Revision summary
Anthropology treats development as social process, not as a drawing. Dube showed Community Development hitting faction at Shamirpet. Elwin tied tribal development to land protection. Village monographs trained the rural bureaucracy to see caste. PESA and FRA carry ethnographic ideas of custom and nistar into law.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
The anthropological perspective on development treats a scheme as a social process among real groups, not as a budget drawing. Indian anthropologists put that view into village studies and into the state.
Body
Perspective
- Development is culture change with winners and brokers. S. C. Dube showed this when Community Development met Shamirpet factions.
- Verrier Elwin insisted that tribal development must not mean loss of land. Isolation versus integration is a development debate, not only a museum debate.
- Later applied anthropology added participation: villagers as analysts, which PRA borrowed. The perspective is sceptical of trickle-down and of a single modernisation ladder.
Contributions in rural India
- Monographs by Dube, Srinivas, and Marriott trained administrators to see caste and faction inside the block office.
- Elwin in NEFA and anthropologists in Tribal Research Institutes wrote handbooks that shaped ITDP manners, if not always ITDP outcomes.
- Land and forest ethnography fed PESA and FRA arguments: nistar, shifting plots, and Gram Sabha as living law.
- Evaluation of nutrition, boarding schools, and displacement is now a standard anthropological job in rural programmes.
Limit
- Contribution is diagnosis and some statute language. It has not stopped leakage. The field still meets the contractor.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD A[Anthropological view] --> S[Scheme as social process] S --> D[Dube Shamirpet] S --> E[Elwin land] S --> P[PESA FRA participation]
Conclusion
Anthropology sees development as structured social change. In India it contributed village realism, tribal caution, and the intellectual ground of PESA and FRA, not a magic rural plan.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Relevance of caste in contemporary Indian politics
Next question on this syllabus topic (2016 · Q1(c)). View answer →
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Is the anthropological view anti-development?
It is anti-blind development. It asks who gains land and who gains only a meeting.
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Did anthropologists run ITDPs?
Rarely as line bosses. They wrote the critique and some of the protective law.
Same topic · past papers
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These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2024 · Q6(b) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
Elucidate the difference between secularism, religiosity, religious fundamentalism, and spiritualism from an anthropological perspective. -
2015 · Q2(b) · Anthropology GS 2 · 15 marks
Briefly describe the classical models of ethnic and linguistic classification of Indian population. Discuss its relevance today
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