Revision summary
Structural transformation moves work toward industry and services. In India it is partial; many still live by the farm. Jajmani becomes cash contract, not a vanished caste. Migration and machines remake attached labour as gangs. Dominant-caste land and panchayat brokerage persist.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Structural transformation is the shift of labour and output from agriculture toward industry and services. In India it has been incomplete, so agrarian social relationships change without fully disappearing.
Body
What transformed
- Green Revolution belts produced surplus, machines, and hired labour. Jajmani grain shares thinned where cash wages paid the harvest.
- Urban services and construction pull circular migrants, as Jan Breman showed, so the attached farm servant becomes a seasonal gang worker.
- Land ceiling and tenancy laws weakened some landlords. Dominant-caste land often remained, now farmed with machines and migrants.
Impact on relationships
- Jajmani hereditary service gives way to contract. The carpenter may still be a caste neighbour, but the tie is a bill.
- Caste hierarchy does not vanish. It reappears in who owns the harvester, who migrates, and who sits in the 73rd Amendment chair.
- Women take more field work as men leave, without equal land title.
- Tribal agrarian ties break faster where mines and forests replace the plough, a harsher transformation than Punjab’s wage harvest.
Incomplete shift
- A large workforce still depends on agriculture. That is why faction, kin, and village remain political facts, as Dube already saw under Community Development.
- N. K. Bose’s civilisation of ranked occupations meets a labour market that ranks by education and network, still caste-shaped social capital.
Reading
- Structural change commodifies labour. It does not automatically produce class without caste. Traditional relationships are monetised more than they are abolished.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD A[Agrarian order] --> G[Green Revolution cash wage] A --> M[Migration services] J[Jajmani] --> C[Contract] L[Caste land] --> L
Conclusion
India’s structural transformation monetised agrarian ties and sent labour to town. Jajmani thinned. Caste land and brokerage remain the rural social structure under a new wage skin.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Describe the traditional patterns of settlement of Indian villages
Next question on this syllabus topic (2016 · Q3(c)). View answer →
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Has India left the agrarian society?
Output shares shifted more than labour shares. Village relationships still matter.
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Did class replace caste on the farm?
Class language grew. Caste still sorts land, marriage, and the contractor.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2016 · Q3(a) · Anthropology GS 2 · 20 marks
Examine the structural and cultural theories of caste system in India
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