Social Classes In India

Answer : The Marxian approach views society to be made of two parts. One is the base or infrastructure coming out of the economic structure of society. This part is of main focus to explain conflict and change in society. The other being super elective comprising all other structures. Changes here are consequences of changes in economic infrastructure. These changes emerge due to the emerging tendencies manifested in the emergence of social groups. Max views social conducts of groups are based on economic interests. When the economic interests are mutually conflicting the deprived group tries to change the existing social order while the dominant group tries to preserve status quo. Thus the clash of interests results in conflict.

In his study, ‘Social Background of Indian Nationalism,’ A.R. Desai applied the Marxian perspective to explain the rise of nationalistic consciousness and the conflict that resulted between British and Nationalist forces ultimately leading to independence. He argues that nationalist consciousness arose as a response to conflict between economic interests of British Government and various newly emerged classes. These various classes were mobilized at the national level to fight against British rule. Thus various diverse sections joined hands for a nationalistic cause.

Traditionally India as a nation state did not exist nor there was the idea of it. The British rule and its policies created conditions which welded hitherto segmented, factional states into a single union. Thus grew nationalist ideology and consciousness among the various sections of Indian society who were adversely affected by British policies.

The first class to emerge from British rule was that of middle classes. Though in its early days of inception they supported and aided the British rule, in the later years they played a major role in freedom struggle. The growth of this class was not accompanied by growth in employment rates. The discrimination of Indians in civil services, recruitment, promotions etc badly affected the prospects of educated middle classes.

These English educated enlightened individuals provided leadership to the freedom struggle in the coming years. The artisans were other groups adversely affected by the British economic policy. Fall of Indian Princely states and nobles resulted in loss of patronage to these groups. Flooding of cheap imported finished goods and non-protectionist promotional attitude of the government forced these groups to reject their hereditary occupations and provided labour force for agricultural labourers. Thus there was deurbanisation and deindustrialization.

The various land revenue systems and tenancy laws withdrew the hereditary ownership of land traditionally enjoyed by peasants and created a new class of Zamindars who had property rights in rural areas. High land revenue, exploitations by intermediaries led to total destruction of rural areas. The ruin of Indian handicrafts was reflected in the ruin of the towns and cities which were famous for their manufactures. The gradual destruction of rural craft broke up the union between agriculture and domestic industry in the countryside and thus contributed to the destruction of self-sufficient village economy.

This increased dependence of the people on agriculture. The rural people were in general state of poverty and impoverishment. There were often uprisings and with the arrival of Gandhiji these groups were effectively mobilized for the freedom struggle.

The Indian bourgeois class who emerged during the World War II saw their prospects would flourish only with a nationalist government. The alien government with its destructive economic policies offered no protection to infant Indian industries against flooding by imported goods. Rather it was opposed to Indian industrialization.

Thus many industrial houses offered coveted support to the Indian national movement.

The Indian working force which emerged as a credible force during 1920s began to fight for proper working conditions, wages, security etc. The various govt. enactments in these aspects were piecemeal in character. The INC leaders were able to aggregate the seemingly conflicting interacts of working and bourgeoisie classes and succeeding in bringing these process for nationalist struggle.

Thus A.R. Desai brings out the various economic conflicts between the alien government and the emergent Indian classes on one hand and the process of aggregating these conflicts by the nationalist leaders against the government on the other hand for independence from it. It is a classical example of Marxian perspective applied to explain social background of Indian nationalism.

Answer : Globalization is a process that promotes free movement of capital goods and services, technology and labour across national borders. Since it directly involves the production process, it has a direct bearing on the structure and hence on the mobilization of working class in India. In the Indian context, globalization implies correlation of the Indian economy with the world economy.

The entire socio-economic institutional arrangement and valuational system should be so constituted that is will maintain the ideals and ethos of global or mass culture of the society. At the economic level, the initiation to correlate the Indian economy with the global one was especially made during the Narsimha Rao govt.

Under his economic policy, the elements of privatization and liberalization were introduced. Thus the global multinational corporations were facilitated for investment in India. Secondly, the commercial and trade relations with the various developed and developing countries are being still established. The new areas of commercial ties such as information technology, softwere, hardwere, biotechnology, agriculture etc are being traced which is proving conducive for the growth the Indian economy.

