Change and Development in Rural Society

Why this chapter matters for UPSC: Land reform, the Green Revolution, migration and agrarian distress are asked in GS1 and GS3 almost every year, and this chapter gives the sociologist's version of each: who owns land and why, which reforms worked and which did not, who gained from the Green Revolution, and why farmers' suicides became "matrix events". Mains has asked why the Green Revolution bypassed the eastern region, what drives the feminisation of agriculture, how land reforms helped small farmers where they succeeded, and whether contract farming is the answer to shrinking holdings. NCERT's terms (dominant caste, differentiation, patronage to exploitation, footloose labour) are the ones examiners reward. The 2026-27 reprint keeps the chapter almost whole (changes listed below).

Contemporary hook: The chapter's central fact, that most rural people depend on a farm economy that cannot employ them well, still holds. NCERT says 69 per cent of Indians lived in rural areas in 2011; the Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2025 finds agriculture's share of employment down to 43.0 per cent, from 44.8 per cent in 2024 (MoSPI). Rural employment policy changed on 1 July 2026, when the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act was repealed and replaced by the VB-G RAM G Act, which guarantees 125 days of work.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

Land is property, means of production and a way of life. NCERT starts from the link between agriculture and culture: harvest festivals such as Pongal, Bihu, Baisakhi and Ugadi mark the agricultural year. But land is unequally distributed. In some regions 40 to 50 per cent of families own no land at all and depend on labour. Access to land shapes the rural class structure, and in rural India class is entangled with caste: dominant landowning castes on one side, landless Dalit and low-caste labourers on the other.

Reform from above changed the agrarian structure less than technology did. Land reforms after 1947 removed the zamindars but left landlordism, tenancy and sharecropping in most places, and ceiling laws were evaded. The Green Revolution changed much more where it went, but it favoured medium and large farmers and well-irrigated regions, so the outcome was "differentiation": the rich grew richer while many of the poor stagnated.

Commercialisation turned rural labour into wage labour and moved it. Hereditary bonds between landlords and labourers loosened into cash wages ("patronage to exploitation"), workers began circulating between poor and prosperous regions as "footloose labour", women became the main agricultural workforce in many areas, and liberalisation exposed farmers to global markets, input companies and debt.

PART 1 — Quick Reference

Caste and Class in the Agrarian Structure (NCERT)

Land Reforms After Independence: NCERT's Three Categories

The Green Revolution: Gains and Social Costs

What the 2026-27 Reprint Changed

The examples of the halpati and jeeta bonded-labour systems and the northern Bihar Bhumihar village were dropped; the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana is now described as "launched in 2014"; and the list of schemes at the end of section 4.6 now names the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Gram Uday se Bharat Uday Abhiyan, the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture and the Kisan Credit Card. The argument, the Green Revolution section, Breman, contract farming, farmers' suicides and the eight exercise questions remain.

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

Agriculture and Rural Life

India is "primarily a rural society though urbanisation is growing": 69 per cent of people lived in rural areas in 2011, by NCERT's figure. Agriculture is the most important livelihood, but "the rural is not just agriculture": artisans (potters, carpenters, weavers, ironsmiths, goldsmiths), specialists (story-tellers, astrologers, priests, water-distributors, oil-pressers) and service castes were part of the village economy. Their numbers have declined since the colonial period, as Chapter 1 showed. Today many rural residents earn their living in rural non-farm work: government services such as the postal and education departments, factories, the army.

Agrarian Structure: Caste and Class

Agricultural land is "the single most important resource and form of property in rural society", and it is unequally distributed. In some regions most households own at least a small plot; in others 40 to 50 per cent of families own none and live by agricultural labour. A few families are well off; the majority live just above or below the poverty line. The agrarian structure is the structure or distribution of landholding, and because land is the main productive resource, access to it largely decides one's role in production and one's class. Medium and large landowners can earn sufficient or large incomes (depending on prices and the monsoon). Agricultural labourers are "more often than not paid below the statutory minimum wage", are mostly daily-wage workers and have no work for many days of the year, which is underemployment. Tenants earn less than owner-cultivators because rent can take 50 to 75 per cent of the crop.

