Answer the following questions in about 150 words each:

(a) 'The transfer of land from cultivating to the non-cultivating owners is bringing about transformation in Indian society.' Justify your answer by giving suitable illustrations. (10 marks)

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Question

Answer the following questions in about 150 words each:

(a) 'The transfer of land from cultivating to the non-cultivating owners is bringing about transformation in Indian society.' Justify your answer by giving suitable illustrations. (10 marks)

(b) Bring out various factors responsible for declining of village Industries in India. (10 marks)

(c) Discuss the social bases of political mobilization in Independent India. Has some change occurred in these during the last 60-70 years? (10 marks)

(d) What are the major problems faced by the labour migrants while working in informal sectors of Indian States? Discuss. (10 marks)

(e) Do you think that law has been able to abolish child labour in India? Comment. (10 marks)

UPSC Answer Check · Accepted Answer

(a) The transfer of land from cultivating peasants to non-cultivating owners represents a profound structural transformation in rural India, fundamentally altering agrarian social relations. Viewed through the Marxist lens of agrarian transition and depeasantization, this process dissolves traditional peasant autonomy and accelerates class polarization. In the Green Revolution belt of Punjab and Haryana, the penetration of agrarian capitalism has encouraged land consolidation by wealthy non-cultivating investors and large commercial farmers, turning marginal peasants into landless agricultural wage labourers or pushing them into distress leasing. Conversely, in states like Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, the persistence and resurgence of non-cultivating absentee landlords sustains semi-feudal relations, where trapped smallholders cultivate land under exploitative informal tenancy and debt-bondage. Furthermore, contemporary land acquisitions by non-cultivating corporate and real-estate entities dispossess cultivating castes, eroding traditional agrarian institutions like the jajmani system and replacing customary reciprocal ties with contractual, commodified, and insecure labor regimes.

(b) The structural decline of village industries in India stems from an interplay of economic transformations and shifting social organization. Economically, village industries suffer from severe technological obsolescence, as traditional artisanal techniques cannot match the scale, standardization, and cost-efficiency of mechanized mass production. This is compounded by acute credit squeezes, where formal institutional finance remains inaccessible, forcing rural artisans into usurious informal debt. Simultaneously, large corporate enterprises have monopolized raw materials, such as raw silk, yarn, and leather, inflating input costs for rural workers. The influx of cheap consumer goods from the organized sector has dismantled local village markets. Sociologically, the weakening of hereditary caste-based occupational structures and the decline of the jajmani network have led younger generations of traditional artisan castes—such as potters, weavers, and blacksmiths—to desert unremunerative hereditary crafts in search of non-farm informal urban employment, cementing rural de-industrialization.

(c) The social bases of political mobilization in independent India were historically anchored in the intersections of caste, class, and region. In early post-independence decades, mobilization functioned under the Congress system, a grand umbrella coalition balancing upper-caste elites with clientelist lower-caste and minority vote banks. Class mobilization emerged prominently in regions like Kerala and West Bengal through organized Left peasant and labour movements, while regional-linguistic identities drove powerful mobilizations, such as the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu. Over the last six to seven decades, this landscape has transitioned decisively from a single-dominant party system to competitive, multi-polar mobilization. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the political assertion of Other Backward Classes (OBCs) via Mandal politics and Dalit assertion through parties like the BSP. In the contemporary phase, mobilization has evolved further through cross-caste religious consolidation by the BJP, combined with the strategic sub-categorization of non-dominant OBCs and Dalits, and the creation of a cross-cutting welfare-recipient class.

(d) Labour migrants in the informal sectors of Indian states confront systemic vulnerabilities conceptualized by Jan Breman as "footloose labour" and Barbara Harriss-White as the informalized economy. First, migrants suffer from a severe absence of social security, working without written contracts, accident insurance, or retirement provisions. Second, they face frequent wage theft, arbitrary deductions, and sub-minimum wages mediated through exploitative labour contractors (sardars/thekedars). Third, housing precarity is pervasive, with migrants confined to unhygienic worksites, open brick kilns, or squatter settlements lacking potable water and sanitation. Fourth, interstate migrants face welfare exclusion, as administrative boundaries and lack of local domicile proof historically barred them from accessing subsidized food grains, public healthcare, and state-specific safety nets. Finally, the prevalence of seasonal and circular migration disrupts family cohesion, leaving elderly dependents isolated and forcing children to drop out of school, thereby reproducing intergenerational poverty and marginalization.

(e) Law has not been able to completely abolish child labour in India, serving instead as a regulatory framework constrained by structural contradictions. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016, while banning the employment of children below 14 years in all occupations, introduced a major loophole by permitting work in "family enterprises" outside school hours. This exception legitimizes home-based child labour in unorganized supply chains such as bidi-rolling, carpet-weaving, and bangle-making. Furthermore, enforcement remains severely crippled by weak administrative surveillance, low inspection frequencies, and minimal conviction rates. Sociologically, child labour is sustained by chronic household poverty, adult underemployment, and social inequality, which compel families to treat children as economic assets. Persisting statistics from the ILO and UNICEF demonstrate that millions of Indian children remain trapped in informal, invisible sectors. Thus, statutory prohibition remains largely symbolic unless backed by universal living wages for adult labourers, comprehensive social security, and robust school-retention infrastructure.

Answer the following questions in about 150 words each: (a) 'The transfer of land from cultivating to the non-cultivating owners…

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