Family and Community

This is Chapter 9 of Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6, the new 2024 book under NCF-SE 2023) and the first chapter of Theme D, ‘Governance and Democracy’. The next three chapters move outwards: fees110 (Grassroots Democracy, Part 1: Governance), then local government in rural and urban areas (Chapters 11–12). The chapter asks two ‘Big Questions’: why is the family unit important? and what is a community and what is its role? It is short, mostly stories and activities. Read it for the definitions, the named examples (halma, Jhabua, the Chennai floods, Kamal Parmar, RWAs) and the ideas of cooperation and interdependence, which the later chapters on governance build on.

• Links in this book: fees108 (Unity in Diversity: the variety of India’s regions, languages and festivals, which you see again here in the Kerala and Meghalaya stories); fees110 (governance, rules and why we need them, which grows out of this chapter’s family and community rules).
• Deeper pages: kesy103 (Class 11: family, marriage and kinship, including the joint-family debate); lesy103 (Class 12: forms of family, matriliny and matriarchy, caste and tribe); kesy102 (primary groups, community and society); kesy104 (socialisation, with the family as the first agent); kesy203 (commons and community rules); lesy203 (Gandhi and Ambedkar on the village). This page links them and does not re-teach them.
• UPSC: Mains GS1 asked whether the joint family’s life cycle depends on economic factors more than social values (2014). GS4 asked how family and surroundings shape attitudes unconsciously (2016) and what social capital is (2023). Prelims asked what counts as social capital (2019). GS3 asked about community participation in disaster management (2026). Other family questions already sit on three chapters and are not repeated here (see strategy).

• Theme D opens (Governance and Democracy, Chs 9–12). Big Questions: why is the family unit important? what is a community and its role? Epigraph: Tiruvalluvar — love and dharma are the flower and fruit of family life.
• Joint family = several generations together (grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins); nuclear = a couple and their children, sometimes one parent and children. Indian languages: many kin terms (bua, tau, tai, chacha, mausi, nana, nani); ‘no word for cousin’ in most.
• Roles: love, care, cooperation (‘working together’), interdependence. Family as a ‘school’ of ahimsa, dāna (giving), sevā (service), tyāga (sacrifice); dharma = doing one’s duty.
• Stories: Shalini (Kerala, Onam — clothes shared with an uncle’s family; the story names 8, the activity says 7); Tenzing (Meghalaya — father shares chores, parents decide expenses together, grandparents care and help neighbours).
• Community: connected families; festivals, weddings, farm work; unwritten rules for water, grazing lands, forest produce → secure access + duties. Halma — Bhils of Jhabua (MP): trees, trenches, water harvesting; Mahesh Sharma (Shivganga) Padma Shri 2019. Chennai floods 2015.
• Urban: Kamal Parmar (Ahmedabad) — 5:30–9:30 pm classes, 150 children; RWAs (last 30–40 years) make their own rules; communities are interdependent. ‘Community’ = jāti, religion, region, work, interest, school clubs (NSS, NCC). UPSC: joint family (GS1 2014), social capital (2019, GS4 2023).

Almost all of us live in a family, which the book calls the fundamental and most ancient unit of any society. Indian society today has several types of families, from joint families to nuclear families. A joint family has several generations living together: grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, brothers, sisters and cousins. A nuclear family is limited to a couple and their children, and sometimes one parent and children. The words ‘from … to’ matter: the book presents the two as ends of a range, with many households in between.

The book points out that English has few terms for family relationships, while Indian languages have many more. Hindi has bua, tau, tai, chacha, mausi, nana, nani and more. Some languages, such as Tamil, have different words for an elder or a younger brother or sister. The book then asks what the word for ‘cousin’ is in an Indian language, and answers that in most Indian languages there is no such word, because cousins are simply ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. This, it says, shows the deep bonds among all the children in the family.

Relationships among family members are based on love, care, cooperation and interdependence, and the book defines ‘cooperation’ as ‘working together’. Each member has a role and responsibility towards the others. Parents are responsible for raising their children to become happy individuals and responsible members of society. As children grow, they take on more responsibilities at home to help parents, sisters and brothers. Through daily practice they learn to participate in household life, and in many homes they also learn traditions and practices followed for generations. The book adds that following one’s dharma, or doing one’s duty, has been an important principle of Indian culture, and calls the family a ‘school’ where children learn values such as ahimsa, dāna (giving), sevā (service) and tyāga (sacrifice). Family members often give up their own needs to look after the family’s.