The class structure works through caste, but not neatly. Higher castes often have more land, yet in most areas Brahmins are not major landowners. In each region one or two landowning castes are also numerically important; M.N. Srinivas called them dominant castes: the Jats and Rajputs of UP, Vokkaligas and Lingayats in Karnataka, Kammas and Reddis in Andhra Pradesh, Jat Sikhs in Punjab. Most marginal farmers and the landless belong to SC, ST or OBC groups, and in many regions Dalits were not allowed to own land and provided most of the agricultural labour, which let landowners cultivate intensively.

So a "proprietary caste" owns most resources and commands labour. Until recently begar, free labour for a fixed number of days a year to the village zamindar or landlord, was common in parts of northern India, and many of the working poor were tied to landowners in hereditary labour relationships, such as the halpati system in Gujarat (Breman 1974) and the jeeta system in Karnataka. "Although such practices have been abolished legally, they continue to exist in many areas." The national law is the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, deemed in force from 25 October 1975, under which "the bonded labour system shall stand abolished". NCERT's Box 4.1 adds that where irrigation was assured, as in the rice-growing Kaveri delta of Tamil Nadu, intensive cultivation needed more labour, and "the most unequal agrarian structures developed", with many landless and often bonded labourers from the lowest castes (Kumar 1998).

Women are usually excluded from owning land because of patrilineal kinship and inheritance. By law they have an equal share of family property; in reality they have limited rights and access only as part of a male-headed household.

The Colonial Background

There are historical reasons why each region is dominated by one or two groups. Before colonial rule, the same cultivating castes probably worked the land but were not its direct owners: local kings or zamindars, usually of Kshatriya or other high castes, controlled the land and took a large share of the produce. The British often ruled through these zamindars and gave them property rights and more control over land than before. Because the colonial state also imposed heavy land revenue, zamindars squeezed cultivators, and under the zamindari system agricultural production "stagnated or declined during much of the period of British rule"; peasants fled oppressive landlords, and famines and wars reduced the population.

Areas under direct British rule had the raiyatwari system, in which the "actual cultivators" (who were themselves often landlords, not cultivators) paid the tax directly. With no overlord in between, the tax burden was lighter, cultivators had more incentive to invest, and these areas became "relatively more productive and prosperous". The present agrarian structure evolved from these colonial arrangements.

Land Reforms in Independent India

After independence, Nehru and his advisers combined planned industrialisation with agrarian reform, responding to low productivity, dependence on imported foodgrains and intense rural poverty. From the 1950s to the 1970s, a series of land reform laws were passed at the national and State levels, in three main categories.

1. Abolition of the zamindari system removed the intermediaries between cultivators and the state. It was "probably the most effective" reform: in most areas it took away the zamindars' superior rights and weakened their power, strengthening actual landholders and cultivators. But it "did not wipe out landlordism or the tenancy or sharecropping systems"; it "only removed the top layer of landlords in the multi-layered agrarian structure".
2. Tenancy abolition and regulation acts tried to outlaw tenancy or regulate rents. In most States they were never implemented effectively; in West Bengal and Kerala there was "a radical restructuring of the agrarian structure that gave land rights to the tenants".
3. Land Ceiling Acts set an upper limit on land a family may own, varying with productivity (low ceilings for very productive land, higher for dry land), with surplus land to be taken over and given to landless families and other categories such as SCs and STs. In most States they "proved to be toothless": landowners divided land among relatives and servants in benami transfers, keeping control in fact if not in name, and some rich farmers divorced their wives while continuing to live with them, because the law allowed a separate share for unmarried women but not for wives.

NCERT's activity asks students to find out about the Bhoodan movement and Operation Barga. Its verdict: although the agrarian structure has changed substantially since colonial times, it "remains highly unequal", which constrains productivity; land reform is needed not only for growth but to eradicate rural poverty and bring social justice.

