(a) To what extent individual's life experiences are relevant for understanding terrorism? (15 marks) (b) Discuss the…

(a) Relevance of life experiences for understanding terrorism

Life experiences are relevant, but only to a limited extent: they explain vulnerability, not the decision to commit violence. Relevant factors: humiliation, discrimination, trauma, loss and perceived injustice. Moghaddam's staircase model (2005) traces how perceived unfairness and blocked mobility push some people up from grievance to moral disengagement and violent acts. Kruglanski's significance-quest theory holds that people who feel insignificant seek meaning through a cause that promises it. Limits: millions face the same adversity and never turn violent, so such experiences are neither necessary nor sufficient. Sageman (2004) found that many militants were educated and middle-class, and joined through friends and kin networks. Horgan (2008) concludes there is no single terrorist profile. Other factors that complete the picture: group dynamics and social identity, ideology and charismatic recruiters, political context, opportunity, and Crenshaw's view that terrorism is also a strategic political choice. Assessment: life experience is one factor within a group, ideological and political context, so prevention needs both individual support and attention to networks and grievances.

(b) Psychological consequences of population explosion and techniques to raise awareness

Overcrowding is not the same as density. Stokols (1972) described crowding as the stressful feeling of too little space and control, and Calhoun's rodent studies (1962) linked high density to aggression and withdrawal. Consequences: crowding stress and sensory overload, loss of privacy, irritability and aggression, learned helplessness (Rodin's study of crowded residents, 1976), competition and frustration over jobs, housing and schooling, and less parental attention per child. Context: India's total fertility rate has fallen to 2.0 in NFHS-5, below replacement level, but population momentum keeps numbers high. Techniques to raise awareness: Health Belief Model: communicate the perceived benefits of small families, such as better child health and schooling. Entertainment-education: dramas such as Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (Doordarshan, 2014), with role models. Frontline workers: ASHAs under Mission Parivar Vikas counselling couples and addressing myths about contraception. Schools: life-skills and reproductive health education. Women's education and participation in decisions, which strongly lower fertility. Voluntary, rights-based approaches work better than coercion, as the backlash to forced sterilisation in 1975-77 showed.

(c) How gender socialisation in India leads to gender discrimination

Gender socialisation is the process by which children learn what is "appropriate" for boys and girls. It leads to discrimination because the learned roles are unequal in power and value. Step 1: Family. Parents treat sons and daughters differently from birth: dowry and son-preference shape nutrition, schooling and freedom of movement. Children see mothers do domestic work; the Time Use Survey (2019) found that women spent about 299 minutes a day on unpaid domestic work for the household against 97 for men. Step 2: Learning mechanisms. Bandura's social learning (modelling and differential reinforcement), Kohlberg's gender constancy, and Bem's gender schema theory (1981) show how children adopt rigid gender categories. Step 3: Other agents. Schools and textbooks that show women as homemakers, peers who police "unmanly" or "unladylike" behaviour, media portrayals, and rituals that favour sons, such as patrilineal inheritance and last rites. Step 4: Outcomes. Girls internalise lower aspirations and self-efficacy (adaptive preferences, in Sen's term), face early marriage, limited mobility and stereotype threat in STEM, and have fewer decision-making powers. Son preference contributes to sex-selective abortion and skewed sex ratios. Step 5: Intersection. Caste, class and religion compound disadvantage, as for Dalit and tribal women. Boys are also harmed by pressure to be dominant and unemotional, which sustains the system.