Globalisation which began around 1990-01 with the Economic Reforms has brought about great transformation in the structure of working class. The process is associated with transfer of capital intensive high tech production process. The direct consequence of it is deskilling of labour and the worker reduced to cog in a machine in Marxian terminology. At the same time it has not led to growth of employment for semi or unskilled workers.

The benefit is reaped by a small section of workers who are specialized in a particular work. The wages of these sections have increased healthily as compared to semi or unskilled workers whose wages have shown near stagnant growths. The consequence is two fold. One it has led to what Dahrendorf calls decomposition of labour i.e. division within the working class. The top section of it is increasingly rising to distinguish themselves from their counterparts. This leads to second consequence i.e. what Lockwood and Oglethorpe call embour- geoisement. The values and attitudes of the top sections are increasing by becoming middle class. It has bearing on the mobilization of working class also. This section views more is instrumental terms than as means of collective bargaining.

One more consequence of globalization is that of relaxation of labour laws facilitating hire and fire policy. This has led to increased contractualization of labour affecting its security. The labour force has become increasingly prone to whims and fancies of global economic trends.

Another impact of globalization is the increase in migration of workers. Many skilled and semi skilled workers are increasingly migrating to Gulf, Western & Australian countries.

Though they are lived by increased wages and standard of life they are prone to exploitation. The recent incidents involving Indian construction workers in Gulf and their pitiable conditions and exploitations show light on actual conditions. In the absence of global labour laws their genuine concerns are unheard of. Thus mobilization of global migrant India workers to show care their genuine demands is a new challenge for trade various and the government. The onslaught of capital-intensive high tech machines has rendered indigenous small industries and numerous workers in it jobless. In the absence of proper social security measures for these workers their condition is pitiable.

There is a gradual shift towards service sector. Unlike other developing countries which graduated from agriculture to manufacturing to service sector India jumped directly from agriculture to service sector. Lack of a strong industrial base has bearing on structure and mobilization of working class in India.

The trade union movement in India has traditionally suffered from many handicaps. A genuine movement has never been in India. It is divided on caste, religion, region and linguistic lines. It also suffered from leadership problems, wherein outside leadership played havoc in many unions.

Many trade unions are affiliated to political parties which have openly supported globalization with the exception of left parties. These made unions try to mobilize working class for political purpose than addressing the concerns of working class. Thus the globalization process offers new challenges and opportunity for trade unions to mobilize workers. International migration, outsourcing, BPOs, ITEs complicate the mobilization of workers. Occupational diversification and new types of jobs often challenge the trade unions’ power of mobilizations.

Answer : According to Anthony Gidding, the middle class in the industrial capitalist society in general and India in particular constitute the higher professionals, managerial and administrative, lower professionals, white collar and minor supervisors. The petty shopkeepers and traders are also included in the middle class.

The new economic and estate systems brought about by the British rule required cadres of educated Indians trained in modern law, technology, medicine, economics, administration science and other subjects. In fact, it was mainly because of the pressing needs of the new commercial and industrial enterprises in the administrative system that the British government was forced to introduce modern education in India. They established modern educational institutions on increasing scale. Schools and colleges giving legal, commercial and general education were started to meet the needs of the state and economy. Thus, there came into being an expanding professional class. Such social categories were linked up with modern industries, agriculture, commerce, finance, administration, press and other fields of social life. The professional classes comprise modern lawyers, doctors, teachers, managers and others working in the modern commercial and other enterprises, officials functioning in state administrative machinery, engineers, technologists, agriculture scientists, journalists and so on. The role of this class in the national movement was decisive. They were in fact pioneers and pace-setters. They were also the force behind progressive social and religious reform movement in the country.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization in India after post-independence has opened the way for large scale employment opportunities in the industries, trade and commerce, construction, transport, service and other varied economic activities. Simultaneously, the state has created a massive institutional set up comprising a complete bureaucratic structure through out the length and breadth of the country. This has provided employment on a sizeable scale. The employment in these sectors, whether private or government require prerequisite qualifications such as education, training, skills and so on. Bureaucrats, management executive, technocrats, doctors, lawyers, teachers, journalists are some of the categories who posses such skills.

