculating and blasé attitude as a protective shield, and a reserve towards strangers. In Indian metros, long commutes, crowding, noise and competition produce stress; the National Mental Health Survey (2015–16) found higher mental morbidity in urban metros than in rural areas. Loneliness among the elderly whose children have migrated, and student and job stress in coaching hubs such as Kota, are new urban issues.
Social life: Wirth predicted secondary, segmental relations; nuclear families, dual-earner couples and apartment living in Indian metros fit this, and neighbourhood ties weaken. Gated communities and slums create spatial segregation, which Leela Fernandes links to the new middle class. Women gain education and jobs but face harassment in public spaces.
Positive side: the metropolis also frees individuals from caste and village control, allows inter-caste marriage and new identities, and nurtures civil society, movements and cultural creativity. M.S.A. Rao and Sylvia Vatuk show that kinship and caste networks adapt rather than disappear, softening anomie.
Metropolitan growth thus reshapes both mind and society: it brings freedom and opportunity along with stress and isolation, so public mental-health services, community spaces, public transport and safe cities must accompany it.Q6(b) · Rural and Agrarian Transformation in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Green Revolution and Changing Modes of Production
Has 'Green Revolution' led to the formation of new power elite in rural India? Elaborate your answer.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या 'हरित क्रान्ति' ने ग्रामीण भारत में नए शक्ति संभ्रांत वर्ग के विरचन को उत्पन्न किया है? अपने उत्तर की सविस्तार व्याख्या कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(b)
Approach: Elaborate whether a new power elite emerged: define power elite (Mills), show the rise of rich peasant castes and their economic, political and social power with studies, add counter-points (Dalit assertion, limits), and conclude.
C. Wright Mills used power elite for the small group whose positions let them dominate key institutions. In rural India, the Green Revolution of the late 1960s created such a group: a class of rich, commercial farmers drawn mainly from the middle peasant castes.
Economic base: HYV technology, tubewells, cheap credit and minimum support prices made land profitable; Frankel (1971) found that larger farmers captured most gains, while tenants were evicted. Jats in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, Kammas and Reddys in coastal Andhra, Patidars in Gujarat and Marathas in Maharashtra became what the Rudolphs called 'bullock capitalists', and Utsa Patnaik traced the rise of capitalist farmers using hired labour.
Political power: these groups converted wealth into power through cooperatives, panchayats and state politics; Charan Singh's politics and the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (1967) gave them voice, and Srinivas's concept of the dominant caste (numerical strength, land, political power) captures their position. The farmers' movements of the 1980s (Sharad Joshi's Shetkari Sanghatana, Mahendra Singh Tikait's BKU) and the 2020–21 protests show their organised strength.
Social effects: they patronise temples, colleges and caste associations, and their dominance sometimes produces violence against Dalit labourers, as at Kilvenmani (1968).
Counter-points: the elite is not fully new, since many were already dominant landholders; and it faces challenges from fragmented holdings, agrarian distress, quota demands by Jats, Patidars and Marathas (a sign of declining farm incomes), and Dalit political assertion.
The Green Revolution therefore did create a new rural power elite of rich peasant castes, but its dominance is now contested by agrarian crisis and democratic mobilisation from below.Q6(c) · Industrialisation and Urbanisation in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Slums and Urban Deprivation
Write a note on Basic Services to Urban Poor (BSUP) and Integrated Housing and Slum Development (IHSD) programmes provided for the urban poor.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
नगरीय निर्धनों के लिए मुहैया कराए गए 'नगरीय निर्धनों के लिए आधारिक सेवाएँ (बी० एस० यू० पी०)' और 'एकीकृत आवासन और गंदीबस्ती सुधार (आइ० एच० एस० डी०)' कार्यक्रमों पर एक टिप्पणी लिखिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q6(c)
Approach: Write a note on both programmes: their origin under JNNURM, objectives, coverage and components, their outcomes and limits, and what replaced them.
Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) and the Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) were launched in December 2005 as the urban-poor components of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).