Shalini lives in a town in Kerala. Her father runs a small business and her mother teaches at a nearby school. She has a younger brother. Her grandmother Acchamma (father’s mother), her uncle Chittappa (father’s brother), her aunt Chitti (his wife) and their daughter Chinni, Shalini’s cousin, live with them. As the family prepares for Onam, Chittappa has just lost his job and Chitti is a homemaker, so they cannot afford new clothes. Acchamma tells Shalini’s father. When Shalini’s parents go shopping they buy new clothes for Chittappa, Chitti and Chinni as well, so Shalini gets a simple cotton dress instead of the silk one she expected. Acchamma explains that this is how families support each other and share. Shalini does not mind, because everyone has something new.

The book then moves north-east to a village in Meghalaya, where Tenzing tells his own story. His father runs a small grocery store. After his mother became busy in a local handicraft cooperative making traditional fabrics, wood carvings and other items for tourists, his father took on cleaning, the vegetable garden and other chores, and often helps the grandmother cook. Grandmother tells stories with humour and wisdom. Grandfather helps with homework, takes Tenzing to the school bus stop and does social work in the colony: he reports power failures at the nearby office, and when a neighbour’s house was damaged in a storm he collected money from the whole neighbourhood for repairs. The parents meet basic needs, discuss special expenses together, and the mother says the family should always save for unexpected needs.

After the two stories, the book notes that both are joint families and asks what aspects of modern living lead some couples to choose a nuclear family, living apart from older generations and other relatives, and what the advantages and disadvantages of each kind might be. The book does not answer. Common reasons are listed below. In the table, each row names who holds the view.

Families are connected not only within themselves but with other families and people around them. The book says such a group of connected people may be called a ‘community’, adding that the word has other meanings depending on context. Members come together to celebrate festivals and organise feasts, weddings and other events. In some villages people help each other with land preparation, sowing and harvesting. Over time, communities often agreed on practices for using shared natural wealth such as water, grazing lands and forest produce. The book says this is true of many tribal communities and, to some extent, of village communities in rural India today. These practices can be called ‘rules’, though they were rarely written down. They gave communities secure access to resources, but they also meant that every family and individual had specific duties. Otherwise the community would not run smoothly.

The book’s ‘Don’t miss out’ box gives two real examples. Year after year the region around Jhabua, in Madhya Pradesh, faced an acute water crisis. Following their halma tradition of coming together to help any person or family in a crisis, the Bhil community decided to plant thousands of trees in hundreds of villages, dug many trenches to conserve rainwater and built other water-harvesting structures. They were not paid, and did it as a duty to their community and the environment. In halma, the book says, the aim is to serve Mother Earth. In 2019, Shri Mahesh Sharma of the Shivganga movement received the Padma Shri for his work with the Bhil communities. Second, during the Chennai floods of 2015 roads turned into rivers, almost all shops closed and services stopped. Many private groups, especially spiritual and religious organisations, cooked food in large quantities and distributed it to people in need. The book asks whether you have heard of other examples of people working for the community without expecting anything in return.

The book says community exists in urban settings too, though it may work a little differently. In a real story set more than 20 years ago in Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Kamal Parmar, owner of a small auto-fabrication workshop, noticed underprivileged children on the street. Some had dropped out of school and others had never been. He began teaching them from 5:30 to 9:30 pm every day after work and gave them a free dinner. Soon 150 children were attending regularly and keenly. Teachers from a local school joined for a while. One was moved that the children listened so closely with no benches, no quiet classroom and traffic noise all around. Older schoolchildren volunteered too, and one said they had come to teach but learnt a lot themselves.

New types of communities have emerged in the last 30 or 40 years. Residents’ Welfare Associations in many urban areas make their own rules, for example on waste management, cleanliness of common areas and pets, and residents take part in making them. Communities are interdependent: the same RWAs depend on the trading community for supplies and on municipal workers to handle waste. In complex societies, everyone depends on many other people and communities. Finally, the book calls ‘community’ a flexible concept. A jāti or a subdivision of it is often called a community. So is a group of a particular religion, region, common work or interest, especially a smaller group (‘Mumbai’s Parsi community’, ‘Chennai’s Sikh community’, ‘America’s Indian community’, ‘Kerala’s scientific community’, ‘our school’s art community’, ‘the village’s farming community’). At school you may belong to your class, the sports community, the National Service Scheme, the National Cadet Corps, or a science or drama club.

