Class, Power and Inequality

UNIT 11 CLASS, POWER AND

INEQUALITY
Structure
11.0 Objectives
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Understanding Class: Relevance and Implication
11.3 Agrarian Class Structure and Class Relations: A Historical Overview
11.3.1 Colonial Land Policy and Agrarian Inequality
11.3.2 Nationalist Approach: A Response to Colonial Policy
11.3.3 Post Independence: Agrarian Reform and Class Structure
11.4 Class Differences in Urban India
11.4.1 Types of Social Classes
11.5 The Dominant Class Model: Inequality and Change
11.5.1 Conceptual Framework
11.5.2 A New Conceptual Framework: Continuity and Shift
11.6 Let Us Sum Up
11.7 References
11.8 Specimen Answers to Check Your Progress

11.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you should be able to:

• explain the relevance and meaning of class;

• discuss the relationship between class, power and inequality;
• provide an overview of class structure and economic inequality in India,
both in the agrarian and urban contexts; and
• spell out the shifts and continuities in the analysis and understanding of
class in the Indian context.

11.1 INTRODUCTION
India has predominantly been reckoned as a caste society in popular thinking
and academic circles. To perceive India however, only through the windows of
caste is incomplete. Class is yet another significant axis to capture divisions and
inequality underlying Indian social reality is spelt out in the Section 11.2.

The following two sections indicate India as a class society. The focus is on
reading of class structure and class relations in both rural and urban India.

The Section 11.5 is on the dominant class, and the extent to which it exercises
power and influence on the state, amidst electoral democracy, contributing to
the reproduction of class- based inequalities of income and wealth.

* Contributed by Kanika Kakar, Delhi University

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Critiques
11.2 UNDERSTANDING CLASS: RELEVANCE AND
IMPLICATIONS
Indian society is a highly stratified society. There are multiple axes which
contribute to divisions and hierarchy in Indian society; caste and class being the
fundamental. The general tendency has been to read India typically as a caste
society. However, class is a significant basis to power and inequality in Indian
society and hence, requires reflection.

Class is a system of stratification that is economic in character unlike caste,

which is about ritual ordering of society. A class is based on the criteria like
occupation, landownership, marketable yield or disposable income and social
capital. The crucial aspect is all these criteria are directly convertible into money.
Therefore, money or wealth is central in class stratification. However, contrary
to caste, class system is flexible and less rigid. While caste status is endowed at
birth and hereditarily ascribed, class status is based on money or wealth, acquired
or achieved by an individual.

The significance of class vis-à-vis caste as a basis to stratification and ranking in

Indian society is recent. In traditional India occupational status stood in distinction
from class through the prevalence of jajmani system. The jajmani system of
traditional occupational obligations/patron-client ties showed overlaps with the
caste ranking and entailed individuals inheriting their occupational status. The
constitutional provisions challenging caste-based rigidities, introduction of land
reforms, industrialisation, spread of education, monetisation of economy and
feasibility of market transaction owing to the availability of modern transport
have led to gradual erosion of practices like jajmani. In present context individuals
are more-or-less free to choose their occupations, independent of their caste, in
accordance to their educational qualifications and skills. Andre Beteille’s work
(1966) on Sripuram village reflects well that new forces are disrupting the
traditional pattern of social stratification and producing economic/class and
political systems that no longer entirely depend on caste. A person’s superior
caste status necessarily does not indicate his economically and politically
dominant position. However, while systems like jajmani have weakened and the
association of occupation with caste has lessened, it has not completely
disappeared. There are still prevailing occupations associated with certain castes.
There are many agricultural labours and those engaged in the sanitation work
tend to be from lower castes, as some of the higher paying occupations are
associated with upper castes.
Check Your Progress 1
i) Complete the following sentences by filling in the blank spaces
a) .......................... of traditional occupational obligations/patron-client
ties.
b) A person’s caste status is fixed at birth and hereditarily ascribed, unlike
his class status which is flexible as is based on wealth/income
and...............
c) The significance of ......................as a basis to stratification and ranking
in Indian society is recent.
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 Class, Power and Inequality
11.3 AGRARIAN CLASS STRUCTURE AND CLASS
RELATIONS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
This section provides a historical perspective on the agrarian and inequality,
focusing on the colonial and nationalist responses post independence agrarian
reforms & class structure.