The Green Revolution and Its Social Consequences

The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was a government programme of agricultural modernisation, largely funded by international agencies, providing high-yielding variety (HYV) or hybrid seeds with pesticides, fertilisers and other inputs. It went only to areas with assured irrigation and mainly to wheat and rice, so the first wave reached Punjab, western UP, coastal Andhra Pradesh and parts of Tamil Nadu. Productivity rose sharply and India became self-sufficient in foodgrains "for the first time in decades".

Sociologists who studied these areas pointed to its social costs:

• Who gained. Inputs were expensive, so medium and large farmers benefited most. NCERT distinguishes peasants, who practise subsistence agriculture and produce mainly for themselves, from farmers, who produce a surplus for the market; it was farmers who reaped most of the gains.
• Displacement. Landowners took land back from tenants to cultivate it directly; machinery (tillers, tractors, threshers, harvesters) in areas such as Punjab and parts of Madhya Pradesh displaced the service castes who did these tasks, speeding rural-urban migration.
• Differentiation. "The rich grew richer and many of the poor stagnated or grew poorer." Employment and wages rose in many areas, but rising prices and the shift from payment in kind (grain) to cash "actually worsened the economic condition of most rural workers".
• The second phase, from the 1980s, spread Green Revolution practices to dry and semi-arid regions: dry to wet cultivation, new crops, and commercial crops such as cotton. Dependence on the market increased insecurity, and the move from a multi-crop system that spread risk to mono-cropping left nothing to fall back on when a crop failed.
• Regional inequality. The programme was promoted more in the west and south and in Punjab, Haryana and western UP than in the east (Das 1999). Bihar, eastern UP and dry regions such as Telangana remained relatively undeveloped, kept an entrenched "feudal" agrarian structure, and have seen violence, including inter-caste violence.
• Lost knowledge. Farmers' traditional knowledge and seed varieties are being lost as hybrid, high-yielding and genetically modified seeds are promoted as "scientific" (Gupta 1998; Vasavi 1999). Many scientists and farmers' movements now suggest a return to organic seeds and methods. In Box 4.2 an elderly woman of Madbhavi village contrasts the sampurna (wholeness) of the local crop with "hibrad": "even the children are hybrid" (Vasavi 1994).

Transformations in Rural Society After Independence

Especially in Green Revolution regions, four changes transformed rural social relations:

1. more use of agricultural labour as cultivation became intensive;
2. a shift from payment in kind (grain) to payment in cash;
3. a loosening of traditional, hereditary bonds between landowners and labourers (bonded labour); and
4. the rise of a class of "free" wage labourers.

The sociologist Jan Breman described the change in relations between landlords (usually of dominant castes) and labourers (usually low castes) as a shift "from patronage to exploitation" (Breman 1974). Some scholars see this as a transition to capitalist agriculture, because capitalism separates workers from the means of production (land) and uses free wage labour. NCERT notes that commercialisation began in the colonial period: in the nineteenth century large tracts of Maharashtra were given over to cotton linked to the world market. After independence the state invested in irrigation, roads, electricity, inputs and credit through banks and cooperatives. NCERT cites the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (launched in December 2014, per the Ministry of Power) as an effort towards uninterrupted rural power; as reported by the States, every inhabited census village stood electrified by 28 April 2018, 18,374 of them under the scheme (PIB factsheet, 2022). That counts villages, not households.

In agriculturally rich regions (coastal Andhra Pradesh, western UP, central Gujarat) well-to-do farmers of the dominant castes invested agricultural profits in business, producing new entrepreneurial groups that moved into growing towns and became new regional elites, economically and politically dominant (Rutten 1995). Private professional colleges in rural and semi-urban areas let them educate their children for professional and white-collar work, feeding the urban middle class. So in areas of rapid development, the old landed groups consolidated into "a dynamic entrepreneurial, rural-urban dominant class". In eastern UP and Bihar, the lack of effective land reform, political mobilisation and redistribution meant little change. Kerala followed a different path: political mobilisation, redistributive measures and links to an external economy, mainly the Gulf countries, made its countryside a "mixed economy" of some agriculture, retail and services, with many families living on remittances.

