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Indian Society: Factors

Responsible for Changes in
Indian Society
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Different Factors Responsible

for Continuity and Change in
Indian Society!

There are a number of factors which

are responsible for continuity and
change in Indian society. Change may
occur through adaptation or inte-
gration. Adaptation occurs when
existing institutions readjust to meet
new needs. Integration occurs when a
society adopts a new element and
makes it part of itself.

Of the various factors which have

enabled our society to adapt/integrate
or fail to adapt/integrate, the most
important ones are: political
independence and introduction of
democratic values, industrialisation,
urbanisation, increase in education,
legislative measures, social change in
caste system, and social movements
and social awareness (like feminism,
globalisation and anti-casteism). We
will analyse all these factors
separately.

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Political Independence and

Introduction of Democratic Values
Political independence has provided
opportunity to all individuals to de-
velop self around conscious and
unconscious orientation towards vital
interests and values involving
identity, status, commitment and
desires. Today, individuals are more
concerned with ‘individuality’.

The groups which were wholly or

largely excluded from free social
interaction for generations together,
also now insist on getting
discriminatory privileges to rise in
social scale. The regions which had
remained economically backward
because of British rulers’ policies
want a share in developmental
schemes.

Some ethnic groups want political

independence to preserve their
cultural identity. Religious groups
want freedom to teach certain values
and sub-cultural norms to their
members. All these desires and de-
mands have affected the nature of
social change and the process of
modernisation in our country in the
last five decades.

The political independence has also

led to major changes in social
structure of our society and its system
of authority by abolishing the feudal
systems of zamindari, jagirdari, and
the princely states. It has
revolutionized the social and
economic base of our rural society,
whose results can now be seen
everywhere in India’s villages. The
liberated tenantry has now emerged
as the powerful rural middle class. It
commands a major voice in the
political domain. The green
revolution in the country has largely
been a contribution of this class.

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The social and cultural resilience (or

quality of quickly recovering the
original condition after being pressed
or crushed), tolerant indifference
towards Brahmanical tradition,
continual involvement in cultural and
agrarian movements, and a pugna-
cious utilitarianism provide this class
today with a major role in the
country’s social and economic
development. This group today leads
the powerful backward class
movement.

Political independence has made

possible for the nation to achieve
credible development and establish a
sound foundation of industrial, tech-
nological, scientific and managerial
growth. A very substantial
technological manpower has been
created. Singh (1994:22) has also said
that a new mid die class, quite
different in character from the middle
class of pre-independence period, has
emerged.

This class has a much broader social

base, coming as it does from the
middle and lower caste and social
strata of society. The new
entrepreneurs and professional
classes in urban areas and the rich
peasantry in villages constitute a
middle class in India estimated to be
around one-fourth of its total
population. There has been a
progressive increase in the percentage
of service sector in gross domestic-
product (GDP) of the country, which
indicates the extent of changes in the
economic structure and the
composition of society. Colonialism
had totally made the industrial
foundation of Indian society lean, and
following independence, the country
today ranks about thirteenth in terms
of industrial advancement. These
achievements have resulted from the
planned development of society in
basic sectors of its life.

Urbanisation:
Urbanisation is another factor that
has affected the society. Urban popu-
lation has grown at a faster rate in our
country in the last few decades. In the
mid-eighteenth century,
approximately 10 per cent of the
population in India was town-
dwellers. During the nineteenth
century, the number of inhabitants of
India’s towns grew ten-fold over a
hundred years. In the twentieth
century, while the country’s entire
population grew from 238 million in
1901 to 846.30 million in 1991, the
number of town-dwellers grew by 520
per cent. In 1951, the urban
population constituted 17.29 per cent
of the total population which
increased to 17.97 per cent in 1961,
19.9 per cent in 1971, 23.34 per cent
in 1981 and 25.73 per cent in 1991.

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The decennial growth rate of urban

population in 1961 was 26.41 per cent
which increased to 38.23 per cent in
1971, 46.14 per cent in 1981 and 36.19
per cent in 1991. In exact terms, the
urban population of India in 1961 was
78 million which increased to 109
million in 1971, 159 million in 1981
and 217 million in 1991. (Manpower
Profile, India, 1998:24).

The family, kinship, caste and

marriage etc., systems in the urban
areas differ from those in the rural
areas not only in composition but in
ideology and functioning too. It has
already been stated that the nuclear
family in urban areas in somewhat
smaller than the non-urban nuclear
family, and that the urban-dweller is
more likely to choose the nuclear
family than the rural-dweller.

Gore (1968) has maintained that the

urban families show a shift away from
joint family norms in their attitudes,
role perceptions, and in their
behaviour. For example, in the area of
decision-making in the urban
families, unlike the rural families,
parents rather than the eldest males
take decisions about their children.
Similarly, urban people who favour
the idea of brothers living together
after the death of parents are fewer
than the rural people with the same
attitude.