11.3.1 Colonial Land Policy and Agrarian Inequality

Scholarly works indicate that class-based inequality and hierarchies prevalent in
agrarian society in the post independence India are an outcome of the colonial
government’s policies and practices. P.C. Joshi (1967) pointed out that agrarian
policy that India had in pre-mutiny period reflected the colonial government’s
political interest rather than scientific-intellectual understanding of the subject.

The Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture that was appointed in 1928
was in continuity with a number of official pre-mutiny documents published by
the Famine Commission, merely showing lip sympathy to the agrarian problem.
It omitted crucial areas of landownership, land tenancy, and assessment of land
revenue and irrigation charges.

The colonial state’s land and agrarian policy underlay capitalist and extortionist
tendencies, which were visible in:

First, the high tax demand that the colonial state made on agriculture as a part of
the ‘zamindari’ and ‘ryotwari’ settlement systems. Contrary to British claims its
actual land revenue collections were generally higher than those under the
traditional indigenous rulers.

Box 1: Zamindari and Ryotwari Settlements

The Zamindari settlement system entailed the colonial state entering into
permanent settlements with zamindars fixing the land revenue rates at a very
high level. The zamindar was the intermediary between the state and the direct
cultivator paying fixed land revenue to the state while he collected rent from
the actual producers. However, since land revenue was fixed, the colonial
state discovered that it was not able to match up the rise in agricultural income
that occurred over time. The surplus in income was being largely appropriated
by the intermediaries.

Consequently, the colonial government shifted to the Ryotwari system of

temporary settlements made directly with the peasant, or ryot. This entailed
periodic revision pushing the revenue rates up to the maximum limit the
economy or polity could bear.

Second, during the colonial rule absentee landlordism and subinfeudation was
rampant. This implied peasants paying high rents to sustain series of intermediaries
between themselves and the state. In addition to the rent demand, the landlords
resorted to numerous illegal exactions in cash, kind or labour (begar), which put
a severe burden on the peasant.

Under the above context, the large landowners found it more profitable to give
out their land on tenancy, extracting very high rents and other illegal dues from
149
Critiques landless peasants; instead of adopting large-scale capital intensive agriculture
practices. It was therefore, the colonial land policy, not because of any allegedly
inherent ‘feudal’ mentality of the agrarian classes that capitalist agriculture did
not emerge.

Third, the heavy taxation on the peasantry by the colonial state and dominant
sections led to its extreme indebtedness to private moneylenders and landlords.
Consequently, bonded labour became a common feature in large parts of the
country.

Thus, during the colonial period the bulk of the Indian peasantry was drained of
resources and was living close to below subsistence level. The upper sections of
rural society found rent and usury more profitable source of income than capitalist
agriculture. As a result they took little interest in modernising and improving
agriculture. Further, the colonial state too did not invest of what it extorted from
agriculture. Indian agriculture therefore remained backward.

Box 2: Women’s Economic Subordination in Agrarian India: A

Colonial Legacy

The colonial intervention in the agrarian economy strengthened the dominant

landowning classes aggravating oppression of the majority of rural women by
exacerbating patriarchal practices as distress sales of daughters, harassment
of women tenants and increase in the regulatory power of class-based marriage
norms and sexual morality. Further, the colonial rule vested individual land
rights in the hands of men reinforcing women’s exclusion from ownership of
the means of production prevalent in pre-colonial agrarian structure; where
matrilineal systems did exist they were slowly transformed into patrilineal
patterns of succession.

In post-independent India land/property rights are still elusive for most rural
and urban women, despite, the enactment of Hindu Succession Amendment
Act of 2005 ensuring equal inheritance rights for both men and women. In
reality few women inherit family property and forfeit their rights to it for their
brother.

11.3.2 Nationalist Approach: A Response to Colonial Policy

Since the late nineteenth century the nationalists had been critical of the
backwardness of Indian agriculture under colonialism. They outrightly contested
and rejected colonial theory of land control, including revenue system in particular
arguing for change in the oppressive landlord-tenant relationship and high land
revenue collected by the colonial state.The early nationalists, Justice Ranade
and R.C. Dutta questioned the colonial state for overlooking the institutional
structure, namely, the traditional land relations, which had a direct bearing on
economic backwardness and required drastic state intervention for restructuring.
Although Ranade and Dutta criticised the colonial state for rural poverty and
economic backwardness but they failed to suggest adequate measures for
improving the land status of the village people.

