Agrarian Social Structure — 2018 Paper II

Approach

• Demand of Question: Explain the organization of social relations around land, cultivation and labour in agrarian society.
• Structuring the Response: Discuss landownership, class, caste, tenancy and labour relations, and show how agrarian hierarchy structures village power.
• Key Dimensions to Cover: Landownership, cultivators, tenants, labourers, caste-class nexus, dominant caste, Béteille, Jajmani and rural inequality.

Model Answer

Introduction: Agrarian social structure refers to the pattern of social relationships arising from ownership, control and cultivation of land. In rural India, agrarian relations have historically intersected strongly with caste, class, kinship and political power.

Principal components

Agrarian society commonly includes:

• landlords or large landowners;
• owner-cultivators;
• tenants and sharecroppers;
• small and marginal peasants;
• landless agricultural labourers.

Thus:

Control over land → Economic position → Social and political influence

Caste and agrarian structure

Traditionally, landownership was unevenly distributed among caste groups. Service and artisan castes were often connected with cultivating groups through systems such as Jajmani.

M.N. Srinivas’s concept of Dominant Caste demonstrated how landownership, numerical strength and political influence combine to produce local dominance.

André Béteille, in Caste, Class and Power, showed that caste rank, economic class and political authority overlap but do not necessarily coincide.

Contemporary change

Land reforms, mechanization, migration and commercialization have produced:

• occupational diversification;
• weakening of traditional patron-client ties;
• new rural classes.

Conclusion: Agrarian social structure is best understood as an interaction of land relations, caste, class and political power, rather than as an economic system alone.