Desai (1964), however, did not share

this belief that urbanisation as such
leads to the break-up of the joint
family system. In his analysis of the
effect of urbanisation on jointness, he
observed significant relationship
between the duration of the stay of
the family in the urban area and
traditional jointness. His
presumption was that longer the
duration of the stay of family in an
urban area, lower will be the degree of
jointness. However, he found that the
jointness tends to exist more among
the ‘very old’ (living in the town for
fifty years or more) and ‘old’ families
(living in the town for twenty-five to
fifty years) than in the ‘new’ ones
(living since twenty-five years or less).

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Louis Wirth (1938) also believed that

city is not conducive to the traditional
type of family life. According to him,
family as a unit of social life is
emancipated from the larger kinship
group characteristic of the village, and
individual members pursue their own
diverging interests in vocational,
educational, religious, recreational,
and political life.

Changes in cities are also reflected in

many other social systems. The
kinship relations in the urban areas
are not so close as in the rural areas.
Whereas in cities, only primary and
secondary kin have intimate contacts,
in villages, the relations are
extensively extended to tertiary and
distant kin too. The caste system in
the urban areas is not as rigid as in
the rural areas.

In cities, caste no longer is dominant

social identity through which people
articulate their social intercourse. But
in villages, people still mediate their
social, political and cultural goals
through caste. In cities, the caste
panchayats have increasingly been
transformed into caste associations.
These associations no longer perform
the traditional role of enforcing
norms of endogamy, pollution and
purity, or settlement of caste disputes,
etc., but these caste associations have
extended their functional and
federative scope. About 3,000 castes
are reported to be active in this
functioning.

Our view is that role of urbanisation

in changing various social systems
has been very significant. The urban
living has weakened joint family
pattern and strengthened nuclear
families. Cities provide increasing
opportunities for new occupations
and higher education. Those who
deviate from the traditional family
occupation and take to new profes-
sions show a greater shift in their
attitudes than those who follow
traditional occupations.

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Similarly, educated persons in urban

areas are less in favour of, if not less
conforming to, joint family norms. It
may, however, be maintained that
change in attitudes has direct
relationship with length of stay in the
city. Cities provide opportunities to
females also for gainful employment
and when woman starts earning, she
seeks freedom in many spheres. She
tries to breakaway more and more
from her husband’s family of
orientation. Urban residence, thus,
seems to introduce a certain measure
of variation in family pattern in our
society.

Industrialisation:
Industrialisation got under way in
India in the last quarter of the nine-
teenth and first half of the twentieth
century. Cities grew around the new
industries. Before industrialisation,
we had (i) agrarian non-monetised
economy, (ii) a level of technology
where the domestic unit was also the
unit of economic exchange, (iii) a
non-differentiation of occupations be-
tween father and son and between
brothers and brothers, and (iv) a
value system where authority of the
elders and the sanctity of tradition
were both supported as against the
criterion of ‘rationality’. But
industrialisation has brought about
economic and socio-cultural changes
in our society.

In the economic field, it has resulted

in specialisation in work, oc-
cupational mobility, monetisation of
economy, and a breakdown of link
between kinship and occupational
structures; in the social field, it has
resulted in the migration of people
from rural to urban areas, spread of
education, and a strong centralised
political structure; in the cultural
field, it has brought secularisation of
beliefs.

There have been three important

effects of industrialisation on family
organisation: First, family which was
a principal unit of production has
been transformed into a consumption
unit. Instead of all family members
working together in an integrated
economic enterprise, a few male
members go out of the home to earn
the family’s living. This has affected
not only the traditional structure of
the joint family but also the relations
among its members.

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Secondly, factory employment has

freed young adults from direct
dependence upon their families. As
their wages have made them
financially independent, the authority
of the head of the household has
weakened further. In the city, in many
cases, along with men, their wives
also have started working and
earning. This has affected intra-family
relations to some extent.

Finally, children have ceased to be

economic assets and have become
liabilities. Although in a few cases, the
use and abuse of child labour has also
increased, law does not permit
children to work. At the same time,
educational requirements have
increased, lengthening dependence
upon parental support.
Accommodation in the cities is
expensive and child-care is
demanding. Thus, work and home
have become separated due to
industrialisation.

Some sociologists have, however,

recently challenged the theory of
emergence of nuclear families due to
industrialisation. This challenge is
based on the results of empirical
studies and the documentation of the
variety of family systems in different
parts of the world. Studies by scholars
like M.S. A Rao, M.S. Gore, and
Milton Singer have shown that
jointness is more preferred and
prevalent in business communities,
and many nuclear families maintain
widespread kin ties. Several recent
researchers in the industrialised West
have also emphasised the supportive
role of kin and their function of acting
as a buffer between the family and the
impersonal wider world (Abbi, 1970).