Unlike their predecessors the later nationalists provided more significant basis
to resolve agrarian inequality. Ambedkar thus through his anti-Khoti movement
not only opposed the colonial state but upper caste dominated landlordism by
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introducing a bill calling for its abolition. The Britishers had introduced the Khoti Class, Power and Inequality
system of land tenure in the Konkan region to collect tax by granting huge power
to powerful persons (Khots) of a locality. They invariably, resorted to brutal and
violent means to collect tax.

The fight against agrarian inequality was to get closely intertwined with the
national movement against colonial rule towards the twentieth century. Much of
the agrarian reforms that were introduced in post independent India were a part
of nationalists’ campaign against oppressive colonial policies towards the agrarian
society. Thus, the Civil Disobedience campaign (1930-40) launched by Mahatma
Gandhi took on the form of no-tax and no-rent campaigns in many parts of the
country. Mahtama Gandhi’s concern for the peasantry further comes forth
explicitly from his remark, ‘land and all property is his who will work it’ made
in the late 1930s. This was synonymous with the notion of “land to the tiller”
which was fundamental to post independence agrarian reforms. The Karachi
session, 1931 of Indian National Congress spelt out Economic Programme
focusing on the fundamental rights of peasantry that it wished to introduce in
independent India. A series of Kisan Conferences were organised in the third
decade of the twentieth century alongside Congress sessions reiterating the
demand for agrarian reform. Gathering strength and support from the nationalist
movement, peasant struggle against agrarian inequality intensified and took shape
of militant anti-landlord movements demanding abolition of zamindari settlement
system in various parts of the country in the 1930-40s.

Activity 1
The Telangana and the Tebhaga peasant protests underlay opposition to class
and economic inequities introduced by the dominant agrarian class at the behest
of the colonial rule creating a base for the post independence agrarian reforms.
Elaborate in two pages.

11.3.3 Post Independence: Agrarian Reforms and Class Structure

a) Agrarian Reforms: Provisions and Implications
After independence, the Congress government appointed the Agrarian Reforms
Committee under the chairmanship of J.C. Kumarappa, based on the
recommendations of which the following land reforms were introduced in the
post independent India that were crucial for challenging rural economic
inequalities:

i) The Zamindari Abolition Act, 1950 was the foremost post independence
agrarian reform. However, this Act could be implemented in its true spirit
only after the government issued First Amendment Act in 1951, added articles
31(a), 31 (b) and Ninth Schedule to the Constitution, which led to dropping
of the right to property from the list of fundamental rights. The amendment
and additions empowered the state to acquire any land or estate.

ii) The Zamindari Abolition Act also declared begari/ bonded labour as a
punishable offence.

iii) The legislation for the abolition of intermediary tenures between the state
and the tiller laying out land to the actual tillers of the soil was enacted in
1950 and reinforced by the second Five Year Plan. The legislation prohibited 151
Critiques subletting/leasing of land except by widows, minors and other disabled
persons. Provisions were made for protection of the sharecroppers and other
tenants from forcible and illegal eviction by landowner.

iv) The land ceiling act was enacted in 1960s to legally stipulate maximum
size beyond which no individual farmer or farm household could hold any
land for ensuring equitable distribution of income and property.

v) The idea of collective farming for the development of reclaimed waste lands
on which landless labourers could be employed was encouraged.

The land reforms introduced after independence however, further led to the
concentration of land in the hands of the large landowners. The fundamental
provision, “land to the tiller” was subverted by large landowners who to a large
extent got evicted long-term tenants prior to the enactment of the legislation.
Further, the basic objectives of the Land Ceiling Act were largely defeated by
the big landlords and other vested interests through fictitious divisions of land,
mere paper entries in the records through the benami transaction or fake ownership
of holdings, fraudulent means adopted in the distribution of land to the landless
and poor peasants, conflict with the law of inheritance and illiteracy of the
peasants.

Also, ideas like joint-farming met with little success as were practised as a
convenient method to by-pass land reforms by the privileged classes and garnering
facilities as loans from government agencies.

