Change and Development in Rural Society

This is Chapter 4 of Social Change and Development in India. Chapter 3 ended with village coteries controlling Gram Sabhas; this chapter explains where that power comes from — the agrarian structure. It runs 15 pages (42–56) with six numbered sections (4.1 agrarian structure; 4.2 land reforms; 4.3 the Green Revolution; 4.4 transformations after Independence; 4.5 circulation of labour; 4.6 globalisation and rural society), three boxes, four activities and eight questions.

• Builds on Chapter 1 (deindustrialisation pushed artisans into farming) and Chapter 3 (panchayats and village inequality); leads into Chapter 5 (industry and informal labour) and Chapter 6 (globalisation).
• Pairs with live chapters: Colonialism and the Countryside (lehs301 — zamindari and ryotwari); Indian Economic Development, Chapter 2 Indian Economy 1950–1990 (keec102 — land reforms and the Green Revolution as policy) and Chapter 5 Rural Development (keec105); India: People and Economy, Chapter 3 Land Resources and Agriculture (legy203 — the geography of the Green Revolution).
• UPSC: GS1 has asked about feminisation of agriculture (2014), Bhoodan and Gramdan (2013) and why the Green Revolution bypassed the east (2014); GS3 repeatedly asks about land reforms (2013, 2016, 2021, 2024) and contract farming (2015). Prelims asked about land ceiling (1981), HYV needs (1984), land reform and growth (1984), land reform aims (2019) and Bhoodan (1980).

• Rural India: 69% of people (Census 2011); land is property, means of production and a way of life; the rural also includes artisans, service castes and non-farm work.
• Agrarian structure = distribution of land. Tenants pay 50–75% rent; labourers below minimum wage; women excluded; class ≈ caste — dominant castes (Srinivas) own land; SC/ST/OBC mostly landless.
• Colonial zamindari depressed farming; raiyatwari areas did better. After 1947: zamindari abolition most effective; tenancy reform strong only in West Bengal and Kerala; ceilings toothless (fake divorces, benami).
• Green Revolution (1960s–70s): HYV seeds + fertiliser + irrigation in Punjab, western U.P., coastal Andhra, Tamil Nadu → self-sufficiency, but differentiation, tenant eviction, regional inequality; phase 2 (1980s) → mono-crops, market risk.
• Labour: grain → cash, hereditary ties loosen, ‘free’ wage labour — ‘patronage to exploitation’ (Breman 1974); footloose labour circulates to Punjab, kilns, cities; feminisation of farm labour.
• Globalisation: WTO, imports, contract farming (PepsiCo), MNC input agents replace extension → dependence, debt; Box 4.3: 8,900 farmer suicides in four States, 2001–06 (Suri 2006).

India is primarily rural — 69 per cent of people lived in rural areas at the 2011 Census — and most rural people live from agriculture or related work. Land is the most important productive resource and form of property, but it is more than a ‘means of production’: agriculture is a way of life. Many cultural practices trace back to agrarian life: New Year festivals such as Pongal (Tamil Nadu), Bihu (Assam), Baisakhi (Punjab) and Ugadi (Karnataka) celebrate the main harvest and begin a new agricultural season. Regional variations in farming are reflected in regional cultures.

Yet the rural is not only agriculture. Artisans — potters, carpenters, weavers, ironsmiths, goldsmiths — were part of the village economy, though their numbers have fallen since colonial times (Chapter 1). Story-tellers, astrologers, priests, water-distributors and oil-pressers were also supported by rural life, and the caste system reflected this occupational diversity with specialist and ‘service’ castes. Some traditional occupations have declined, but closer rural–urban links have created new ones: many rural people work in non-farm jobs — government services such as the post and education departments, factories or the army.

Land is not equally distributed. In some regions most households own at least a little land; in others 40 to 50 per cent of families own none and depend on agricultural labour or other work. A few families are well-to-do; most live just above or below the poverty line. Women are usually excluded from ownership by patrilineal kinship and inheritance — by law they should have an equal share of family property, but in reality they have limited rights and access only as part of a male-headed household.