BSUP covered the 65 large mission cities and IHSDP the other towns. Both aimed at integrated development of slums: housing for slum dwellers, preferably in situ, with security of tenure at affordable prices; water supply, sanitation, drainage and street lighting; and convergence with health, education and social security. Reforms such as earmarking land and funds for the urban poor were linked to central assistance.
Outcomes were mixed: many houses were built, but studies found poor location, low occupancy of relocated flats, beneficiary contributions too high for the poorest, and resettlement far from work.
They were followed by Rajiv Awas Yojana (2011) and then PMAY-Urban (2015), which carried forward in-situ slum redevelopment.
Question 7 (50 marks)
Q7(a) · Politics and Society in India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Nation, Democracy and Citizenship in India
Has caste system hindered democracy and adult franchise in India? Discuss.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या भारत में जाति व्यवस्था ने लोकतन्त्र एवं वयस्क मताधिकार में बाधाएँ डाली हैं? विवेचना कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(a)
Approach: Discuss both sides: how caste hindered democracy (vote banks, dominance, violence, proxy) and how democracy transformed caste and empowered lower castes (Kothari, Rudolphs, Yadav), with examples; give a balanced verdict.
Many feared that caste, a hierarchy based on birth, would make adult franchise (adopted in 1950) unworkable; Ambedkar warned of a 'life of contradictions' between political equality and social inequality.
How caste hindered democracy: early elections often saw dominant castes control the votes of dependent labourers, and Srinivas described how dominant castes such as Okkaligas and Lingayats in Mysore commanded 'vote banks'. Booth capturing and intimidation of Dalit voters occurred in parts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh; parties distribute tickets by caste arithmetic, which can sideline merit and issues; caste mobilisation sometimes produces violence, as in caste massacres in Bihar in the 1990s; and caste panchayats and proxy leaders limit the agency of women and Dalit representatives.
How democracy changed caste: Rajni Kothari (Caste in Indian Politics, 1970) argued that politics politicised caste, turning ritual hierarchy into competing interest groups and secularising it; the Rudolphs (The Modernity of Tradition, 1967) showed caste associations acting as democratic vehicles. Universal franchise allowed lower castes to convert numbers into power: the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the BSP under Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, and OBC-led parties after Mandal (1990), what Yogendra Yadav called the 'second democratic upsurge' and Jaffrelot a 'silent revolution'. Reservation of seats and panchayat quotas created Dalit and Adivasi leaders.
Verdict: caste has distorted democracy by encouraging identity-based mobilisation and patronage, but democracy has also eroded hierarchy and empowered the lower castes. Caste and democracy have transformed each other: caste now functions less as a ritual order and more as a political community.
Deepening democracy therefore requires reducing the social inequality behind caste politics, through education, land and dignity, rather than wishing caste away.Q7(b) · Social Movements in Modern India · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Backward Classes and Dalit Movements
Elaborate various forms of Dalit assertions in contemporary India. What are its implications on the Indian political system?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
समकालीन भारत में दलित आग्रहिताओं के विभिन्न स्वरूपों को सविस्तार स्पष्ट कीजिए। भारतीय राजनीतिक व्यवस्था पर इसके क्या निहितार्थ हैं?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(b)
Approach: Two parts: elaborate the forms of contemporary Dalit assertion (electoral, legal, protest, cultural and religious, economic, educational, digital) with examples, then their implications for the political system (representation, party strategies, policy, polarisation and backlash); conclude.
Dalit assertion means the collective claim by Dalits to dignity, rights and power, rejecting the subordination assigned by caste. In contemporary India it takes many forms.
Forms: (i) Electoral: the BSP's rise, Dalit voting blocs and leaders across parties. (ii) Protest: the Una agitation in Gujarat (2016) after the flogging of Dalit youths, led by Jignesh Mevani, and the nationwide Bharat Bandh of 2 April 2018 against the dilution of the Atrocities Act. (iii) Cultural and religious: mass celebrations of Ambedkar Jayanti, the Bhima Koregaon commemoration (whose 2018 bicentenary saw clashes), Buddhist conversion, Dalit literature, music and cinema. (iv) Youth and local organisations: the Bhim Army (2015) in western Uttar Pradesh runs schools and resists dominant-caste violence. (v) Educational: Ambedkar Students' Associations on campuses after Rohith Vemula's death (2016). (vi) Economic: DICCI (2005) promotes Dalit entrepreneurs. (vii) Digital: social media publicise atrocities and build networks.