The chapter’s activity boxes and story questions, in page order.

Numbers

One-liners

• The book calls the family the fundamental and most ancient unit of any society.
• A joint family has several generations living together.
• A nuclear family is a couple and their children, and sometimes one parent and children.
• Most Indian languages, the book says, have no word for ‘cousin’: cousins are brothers and sisters.
• Tamil has separate words for elder and younger brother and sister.
• Cooperation means ‘working together’.
• The family is called a ‘school’ of ahimsa, dāna, sevā and tyāga.
• Shalini’s story is set in Kerala during Onam; Tenzing’s in Meghalaya.
• Tenzing’s parents discuss special expenses together.
• Communities agreed on unwritten rules for water, grazing lands and forest produce.
• Halma is the Bhil tradition of coming together to help anyone in crisis.
• Mahesh Sharma of the Shivganga movement received the Padma Shri in 2019.
• Residents’ Welfare Associations make their own rules on waste, common areas and pets.
• A jāti, or a subdivision of it, is often called a community.
• Communities are ultimately interdependent.

Traps to avoid

• Nuclear family includes the single-parent family in the book’s definition. Don’t limit it to ‘a couple and children’.
• Shalini’s family has eight people, though the activity says ‘seven members’.
• Halma: Bhils of Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh. It is not a Gond tradition and not in Rajasthan.
• Mahesh Sharma got the Padma Shri (2019), not the Padma Bhushan or a Magsaysay.
• Kamal Parmar ran an auto-fabrication workshop in Ahmedabad and was not a schoolteacher; the teachers joined later.
• ‘No word for cousin’: Hindi has chachera/mamera bhai, and Dravidian systems separate cross-cousins from siblings.
• Tāū = father’s elder brother; chāchā = father’s younger brother; māmā = mother’s brother; būā = father’s sister; mausī = mother’s sister.
• Matriliny (descent through women: Khasi, Garo, historically Nairs) is not matriarchy (rule by women).
• Hardin (1968) = tragedy of the commons; Ostrom (1990) = commons governed by community rules.
• RWAs are voluntary residents’ bodies, not elected urban local governments.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• From this chapter: 2019, social capital is ‘the level of mutual trust and harmony in the society’, not literacy (human capital) or buildings (physical capital). The chapter’s community of mutual support and interdependence is social capital in practice (Putnam, section 8).
• Expect: definitions (joint, nuclear, community), the named examples (halma and the Bhils of Jhabua; Padma Shri 2019; the Chennai floods 2015), and Beyond NCERT pairs: Ostrom/commons, Tönnies/Gemeinschaft, Durkheim/organic solidarity, and the kinship terms.
• Elsewhere: ‘Matriarchical system obtains among the Nairs and Khasis’ (1990, key b) belongs with lesy103’s matriliny section (note the matriliny/matriarchy trap) and is not linked here because this chapter does not teach matriliny. Khasi and Garo in Meghalaya (1987) and the Bhils as the largest tribe (1979, lesy103) are geography or tribe questions, not this chapter’s.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 (Indian society): 2014, whether the joint family’s life cycle depends on economic factors more than social values. Use section 5: economic drivers (Goode; jobs, migration, housing), demographic ones (Shah: longer lives), and values of ‘jointness’ that outlast separate households (Desai), with the book’s Shalini story as an example of sharing. Conclude that both matter, at different stages. GS1 2022 (work from home and family) sits on three other chapters.
• GS4 (ethics): 2016, attitudes shaped unconsciously by family and surroundings, some undesirable in a democratic, egalitarian society. Use the family as a ‘school’ (section 3) for good values (sevā, dāna) and for learned bias (gendered chores, caste distance), then how training and exposure reshape them. 2023, social capital and good governance: define it (Putnam), then use the chapter’s RWAs, halma and volunteers as examples of trust and networks that improve service delivery and accountability.
• GS3 (disaster management): 2026, community participation as the cornerstone of disaster management. Use the Chennai floods (2015) and halma-style water conservation as Indian examples; add challenges (exclusion of the poor, elite capture, lack of training) and measures (community-based disaster management under the 2005 Act, volunteers).

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

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