The agrarian structure — the distribution of landholding — shapes the rural class structure, because access to land decides one's role in production. Medium and large landowners can earn sufficient or large incomes (subject to prices and the monsoon). Agricultural labourers are usually paid below the statutory minimum wage, have insecure daily-wage work and are underemployed for many days a year. Tenants earn less than owner-cultivators because rent can take 50 to 75 per cent of the crop.

Class works through caste. Higher castes broadly have more land and income, but not exactly: Brahmins, the highest caste, are mostly not major landowners. In each region there are usually one or two major landowning castes that are also numerous — M.N. Srinivas's dominant castes — the most powerful group economically and politically: the Jats and Rajputs of U.P., Vokkaligas and Lingayats in Karnataka, Kammas and Reddis in Andhra Pradesh, Jat Sikhs in Punjab. Most marginal farmers and landless belong to lower castes — officially SCs, STs or OBCs. In many regions the former ‘untouchable’ or dalit castes were not allowed to own land and supplied most farm labour, letting landowners cultivate intensively. A ‘proprietary caste’ owns most resources and commands labour; begar (unpaid labour for set days each year) was common in parts of northern India until recently, and many workers were tied in hereditary labour relations — practices abolished in law but persisting in places.

Each region came to be dominated by one or two groups for historical reasons, and the structure has changed greatly from pre-colonial to colonial to independent India. Before colonial rule, the same cultivating castes probably farmed but did not directly own the land; local kings or zamindars — politically powerful, usually Kshatriya or other high castes — controlled it and took a large share of produce. The British ruled many areas through these zamindars, gave them property rights and more control than before, and imposed heavy revenue; zamindars squeezed cultivators. Under this zamindari system, production stagnated or declined, peasants fled oppressive landlords, and famines and wars cut the population.

Other areas under direct British rule had the raiyatwari system, in which the ‘actual cultivators’ — often themselves landlords — paid tax directly. With no overlord in between, the tax burden was lighter and cultivators had more incentive to invest, so these areas became relatively more productive and prosperous.

After Independence, Nehru and his advisers combined planned industrialisation with agrarian reform, responding to low productivity, dependence on imported grain and intense rural poverty. From the 1950s to the 1970s a series of national and State laws followed. The first, zamindari abolition, removed the intermediaries between cultivators and the state; it was probably the most effective, taking away zamindars' superior rights and weakening their power, though not without struggle — and strengthening actual landholders and cultivators.

Tenancy abolition and regulation acts tried to outlaw tenancy or regulate rents to secure tenants; in most States they were poorly implemented, but West Bengal and Kerala saw a radical restructuring that gave land rights to tenants. Land Ceiling Acts set an upper limit on land per family — lower for productive land, higher for dry land — with surplus to be taken by the State and redistributed to the landless, SCs and STs. In most States they were toothless: landowners used loopholes; some rich farmers even divorced their wives on paper while living with them, because the law allowed a separate share for unmarried women but not for wives — NCERT groups such evasions under benami transfers. Overall the agrarian structure, though much changed, remains highly unequal, which constrains productivity; land reform is needed for growth, poverty reduction and social justice.

Land reforms had limited impact; the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s changed the areas it reached far more. It was a government programme of agricultural modernisation, largely funded by international agencies, providing high-yielding variety (HYV) or hybrid seeds with fertilisers, pesticides and other inputs. It went only to areas of assured irrigation, mainly wheat and rice areas — Punjab, western U.P., coastal Andhra Pradesh and parts of Tamil Nadu. Productivity rose sharply and India became self-sufficient in foodgrains for the first time in decades — a major achievement of government and scientists. But sociologists also found negative social effects, and there were environmental costs.

Mainly medium and large farmers benefited, because inputs were expensive. NCERT distinguishes peasants, who produce mainly for subsistence, from farmers, who produce a surplus for the market — and it was the farmers who gained most. In the first phase, inequality seemed to grow: landowners took back land from tenants to cultivate directly as farming became profitable; machines (tillers, tractors, threshers, harvesters, in Punjab and parts of Madhya Pradesh) displaced service castes, speeding rural–urban migration. The outcome was ‘differentiation’ — the rich grew richer, many poor stagnated or grew poorer. Employment and wages for labour did rise in many areas as demand grew; but rising prices and the shift from payment in grain to cash worsened most workers' condition.