Circulation of Labour

As patronage bonds broke and seasonal demand for labour rose in prosperous regions such as Punjab, a pattern of seasonal migration emerged: thousands of workers circulate between home villages and areas with more demand and higher wages. Rising rural inequality from the mid-1990s also forced households to combine several occupations. Men migrate periodically while women, children and the elderly stay behind. Migrants come mainly from drought-prone and less productive regions and go to farms in Punjab and Haryana, brick kilns in UP, or construction sites in cities such as New Delhi or Bangalore. Jan Breman called them "footloose labour", but his 1985 study shows that landless workers "do not have many rights" and are usually not paid the minimum wage. Wealthy farmers prefer migrants for harvesting because they are easier to exploit and can be paid less, which produces a peculiar pattern, especially in sugarcane areas: local labourers leave in the peak season while migrants are brought in. NCERT's exercise asks students to visit a construction site or brickyard and find out about the mukadam, the labour contractor who recruits workers from their villages.

Circulation has changed the sending regions too. Where men spend much of the year away, cultivation has become primarily a female task, and women are emerging as the main source of agricultural labour: the "feminisation of agricultural labour force". Women earn lower wages than men for similar work, were long invisible in official statistics as earners, and are still largely excluded from owning the land they work.

Globalisation, Liberalisation and Rural Society

Liberalisation since the late 1980s has had a very significant impact on agriculture. Participation in the World Trade Organisation requires opening Indian markets to imports, so after decades of state support and protected markets, Indian farmers face global competition: imported fruit on local shelves, and (in the 2021-22 text) a controversial decision to import wheat that reversed the policy of self-reliance in foodgrains and recalled dependence on American grain after independence.

Contract farming. In regions such as Punjab and Karnataka, farmers contract with multinational companies (such as PepsiCo) to grow crops such as tomatoes and potatoes, which the companies buy for processing or export. The company identifies the crop and provides seeds, other inputs, know-how and often working capital; the farmer is assured a market at a predetermined price. It is now common for cut flowers, grapes, figs, pomegranates, cotton and oilseeds. It seems to give security but can increase insecurity as farmers become dependent on companies; export crops such as flowers and gherkins divert land from foodgrains; and it has sociological significance because it "disengages many people from the production process and makes their own indigenous knowledge of agriculture irrelevant". It mainly produces elite items and, needing heavy fertiliser and pesticide doses, is often not ecologically sustainable.

Input companies. More widespread is the entry of multinationals as sellers of seeds, pesticides and fertilisers. As the government scaled down its programmes, agricultural extension agents were replaced in villages by company agents, often farmers' only source of information, with an interest in selling. Dependence on expensive inputs has cut profits, put many farmers into debt and created an ecological crisis.

Farmers' suicides as "matrix events". Distress from drought, crop failure or debt is old, but farmers' suicides appear to be new. Sociologists call them "matrix events": a range of factors "coalesce to form an event". Many who died were marginal farmers trying to raise productivity with Green Revolution methods: production costs rose as subsidies fell, markets were unstable, they borrowed heavily for expensive inputs, and the loss of a crop or an inadequate price left debts they could not bear, compounded by rising costs of marriages, dowries, education and medical care (Vasavi 1999). NCERT adds that agricultural issues are no longer key public issues, so farmers cannot form powerful pressure groups. Box 4.3 links the spate of suicides since 1997-98 to agrarian distress caused by changed landholdings, the shift to cash crops, liberalisation, high-cost inputs, the state's withdrawal from extension, declining state support and individualised farming, and records 8,900 suicides by farmers between 2001 and 2006 in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra (Suri 2006). The national count is published each year by the National Crime Records Bureau in Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India, whose latest edition relates to 2024; quote any figure with its edition.