Implications for the political system: parties now compete for Dalit votes, appointing Dalit leaders and celebrating Ambedkar; Parliament restored the Atrocities Act within months in 2018, showing responsiveness; sub-caste assertion has led to sub-classification debates and the 2024 judgment; and new Dalit parties and independents fragment the vote. Assertion also provokes backlash from dominant castes, as Teltumbde argues, raising conflict and polarisation.
Overall, Dalit assertion has made the political system more inclusive and responsive, confirming Kothari's view that democracy and caste transform each other, while testing the State's ability to protect those who assert.Q7(c) · Politics and Society in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Regionalism, Decentralisation and Secularisation
With increase in education and economic development is Indian society becoming more secular?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
क्या शिक्षा में वृद्धि और आर्थिक विकास के द्वारा भारतीय समाज और अधिक धर्मनिरपेक्ष हो रहा है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q7(c)
Approach: Answer with evidence on both sides: secularising effects of education and development (rationality, decline of purity rules) and evidence of persistent or rising religiosity among the educated; conclude.
Modernisation theory, following Weber's 'disenchantment', expected education and economic development to make society more secular.
Secularising trends: M.N. Srinivas noted the decline of purity–pollution rules in cities, travel and commensality; educated Indians accept science, inter-caste marriage is slowly rising, and religion has lost control over law, education and occupation, the institutional differentiation that defines secularisation.
Counter-trends: religiosity has not declined among the educated middle class: the Pew survey (2021) found 97% of Indians believing in God, new gurus and televised religion attract professionals, temple economies and pilgrimages boom with prosperity, and Meera Nanda (The God Market, 2009) links this to globalisation. Religion has also become more important in politics, often led by educated activists.
Indian society is thus becoming secular in institutions but not in belief; religion is changing form rather than disappearing.
Question 8 (50 marks)
Q8(a) · Population Dynamics · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Components of Population Growth and Population Policy
What are the issues relating to male migration and its impact on birthrate? Does it necessarily result in skewed sex ratio?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पुरुषों के प्रवसन से सम्बद्ध कौन-कौन से मुद्दे हैं और इनका जन्मदर पर क्या प्रभाव होता है? क्या आवश्यक रूप से इसका परिणाम विषम लैंगिक अनुपात होता है?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(a)
Approach: Two parts: issues of male migration and its effect on birth rate (spousal separation, left-behind wives, changing norms), then whether it necessarily skews the sex ratio, distinguishing the population sex ratio of origin and destination areas from the sex ratio at birth; conclude.
Male migration, in which men move alone for work while wives, children and parents stay behind, is common from Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, the Uttarakhand hills and, internationally, Kerala to the Gulf. PLFS 2020–21 shows that men migrate mainly for employment, while women migrate mainly for marriage.
Issues: left-behind wives manage farms and households, which can increase their autonomy but also their workload and dependence on in-laws, as studies of Kerala's 'Gulf wives' show; children grow up without fathers; the elderly lack care; and migrants face poor living conditions and health risks, including the spread of HIV along migration routes, which led to targeted prevention programmes.
Impact on birth rate: long spousal separation reduces the frequency of conception and lengthens birth intervals, so male out-migration tends to lower fertility in origin areas; remittances also raise women's education and aspirations for smaller families. However, in some areas migrants' families continue high fertility because of son preference and low female autonomy, so the effect is not uniform.
Does it skew the sex ratio? It skews the population sex ratio of places: origin districts such as Ratnagiri in Maharashtra or Almora in Uttarakhand show more women than men, while destinations show very few women, for example Daman and Diu (618) and Delhi (868) in Census 2011. But it does not by itself skew the sex ratio at birth, which depends on son preference and sex-selective abortion, as in Haryana and Punjab.