From the 1980s, farmers in dry and semi-arid regions adopted Green Revolution methods: a shift from dry to irrigated cultivation and new crops. Commercialisation — for example where cotton was promoted — increased rather than reduced livelihood insecurity, since farmers who once grew food now depend on the market; in single-crop market farming, a price fall or a bad crop can spell ruin. Many switched from multi-crop systems that spread risk to mono-crop regimes with nothing to fall back on.

Regional inequality worsened: the Green Revolution was promoted more in the west and south, in Punjab, Haryana and western U.P., than in the east (Raju J. Das, 1999). Some regions retain an entrenched ‘feudal’ structure in which landed castes dominate lower castes, landless workers and small cultivators; sharp caste and class inequality and exploitative labour relations there have produced violence, including inter-caste violence. NCERT also warns against assuming ‘scientific’ farming alone helps: farmers have deep traditional knowledge, and traditional seed varieties are being lost as hybrid, high-yielding and genetically modified seeds are promoted; some scientists and farmers' movements now urge a return to organic seeds and methods, and many rural people believe hybrids are less healthy.

After Independence, especially in Green Revolution regions, rural social relations changed profoundly: more use of hired labour as cultivation intensified; a shift from payment in kind (grain) to cash; a loosening of hereditary ties between landowners and workers (bonded labour); and the rise of a class of ‘free’ wage labourers. The sociologist Jan Breman called this a shift from ‘patronage to exploitation’ (1974). Some scholars see it as a transition to capitalist agriculture, since capitalism rests on separating workers from the means of production (here, land) and using free wage labour. Farmers in developed regions became market-oriented; rural areas joined the wider economy, bringing money and new opportunities.

This began in colonial times — in the 19th century large tracts in Maharashtra went to cotton linked to the world market — but sped up after 1947 as the state invested in irrigation, roads, electricity, inputs and credit through banks and cooperatives (NCERT cites the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana for rural power). Medium and large farmers from dominant castes in coastal Andhra, western U.P. and central Gujarat invested farm profits in business, moved into towns and became new regional elites, economically and politically dominant (Mario Rutten, 1995); private professional colleges let their children enter professions, swelling the urban middle class. Elsewhere — eastern U.P. and Bihar — weak land reform, mobilisation and redistribution meant little change. Kerala took a different path: political mobilisation, redistribution and links to the Gulf made the rural a mixed economy of some farming, retail and services, with many families living on remittances.

Commercialisation also produced migrant agricultural labour. As patronage ties broke down and seasonal demand rose in Green Revolution regions like Punjab, thousands began to circulate between home villages and areas with more work and higher wages. Rising rural inequality from the mid-1990s pushed households to combine several occupations: men migrate periodically while women, children and the elderly stay behind. Migrants come mainly from drought-prone and less productive regions and work part of the year on farms in Punjab and Haryana, in brick kilns in U.P., or on construction sites in New Delhi or Bangalore. Jan Breman called them ‘footloose labour’ — but this is not freedom: his study (1985) shows they have few rights and are usually paid below the minimum wage. Rich farmers often prefer migrants because they can be paid less, producing — especially in sugarcane areas — a double movement: local landless workers leave at peak season while migrants are brought in.

In sending areas where men are away most of the year, cultivation has become mainly a female task; women are becoming the main source of farm labour — the ‘feminisation of agricultural labour force’. Their insecurity is greater because they earn less than men for similar work; until recently they were barely visible in official statistics as workers; and patrilineal kinship still largely excludes them from owning the land they work.