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

NCERT's Answers to Its Own Exercise Questions

Exam Strategy

For Prelims: dominant caste (Srinivas) and NCERT's examples; begar, halpati (Gujarat), jeeta (Karnataka); raiyatwari vs zamindari; three categories of land reform; benami transfers; first-wave Green Revolution regions; peasant vs farmer; Breman ("patronage to exploitation", "footloose labour"); contract farming (PepsiCo, Punjab and Karnataka); "matrix events"; 8,900 suicides in four States, 2001-06; VB-G RAM G Act in force 1 July 2026 (125 days).

For Mains: for land-reform questions, use NCERT's three categories and verdicts, with West Bengal and Kerala as the exceptions and benami transfers as the reason ceilings failed. For Green Revolution questions, organise by who gained, displacement, differentiation, the second phase and regional inequality. For migration and feminisation, use Breman and NCERT's account of sending regions.

Avoid: calling zamindari abolition the end of landlordism; treating the Green Revolution as uniformly good or bad; writing MGNREGA as the current law; quoting farm-suicide figures without the NCRB edition and year.

Practice Questions

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers). Mains questions 1 to 3 adapt NCERT's own exercises.

Prelims:

1. According to NCERT, which of the following land reform laws was "probably the most effective"?
   (a) Abolition of the zamindari system
   (b) Tenancy regulation acts
   (c) Land ceiling acts
   (d) Consolidation of holdings

2. The phrase "from patronage to exploitation", describing the change in relations between landlords and agricultural labourers, is associated with:
   (a) M.N. Srinivas
   (b) Jan Breman
   (c) Mario Rutten
   (d) A.R. Vasavi

3. Consider the following pairs of bonded or tied labour systems and the States NCERT associates them with:
   

   1. Halpati : Gujarat
      
   2. Jeeta : Karnataka
      
   3. Begar : Kerala
      Which of the pairs given above is/are correctly matched?
      (a) 1 and 2 only
      (b) 2 and 3 only
      (c) 1 and 3 only
      (d) 1, 2 and 3

4. Under the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025, which replaced the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act from 1 July 2026, the number of days of guaranteed employment per rural household per year is:
   (a) 100
   (b) 125
   (c) 150
   (d) 200

Mains:

1. "The agrarian structure in India has changed since colonial times but remains highly unequal." Discuss with reference to land reforms. (250 words)
2. What factors have enabled certain rural groups to transform themselves into new wealthy, entrepreneurial, dominant classes? (150 words)
3. What measures has the government taken, or should it take, to protect the rights of landless agricultural labourers and migrant workers? (250 words)
4. Explain why sociologists describe farmers' suicides as "matrix events". (150 words)

📦 Revision Capsule

Sources

• NCERT, Social Change and Development in India (Class XII), ch. 4 "Change and Development in Rural Society", Boxes 4.1-4.3 (2021-22 print and Reprint 2026-27): 2021 book archive, Wayback copy; 2026-27 book archive.
• Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Periodic Labour Force Survey, annual report 2025, press note: PIB release.
• Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Final Estimates of Production of Foodgrains, Oilseeds and Other Commercial Crops for 2024-25 (released through PIB, November 2025).
• FAO, FAOSTAT, Crops and livestock products (production, 2024): bulk download.
• PIB, PM-KISAN 23rd instalment, 20 June 2026: pib.gov.in.
• PIB backgrounder, "Historic Operationalisation of the VB-G RAM G Act Across All Rural Areas of the Country", 11 May 2026: static.pib.gov.in PDF.
• The Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976: Indian Kanoon; The Farm Laws Repeal Act, 2021 (Act 40 of 2021): Indian Kanoon.
• PIB, "Decrease in Agricultural Holdings" (Agriculture Census), 3 March 2020: pib.gov.in; PIB factsheet, "Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana", Ministry of Power, 2022: static.pib.gov.in PDF; Cabinet approval of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, 13 January 2016 (PIB text): icar.org.in.
• National Crime Records Bureau, Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India (editions page): ncrb.gov.in.