Social historians too have shown that

the nuclear family was prevalent as a
cultural norm in Europe and the
United States even before
industrialisation. However, it has to
be noted that the supportive role of
the kin does not have the compulsory
character which is found in the family
obligations of the Indian nuclear
family. The youngsters in the nuclear
family still willingly follow the normal
responsibility towards the primary
kin (such as parents and siblings),
solidarity of the close kin, and some
sense of unity of the family, even
though living in separate households
(Dube, 1974:311).

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All these changes have modified our

family system. While the population
movement from the rural to the urban
areas has led to decline in
authoritarian power, growth of
secularism has developed a value
system which emphasises individual
initiative and responsibility.
Individual now functions without any
restrictive familial controls. Formerly,
when man worked in the family and
all family members helped him in his
work, there was more intimacy among
the family members but now since he
works in the industry away from the
family, the intimacy in relations has
been adversely affected.

The effect of industrialisation on the

pattern of family relationship is also
evident from the decline in self-
sufficiency of the family, and
attitudinal changes toward family.
Industrialisation has, thus,
contributed markedly to the creation
of a new social and psychological
setting in which the survival of the
early joint family with its
authoritarian organisation has
become very difficult.

The social profile of communities

under the impact of industrialisation
is indicative of many dimensions of
linkages and interactions among
segments of region, culture, social
categories and communities. It is re-
flected in migration of people from
one region to another which has
contributed to increase of
bilingualism. The Census of India,
1991 placed bilingualism to about 15
per cent, which in reality has been
estimated to be as high as 60 per cent
in survey of communities.

Interaction and commonality among

cultural regions too is reflected in
shared cultural traits, which is also
true for large number of communities
across regions and territories. Such
cultural traits belong not only to
rituals and institutional practices but
also to technologies of occupation,
skills and division of labour. Most
communities have also moved away
from their traditional occupations
and show keen awareness of
developmental programmes
sponsored by the government. This
awareness, together with high aspira-
tions, introduces in the social system
a measure of tension and conflict now
manifest in various dimensions of our
social life.

Increase in Education:
In the modern age, Indian society has
tried to expand its educational system
because it requires a more literate and
numerate population. Though the
literacy percentage has increased
from 36 in 1951 to about 60 in 1997,
yet there are about 330 million
illiterate people to be made literate.
The male literacy rate has now
reached to about 70 per cent and
female rate to about 50 per cent (by
end of 1997).

In states, the literacy rate has gone

beyond 75 per cent in states like
Kerala, Mizoram, Goa, and Delhi, and
beyond 70 per cent in five out of six
union territories. In 16 states, the lit-
eracy percentage varies between 50
and 65. Amongst the SCs, the literary
percentage has increased to 37 per
cent and among STs to 30 per cent (in
1991). The number of students
studying in schools and colleges (up
to graduation level only) has
increased from 548 million in 1971 to
846 million in 1991 (Manpower
Profile, India, 1998: 42-47).

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Education has not only brought about

changes in the attitudes, beliefs,
values and ideologies of the people
but has also created and aroused
individualistic feelings. The
increasing education not only brings
changes in the philosophy of life of
men and women but also provides
new avenues of employment to the
latter. After becoming economically
independent, women demand more
voice in family affairs and also refuse
to accept anybody’s dominance over
them. This shows how education
brings changes in relations in the
family, ultimately leading to the struc-
tural changes too.

Deasi (1964) and Ross (1961) have

also referred to the reciprocal in-
fluence of educational system and
family system on each other. The
former has referred to the working of
education against the joint family in
two ways: one, by emphasising
individualism, it puts before people
the concept of the type of the family
which is contrary to the prevailing
concept of joint family, and two, it
prepares people for occupations
which cannot be found in their native
places, as a result of which they
separate from the ancestral family
and live in areas which provide them
the occupations suited to their
educational equipment.

In course of time, these people lose

contact with the parental family and
imbibe new ways of living and
thinking which are inimical to the
joint family sentiment and conducive
to the nuclear family. But in his own
study in Mahuva, surprisingly Desai
found that with the increase in the
educational level, jointness increased
and nuclearity decreased. Desai’s
opinion is that only a few people
subscribe to newspapers or purchase
general and popular books and the
views and the beliefs of the people are
not directly affected by the general
reading of the newspapers,
periodicals or English books in
particular or by the western
educational system in general.

Whatever effect education might have

on the people can be through the
influence of what we might call the
new elite, and the home and the
school environment. Thus, it is not
the level of education of the head of
family or the whole household that Privacy - Terms
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