Liberalisation, which NCERT dates from the late 1980s, has deeply affected agriculture. It entails membership of the World Trade Organization, which seeks freer trade and requires opening Indian markets to imports; after decades of state support and protection, farmers face global competition — imported fruit in local shops, and a ‘recent’ decision to import wheat that reversed self-reliance and revived memories of dependence on American grain after Independence. In contract farming, companies such as PepsiCo contract farmers in Punjab and Karnataka to grow crops such as tomatoes and potatoes, supplying seeds, inputs, know-how and often capital, and guaranteeing to buy at a fixed price. It is now common for cut flowers, grapes, figs, pomegranates, cotton and oilseeds. It may seem to give security, but it can deepen insecurity through dependence; diverts land from food grains to export crops like flowers and gherkins; disengages people from production and makes their indigenous knowledge irrelevant; caters to elite items; and, using heavy fertilisers and pesticides, is often not ecologically sustainable.

More widespread is the entry of multinationals as sellers of inputs. As government scaled down agricultural development programmes, agricultural extension agents were replaced by agents of seed, fertiliser and pesticide companies — often the farmers' only source of information, with an interest in selling. Dependence on costly inputs cut profits, pushed many into debt and created an ecological crisis. Many farmers who committed suicide were marginal farmers trying to raise productivity through Green Revolution methods amid rising costs (lower subsidies), unstable markets and heavy borrowing. NCERT says farmers' suicides are basically associated with debt and with natural disasters causing crop failure, and lists government schemes that may help, including the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture and the Kisan Credit Card.

Numbers

One-liners

• Land is property, means of production and a way of life.
• Agrarian structure shapes class; class works through caste.
• Dominant castes are numerous, landed and powerful — not necessarily the highest caste.
• Zamindari abolition worked best; ceilings were evaded.
• Tenancy reform transformed West Bengal and Kerala.
• The Green Revolution brought self-sufficiency and differentiation together.
• Mono-crops raise risk; multi-crops spread it.
• Breman: from patronage to exploitation; footloose labour is not free.
• Men circulate; women farm — feminisation of agricultural labour.
• Contract farming promises security but brings dependence.
• Farmers' suicides are linked to debt and agrarian distress, not only personal causes.

Traps to avoid

• Brahmins are the highest caste but mostly not major landowners.
• ‘Patronage to exploitation’ is Jan Breman, not Srinivas.
• Ceilings: lower for productive land, higher for dry land.
• ‘Raiyat’ is from Arabic via Persian, not Telugu as NCERT says.
• Green Revolution's first wave: irrigated wheat and rice areas — not dry regions.
• ‘Moreover’ in NCERT should read ‘however’: wages rose in places, but workers' real condition worsened.
• Box 4.3's 8,900 suicides are for four States, 2001–06 — not all India.
• Feminisation means women as the main farm labour force, not as landowners.
• The 2019 Prelims key on land reform aims is disputed; NCERT supports ceilings on family holdings.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• Land reform: what a land ceiling is (1981 — the quantum of land a family may hold); land reform and slow agricultural growth (1984, assertion–reason, both true and linked); aims of land reform (2019 — key chose ‘land to all landless’; NCERT supports ‘family holdings’; disputed).
• Green Revolution: HYVs need more water and more fertiliser (1984). Bhoodan: Vinoba Bhave (1980).
• Keep a list of NCERT examples: dominant castes by State; first-wave regions; regional-path States; contract crops.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 Society: feminisation of agriculture (2014) — migration, wage gaps, invisibility, landlessness (section 8); Bhoodan and Gramdan (2013) — objectives, achievements and limits; why the Green Revolution bypassed the east (2014) — agrarian structure as well as geography.
• GS3 land reform: relationship with productivity and poverty (2013), role and success factors (2016, 2024), gains for small and marginal farmers (2021) — zamindari abolition, West Bengal and Kerala tenancy reform, why ceilings failed; contract farming and land leasing (2015) — NCERT's promise-and-dependence analysis.
• Use attributed scholars (Breman, Frankel, Bhalla and Chadha, Shiva, Vasavi, Rutten) and bare dated facts for laws; treat distress and suicides factually.

Tap an option. NCERT's own exercise questions come first; the rest test the figures and common confusions.

Open any question to attempt it in the Question bank — your attempt is saved to your progress.