Revision summary
Society shapes political attitudes through family, caste, class, school, and media. That shaping can be civic trust or prejudice sold as culture. Internationalizing is the travel of attitudes via diaspora, platforms, NGOs, and global rights language. Borrowed frames can protect a minority or skip a local worker’s justice. The officer hears society but measures it by the Constitution, not the loudest sabha.
Model answer
Introduction
Political attitudes are likes and dislikes toward parties, rights, and the State. Society plants them at home and in the street. In a wired century the same society also sends those attitudes across borders, and imports others. The role is powerful, and it is not automatically ethical.
Body
How society shapes political attitudes
- Family and caste are first classrooms: a child inherits a party colour or a silence about a massacre before any textbook.
- Religion, class, and region teach who is “us”; Almond and Verba’s civic culture already showed that trust and participation are social before they are official.
- School, campus, union, and panchayat add a second layer: a teacher’s story of Ambedkar or a local patron’s bounty.
- Media and now social media compress rumour and manifesto into the same feed.
- Example: a riot neighbourhood can produce a lasting communal vote more firmly than a manifesto paragraph.
Critical limits of that shaping
- Society can plant prejudice, majoritarianism, and clientelism and then call them “culture.”
- Elite capture: a chamber of commerce or a caste association may speak as “society” while the landless are unheard.
- The State and the party also shape society; the arrow is not one-way.
- Gender: political attitudes of women have often been treated as the household’s echo, which is itself a social failure.
Internationalizing political attitudes
- Internationalizing here is the travel of attitudes across borders: diaspora voting debates, satellite news, climate marches, feminist hashtags, and human-rights frames that enter a district meeting.
- Global NGOs, UN days, and trade unions teach a language of rights that a local movement can borrow.
- India’s own attitudes also travel: non-alignment memory, yoga diplomacy, and majoritarian online speech all find foreign audiences.
- Example: a farmers’ protest that draws overseas commentary, or a Black Lives Matter frame used in a local police-reform debate, is society internationalizing attitude.
Critical view of internationalization
- Cosmopolitan rights can shame a local cruelty and support a minority.
- Imported slogans can skip local justice: a campus copies a foreign culture war while a sanitation worker still has no contract.
- Information imperialism and paid influence operations can manufacture an attitude that looks homegrown.
- A closed society that refuses all foreign norms can also hide patriarchy as sovereignty.
Ethical administrative reading
- The officer should hear social attitudes without treating the loudest sabha as the Constitution.
- International norms (CEDAW, climate duties) are aids to Article 14 and 21, not a replacement for the Gazette.
- Civic education, a free press, and a secular public school are how society can shape attitudes toward fraternity rather than toward a hunt.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD S[Society] --> A[Political attitudes] A --> L[Local vote identity] A --> I[Cross-border frames] I --> R[Rights or culture war] L --> C[Constitution as measure]
Conclusion
Society is the first factory of political attitudes, through family, caste, class, and media. It also internationalizes those attitudes through diaspora, platforms, and global rights talk. Critically, the same factory can stamp prejudice or liberation; the Constitution, not the loudest custom, remains the officer’s measure.
Quick related
Students also ask
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As an administrator, develop an intervention programme for attitude change in "Corruption-Free India".
Next question in the 2024 paper (Q17). View answer →
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Does internationalizing mean losing Indian culture?
No. It means attitudes now travel. Culture remains; the ethical test is whether the imported or exported attitude respects dignity.
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Is the family still the main shaper?
It is still first. Peers and platforms now compete earlier, which is why a closed home and an open phone can split one child.
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