Male migration therefore changes the age–sex composition of regions and lowers fertility, but a skewed sex ratio at birth is a product of gender discrimination, not of migration as such.Q8(b) · Challenges of Social Transformation · 20 marks≈ 14 min
Crisis of Development: Displacement, Environment and Sustainability
Western patriarchy which surrenders feminine principles is the new development project in India. Do you agree with this view? Why?
हिंदी में प्रश्न
पश्चिमी पितृतन्त्र, जो नारीवादी सिद्धान्तों को त्याग देता है, भारत में एक नई विकास परियोजना है। क्या आप इस विचार से सहमत हैं? क्यों?
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(b)
Approach: Give a reasoned partial agreement: explain Vandana Shiva's thesis of maldevelopment as a Western patriarchal project that destroys the feminine principle, apply it to Indian development, then present critiques (Agarwal, Nanda, Guha) and conclude.
The statement draws on Vandana Shiva's Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Survival in India (1988), which argues that modern development is maldevelopment: a Western, patriarchal project rooted in reductionist science that treats nature as a resource to be exploited and abandons the feminine principle (prakriti, shakti), the creative, life-sustaining force embodied in nature and women's work.
Arguments in support: (i) the Green Revolution replaced women's knowledge of diverse seeds and organic farming with monocultures, chemicals and machines controlled by men and corporations; (ii) commercial forestry and plantations replaced diverse forests that women used for fuel, fodder and food, increasing their burden, as Chipko women argued; (iii) big dams and mines displaced communities and destroyed commons on which women depend; (iv) development measured by GDP ignores unpaid care and subsistence work, which feminist economists such as Marilyn Waring (If Women Counted, 1988) highlighted; (v) mechanisation and market-led growth have pushed women out of paid work, contributing to a low female labour force participation rate (40.0% in PLFS 2025).
Critiques: (i) Bina Agarwal's 'feminist environmentalism' (1992) argues that women's relation to nature arises from the gendered division of labour and property, not from an essential feminine nature; (ii) Meera Nanda (Prophets Facing Backward, 2003) criticised Shiva for romanticising tradition and ignoring caste and patriarchy within Indian society; (iii) Ramachandra Guha saw Chipko mainly as a peasant movement; (iv) development has also brought women education, health and legal rights, and Indian patriarchy is not a Western import.
Assessment: I agree partly: the dominant development model has been extractive and gender-blind, and has marginalised women's knowledge and work; but describing it simply as 'Western patriarchy' ignores indigenous patriarchy and the emancipatory gains of modernity.
What is needed is a gender-just and ecologically sustainable development that values care, commons and women's voice, combining Shiva's ecological critique with Agarwal's attention to rights and resources.Q8(c) · Visions of Social Change in India · 10 marks≈ 7 min
Constitution, Law and Social Change
Assess the impact of ban on 'Triple Talak' on marriage and divorce among the Muslim community in India.
हिंदी में प्रश्न
भारत में मुस्लिम समुदाय में, विवाह एवं विवाह-विच्छेद पर 'तीन तलाक' पर प्रतिबन्ध के प्रभाव का आकलन कीजिए।
Model answer
Paper and question: Paper II, Q8(c)
Approach: Assess impact: state the law (Shayara Bano 2017 and the 2019 Act), then its effects on marriage, divorce and women's security, with criticism and a balanced judgement.
In Shayara Bano v. Union of India (August 2017) the Supreme Court held instant triple talaq (talaq-e-biddat) unconstitutional; the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act 2019 made its pronouncement void and a cognisable offence punishable with up to three years' imprisonment, with subsistence allowance and custody for the wife.
Impact on marriage and divorce: it removed the husband's power to end a marriage in one sitting and strengthened the security of the wife within marriage; divorce now follows procedures with reconciliation periods, such as talaq-e-ahsan, or khula. Muslim women's groups such as the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan saw it as a victory of rights over patriarchal personal law.
Criticism: scholars such as Flavia Agnes argued that criminalising a civil wrong may push husbands to desert wives rather than divorce them, and that a jailed husband cannot pay maintenance; others saw selective targeting of one community.
The ban is therefore an important legal step towards gender justice, but its real impact depends on women's economic independence and access to courts.