Change and Development in Rural Society — Class 12 Sociology

India is primarily a rural society, with the majority living in villages and depending on agriculture, which is not merely a livelihood but a way of life reflected in harvest festivals like Pongal, Bihu, Baisakhi and Ugadi. Agricultural land is the most important resource and form of property, but it is very unequally distributed; access to land shapes the rural class structure of landowners, tenants and landless labourers, who are often underemployed and paid below the minimum wage. Caste and class roughly overlap: the major landowning groups are usually the 'dominant castes', while Dalits and adivasis form most of the marginal farmers and agricultural labourers. Under colonialism the zamindari and raiyatwari systems shaped landholding. After Independence land reforms — abolition of zamindari (the most effective), tenancy reforms, and land ceiling acts (largely ineffective due to loopholes and benami transfers) — sought to make the structure more equal. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s raised productivity and made India self-sufficient in food grains, but mainly benefited medium and large farmers in irrigated regions, displaced tenants and service castes, and increased inequalities and a process of 'differentiation'. Post-Independence changes include a shift from patronage to exploitation in labour relations, the circulation of migrant 'footloose' labour, the feminisation of agricultural labour, and the effects of globalisation and liberalisation — contract farming, dependence on costly inputs, and agrarian distress including farmer suicides.