Mencher (2002: 216-17) points out that the state has shifted its focus from land
redistribution to increasing ‘efficiency’ of agriculture. The growing corporatisation
and commercialisation of agriculture led to land consolidation, introduction of
capital intensive farming techniques, mono-cropping and export crop production.
This has made medium and small farmers and landless agricultural labours
unemployed and driven them to a state of abjection. The capital intensive
agriculture and its implications in heightening of rural inequalities first became
visible with the introduction of Green Revolution by the Indian state in 1960s.
The Green Revolution entailed introducing modern methods and technology
such as high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds, tractors, irrigation facilities, pesticides
and fertilizers. This required heavy investments and could be afforded only by
the large landholders and rich farmers. According to P.C. Joshi (1974), in Punjab
and Haryana the trend that emerged was that small landowners rented their land
to big farmers who needed a larger land spread to use their machinery profitably.
This while enriched the large landowners; it pushed the landless workers into
misery and unemployment.

Activity 2

Increase in number of farmers committing suicide in India is a reflection of

agrarian class inequalities and state failure to address rural poverty. Note down
your views on the issue in your note book.

b) Agrarian Class Structure and Class Relations

The agrarian social structure varies regionally. Every region has diverse groups
and classes that occupy certain positions in order to control and manage the
152
affairs of the land. A.R. Desai and Daniel Thorner are prominent scholars to Class, Power and Inequality
have constructed general frameworks for classifying agrarian classes found in
post independence India. These frameworks reflect hierarchies of income and
wealth/property in agrarian society, throwing light on prevailing economic
inequality. The land reforms, emergence of cooperatives and credit societies failed
to reduce the power of the landlords as seen in the earlier section.

A.R. Desai (1959) enumerates the most popular conceptions of agrarian social
structure as consisting of four classes: the three classes in the agricultural field
(categories of cultivators) are constituted by land­ owners, tenants, and labourers,
while the fourth class is of non-agricultur­ists.

Daniel Thorner (1956) rejected the above classification of cultivators as landlords,

tenants, and labourers. In his view the same man can belong simultaneously to
these categories. A person can himself cultivate a few acres of land he owns,
give some land on rent, and in emergency may work on other’s field as labourer.
He has analysed agrarian relations by using three specific terms:
• Malik for agricultural landlords,
• Kisan for working peasants (including tenants) with inferior rights in land
than maliks and
• Mazdoor for agricultural labourers who work on others lands/plot.
He has arrived at this categorisation using the following criteria:
i) Type of income obtained from land as rent or fruits of own cultivation or
wages.
ii) The nature of rights may vary as derived from proprietary and ownership or
tenancy or sharecropping claims.
iii) The extent of fieldwork actually performed. There may be those who do
not work at all (absentee), those who perform partial work, actual cultivators
doing total work with family labour, those who work for others and earn
wages.
Check Your Progress 2
i) How do early nationalists critique the colonial agrarian policy? (Elaborate
in 3 sentences)
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ii) Green Revolution contributed to increase disparities in agrarian India.
Discuss (Explain in a sentence)
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Critiques
iii) Enumerate Daniel Thorner’s classification of agrarian classes.
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11.4 CLASS DIFFERENCES IN URBAN INDIA

Class inequality and differentiation of income and wealth is a phenomenon true
not only to agrarian India. Occupation and income based distinctions are evident
in urban areas as rural counterparts. Thus, the economic distinctions and
hierarchical positioning exemplified by capitalists and working class in industries
of urban India show a considerable overlap with that of landlords and landless
labourers in agrarian society. This reinforces the universalistic character of class-
based distinctions and variations exempting us from the need for making a detailed
elaboration on urban classes. However, unlike agrarian classes, classes in urban
areas derive income from engagement in non-agricultural employment.
Consequently, a brief overview of social classes in urban context is necessary.

11.4.1 Types of Social Classes

Broadly, following social classes are typical to urban India:

Industrial Capitalist Class : This class grew during the colonial rule out of the
pre-existing mercantile class. Economically and socially it is the strongest. After
independence, the major fields like agriculture, industry and trade were left to
the private individuals. The creation of infrastructure and establishment of heavy
industries were taken off by the state sector. This type of economy led to a
phenomenal rise in the number of industries owned and controlled by the
capitalists. Industrial business houses like the Tata and Birla showing
concentration of assets, resources emerged post independence. Profit seeking
and capital accumulation is the primary goal of this class. As a result of its
economic position this class exercises a significant influence on state as is
examined in the following section.