They have grown considerably in size and scale ever since independence. This class, however, hardly constitutes a homogeneous category. Of course it enjoys pay and conditions of work far more favourable than those engaged in manual work but less than those enjoyed by the upper class. However, even within the non-proprietary class of non-manual workers, a deep hierarchy exists. There are some high paid cadre at the top. A large proportion, on the other hand, have earnings only little proportion above those of the non-manual workers. There are also considerable differences in the condition of their work and opportunity for promotion. They differ in their style of life as well. In view of this, they have not crystallized into a well defined middle class.

In addition to the above mentioned professional groups of the middle class, the petty traders, shopkeepers and unorganised workers are also included in the middle class. These classes have developed with the growth of modern cities and towns. They constitute the link between the producer of goods and commodities and the mass of consumers. That is, they buy goods from the producers or wholesalers and sell it among the consumers. Thus, they make their living on the profit margin of the price for which they buy and sell their goods and commodities. Like other groups in the middle class such as bureaucrats, lawyers, professionals etc., this class has also grown in the post independent India. The unprecedented growth of the cities in the process of urbanisation in the post-independent India has stimulated the growth of this class. The pressure of population on the land and lack of avenues of employment in the rural society have led to large scale migration of rural population to towns and cities. Urbanisation on the other hand, offers a variety of new activities and employment. The growing urban population creates demands for various kinds of needs and services. Petty shopkeeping and trading cater to these needs of the urban population. A section of urban population draws its livelihood from these sources. In view of the growing urbanisation their size has considerably increased. Besides these spheres of activities, urbanisation also offers opportunity for employment in the organised and unorganised sectors of the economy. The opportunities in the organised sector are small which require educational qualification, and training. The bulk of the rural migrants lack this pre-requite and hence the organised sector is closed to them.

Answer : According to Bottomore social classes are the characteristic feature of the industrial societies. He gives the example of capitalist society in which the capitalist and working class besides the others are mainly found. With the emergence of industrialisation, the various types of classes have come into existence mainly in the urban areas which can be categorised as: (i) capitalist (Commercial and industrialist) (ii) Professional classes (iii) Petty traders and shopkeepers and (iv) Working classes. Karl Marx's views about the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat classes are also applicable to industrial class structure in India. There is a wide disparity between these two polar opposite classes in terms of income and social status. The British economic and political policies in India led, on the one hand, to the destruction of many older classes and formation of some new classes. In cities, new industrial and mercantile class came into being and others also emerged as new bureaucratic administrative class. The British, however, succeeded only in altering the nature of class circulation in India and not its social base. The sociology of the Indian class stratification nevertheless bears a deep imprint of these historical antecedents in two respects, first the middle class that subsequently emerged maintained the structural continuity in terms of recruitment and social background with the previous class structure. Secondly the British contact set a process of new cultural adaptation among the new middle classes.

Answer : The agrarian social structure chiefly refers to the pattern of relationship, social stratification, means of livelihood, customs and tradition of the people living in Indian villages. The caste system is the basic system of stratification in the agrarian society. The economy of this society is mainly based on agriculture and allied activities. Daniel Thorner has studied the emergence of class in the agrarian society and has pointed out three types of class structure namely Malik (Owner), Kisan (Peasant) and Majdur (Worker). Similarly Kotovsky, in his analysis of agrarian class in India has mentioned five types of classes. These are; (i) Bourgeoisie (ii) Capitalist type of landowner (iii) rich peasant (iv) landless peasantry (v) agricultural labourers. Gadgil has mentioned two important classes. These are substantial landlord and trade money lenders. The another feature of the present day agrarian society is the influence of religion, customs, new values and change. The traditional methods of agriculture has been mostly abolished or replaced by the new equipment, fertilisers, seeds etc. The Green revolution in Punjab and Western Uttar Pradesh are its example. Recently, under the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act the Panchayati Raj institution has been introduced in the village which will surely ensure the growth and development of the agrarian society.