White Collar Working Class: The class is constituted by all those engaged in
administrative, managerial and other service related works. The professionals,
managers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, bureaucrats are white collar
workers. In short, the white collar working class is that of non-manual and mental
workers. The educational qualifications and technical competence and expertise
of the members of white collar class make them a part of skilled workforce in
urban India. This class receives a salary for work and is economically well-off
for its members may be a part of upper and middle brackets of income hierarchy.

This class started emerging during British rule as there was an expansion of
modern industry, agriculture, commerce, finance, administration, press and other
154 fields of social life. Rapid industrialisation, urbanisation and globalisation in
post-independent India further created large-scale employment opportunities in Class, Power and Inequality
industries, trade and commerce, construction, transport and service etc. Similarly,
the post independent state created a massive institutional set-up comprising a
complex bureaucratic structure throughout the length and breadth of the country.
The white collar class hardly constitutes a homogeneous category. Within this
non-proprietary class of non-manual workers, a deep hierarchy exists. There are
some high paid cadres at the top, representing upper and middle brackets of
income hierarchy and low paid at the bottom that have not crystallised into a
well-defined middle class. They differ in their style of life as well.

Small Entrepreneurs: This class consists of, petty businessmen, traders and
shop keepers. It has developed with the growth of modern cities and towns. It
constitutes the link between the producers of goods and commodities and the
mass of consumers. Its members make their living on the profit margin of the
process on which they buy and sell their goods. The unprecedented growth of
cities in the post independent India has stimulated a large-scale growth of this
class. The growing urban population creates demands for various kinds of needs
and services. Petty shop-keeping, enterprises and trading caters to these needs.
The bulk of city dwellers and rural migrants who lack adequate educational
qualification, and hence the entry to the organised sector is closed to them set up
small-scale production units or petty businesses. The scale of these is generally
small, requiring minimal capital investment. Most of these units and businesses
are run as home-based enterprises.

Working Class: The working class in urban India is constituted by manual and
blue-collar workers performing semi-skilled and unskilled jobs. The working
class sell their labour power in discrete amounts of time or output in return of a
wage. The working class comprises those who are in an entirely subordinate
role. It emerged during British rule in India as a result of setting up of modern
industries, railways and plantations. It was formed predominantly out of the
pauperised peasants and ruined artisans. Like all other classes in post independent
India the working class has grown in volume. The members of working class are
distributed in different parts and different sectors of the industry. A large part of
this class is constituted by the workers in the unorganised sector. Thus, it is
heterogeneous and diverse.

Unionisation goes a long way in the fight for worker’s rights. (Pic credit: radicalnotes.org)
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Critiques The diversity in the working class is due to a complex set of relations in the
different sectors of urban employment. In the post independent India, the
government’s attitude towards the industrial working class has been considerably
favourable. Several acts and provisions were instituted by the government granting
some facilities to the workers. Trade union movements have taken place in
independent India. However, the workers in the unorganised sector who work as
invisible labour in home-based industry in the absence of adequate government
support, continue to live on the margins of society. They get low wages and are
denied the benefits of the organised labour force. The process of economic
liberalisation and globalisation has added to their state of abjection.

Box 3: Class Differences and Female Work-Force Participation in

Urban India

The post-independence India is marked by growing industrialisation and

urbanisation with which emerged new contexts of marginalisation and
exploitation of women. For the upper and middle class women it signals
emergence into a different kind of economic sphere-the service sector,
professions etc., into which they will have to face the challenges of patriarchy.
Notwithstanding is their poor participation in these spheres and constitution
of female work-force, premised on the separation of public/masculine from
private/feminine spheres.

For poor women urban contexts imply move into modern industrialised sector
indicating the emergence of new forms of challenges visible in the form of
conditions of industrialisation (unequal wages, migration and housing), along
with the attendant patriarchal practices. Also, visible is ready absorption in
informal sector of urban milieu as domestic-workers and labour in home-
based industry.

Check Your Progress 3

i) Complete the following sentences by filling in the blank spaces:
a) The working class in urban India is constituted by..............................
b) The............................................................ are white collar workers.
c) The class of ................... has developed with the growth of modern
cities and towns.

11.5 THE DOMINANT CLASS MODEL:

INEQUALITY AND CHANGE
There are scholarly writings which indicate that post independent India is marked
by the dominance of three classes. Their occupational positioning, ownership of
land and income/wealth give them a significant clout and basis to exercise power
over the masses. Often, these groups come in nexus with the state and garner all
the development benefits robbing the masses of development gains that the latter
sets for them. However, onset of globalisation marks a paradigm shift in economic
practises, which along with electoral democracy makes it imperative for state/
government to take care of the interests of the marginalised groups.

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11.5.1 Conceptual Framework Class, Power and Inequality

Reviewing the planned economic development in India in the first three decades

since Independence, Bardhan in The Political Economy of Development, (1984)
identified three dominant proprietary classes as the industrial capitalists, agrarian
capitalists/rich farmers and the professionals consisting of the civil and military
bureaucracy and white-collar workers of all kinds, which have played a significant
influence on the scope and nature of state policy. These three classes form the
ruling bloc in India. They protect and promote their own interests by using the
state.

Nevertheless, the role of the state has been significant. It is an autonomous entity
exercising not only political and legal powers but controls a substantial share of
economic resources. The state has ownership of large public sector undertakings,
control over the private manufacturing sector through the regime of licensing
and the allocation of credit However, the dominant classes constantly manipulated
and garnered the benefits from the policies and programmes of the state. They
drained the resources of the state, which led to a gradual decline in both public
and private investment in the economy and consequently slowed down the growth.
Fulfilling their vested interests the dominant classes thus, make it virtually
impossible for the state to take measures for the development of the masses.
They have created a passive revolution of capitalism, displacing the poor. The
persistence of mass poverty, inequality of income and unequal distribution of
resources is explainable in terms of their strength and their nexus with the state.

A New Conceptual Framework: Continuity and Shift

Towards the 1990s, according to Partha Chatterjee, the onset of globalisation
and transformations in state’s economic practices led to some changes in the
structure and dynamics of passive revolution.

Box 4: Passive Revolution

The Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of passive

revolution in Prison Notebooks. It relates to elite-engineered socio- political
reform in the state that strengthens the dominant classes by reinforcing political
economy of capitalism.

Sudipta Kaviraj (1988) and Partha Chatterjjee (2008) have deployed the concept
to understand state formation and the manoeuvres and strategies of dominant
classes in the post colonial India.

The weakening of licence regime, easier flow of foreign capital and consumer
goods with changes in the state fiscal policy and opening of public sectors like
telecommunications, transport and banking to private players led to modifications
in the framework of class dominance.

In the changed scenario along with the traditional business houses, the MNCs
and TNCs were to constitute the capitalist class. Further, there has been a distinct
ascendancy of corporate capitalist class as compared to the landed elite. The
autonomy of state in relation to the class of capitalist has become questionable
as there is a growing competition between state governments to woo capitalist
investment, both domestic and foreign. All this reflects the success of the passive
revolution of capitalism, although in its renewed form.
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Critiques However, along with corporate capital is the huge sphere of non-corporate capital
including the peasantry and those who are a part of the informal sector, which is
increasingly getting marginalised with the intensification in state’s focus on
capitalist economic growth. The passive revolution under conditions of electoral
democracy makes it unacceptable and illegitimate for the government to leave
marginalised population to fend for themselves. This carries the risk of turning
them into “dangerous classes”. Hence, a whole series of governmental policies
are devised to reverse the effects of growing capitalism. In short, the marginalised
classes have to be fed, clothed and given work which is the difficult and innovative
process of politics on which the future of passive revolution under conditions of
democracy depends.

Check Your Progress 4

i) Who constituted the dominant class in the early decades of post
independence India. (State in 1 sentence)
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ii) Briefly spell out the reasons which have attributed to change and
modification in the dominant class framework.
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11.6 LET US SUM UP

The unit has reflected on the institution of class and the resultant economic
hierarchies and divisions in Indian social reality. A review has been made of
class-based inequalities in rural and urban contexts. Class-based inequality may
be understood in terms of distinctions in income and wealth that is closely
connected to a person’s occupational status in the present context.

In the contemporary Indian context along with caste, class has emerged as a
strong force to reckon with. The close association between class status and
political power and the concept of dominant class illustrate the point. However,
though class status has become a significant basis to exercise power and control
in the wake of electoral democracy the marginalised groups and lower classes
cannot be overlooked.
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 Class, Power and Inequality
11.7 REFERENCES 
Bardhan, P. (1999). The Political Economy of Development in India: Expanded
edition with an epilogue on the political economy of reform in India. OUP
Catalogue.

Beteille, Andre. (1966). Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of

Stratification in a Tanjore Village. Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

Chatterjee, P. (2008). Classes, capital and Indian democracy. Economic and

Political Weekly, 89-93.

Desai, A.R . (1959). Rural Sociology in India. The Indian Society of Agricultural
Economics. Bombay,

Joshi, P. C. (1974). Land reform and Agrarian change in India and Pakistan since
1947: 1. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 1(2), 164-185.

Joshi, P. C. (1967). Pre-independence thinking on agrarian policy. Economic and

Political Weekly, 447-456.

Kaviraj, S. (1988). A critique of the passive revolution. Economic and Political

weekly, 2429-2444.

Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (ed.) (1989). Recasting Women. essays in
Colonial History. Kali for Women.

Mencher, Joana. (2002). what happened to land reform? In Sujata Patel et al

(ed.) Thinking Social Science in India: Essays in Honour of Alice Thorner .Sage,
2002. (pp. 213 to 226)

Thorner, Daniel. (1956). Agrarian Prospects in Inda. Delhi, Allied Publishers.

11.8 SPECIMEN ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR

PROGRESS
Check Your Progress 1
i) Complete the following sentences by filling in the blank spaces:
a) Jajmani is a system of traditional occupational obligations/patron-client
ties.
b) A person’s caste status is fixed at birth and hereditarily ascribed, unlike
his class status which is flexible as is based on wealth/income and may
be achieved.
c) The significance of class vis-à-vis caste as a basis to stratification and
ranking in Indian society is recent.
Check Your Progress 2
i) How do early nationalists critique the colonial agrarian policy? (Elaborate
in 3 sentences)

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Critiques Since the late nineteenth century the early nationalists had been critical of the
colonial policy of land including the oppressive revenue system. Both Justice
Ranade and R.C. Dutta questioned the colonial state for overlooking the
institutional structure, namely, the traditional land relations, which had a direct
bearing on economic backwardness and required drastic state intervention for
restructuring. However, unlike the later nationalists they could not suggest
adequate measures for resolving agrarian inequality.

ii) The Green revolution contributed to increase disparities in agrarian India.

(Explain in 1 sentence)

The Green Revolution entailed introduction of capital intensive agriculture

methods and techniques and hence, benefitted only the large landholders
and rich farmers leading to increase in disparities in agrarian India.

iii) Enumerate Daniel Thorner’s classification of agrarian classes.

Daniel Thorner has analysed agrarian relations by using three specific terms:
Malik for agricultural landlords, Kisan for working peas­ants (including
tenants), and Mazdoor for agricultural labourers.
Check Your Progress 3
i) Complete the following sentences by filling in the blank spaces:
a) The working class in urban India is constituted by workers performing
manual and blue-collar jobs.
b) The professionals, managers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers,
bureaucrats are white collar workers.
c) The class of small entrepreneurs has developed with the growth of
modern cities and towns.
Check Your Progress 4
i) Who constituted the dominant class in the early decades of post independence
India? (State in 1 sentence)

Bardhan in The Political Economy of Development, (1984) identified the

industrial capitalists, agrarian capitalists/rich farmers and the professionals
consisting of the civil and military bureaucracy and white-collar workers as
the three dominant classes in post independence India.

ii) Briefly spell out the reasons which have attributed to change and modification
in the dominant class framework.

The weakening of licence regime, easier flow of foreign capital and consumer
goods with changes in the state fiscal policy and opening of some of sectors
like telecommunications, transport and banking to private players have led
to modifications in the earlier framework of class dominance.

iii) The notion of Passive Revolution may also be added.

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