Revision summary
Tertiary work often scatters labour and uses subcontract and platforms. That weakens factory-style formality, unions, and tenure. A bureaucratic core in state and corporate services remains. Feminised care was already informal; services can expand it. Verdict: true for the mass of new jobs, false as a claim about every service.
Model answer
Introduction
- The tertiary sector is services: trade, care, finance, transport, platforms. Formal organisation of work means stable contract, union, office hierarchy, and social security. The statement links service growth to weaker formality. It is largely true for a mass of jobs, and overstated for core offices and big firms.
Body
Why services can weaken formality
- Karl Marx’s classic factory concentrated workers and made class organisation thinkable. Scattered service sites reverse that concentration.
- Max Weber’s bureaucracy still sits in banks and the state. Outsourced canteens, drivers, and gig apps sit outside that staff.
- Informalisation: subcontract, piece-rate, and “self-employed” riders without tenure.
- Feminised care and domestic work, after Ann Oakley, were never inside the male factory form. Tertiary growth can expand that informal care market.
What has actually grown
- Indian PLFS and related labour files show a large informal services mass beside a thin formal core.
- Call centres and IT look formal at the campus gate and weak in contract length, night shifts, and union density.
- Durkheim’s organic solidarity in a service city can be anomic: high division of labour, weak occupational groups.
Limits of the statement
- The tertiary sector also includes tightly organised public administration, hospitals, and corporate HQs.
- Robert K. Merton’s bureaucratic personality still appears in those cores.
- Some platform work is digitally Taylorised: strong control, weak rights. That is organisation without formality of protection.
- Talcott Parsons’s adaptive economy can grow services while the integrative union lags: cultural lag in Ogburn’s sense.
Examination
- The statement holds for the typical new job, not for every service job.
- Formal organisation is not only a factory. It can be rebuilt as portable social security, which politics has only partly done.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD TER[Tertiary growth] --> INF[Informal scattered work] TER --> CORE[Formal offices remain] INF --> WEAK[Weaker unions tenure] CORE --> WEB[Weberian bureaucracy]
Conclusion
Service growth has weakened the classic formal organisation of concentrated, unionised work for many. Marx and Weber explain the lost factory and the split between bureaucratic core and outsourced margin. Examine sector and contract, not the word “tertiary” alone.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Caste ideology appears to have strengthened democracy .Comment.
Next question in the 2015 paper (Q7). View answer →
-
Is IT work informal?
Often formally waged yet weakly unionised and contract-short. Formality is a bundle, not one switch.
-
Did the secondary sector vanish?
No. Manufacturing remains, often itself informalised through supply chains.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2020 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Discuss the new labour codes and their impact on formal and informal labour in India. -
2019 · Q7(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
What is 'informal labour' ? Discuss the need for and challenges in regulating informal labour in the post-industrial society -
2018 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Discuss the nature of social organization of work in capitalist society with reference to the Limits of the working day. -
2017 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
Trace the changing nature of organisation of work in capitalist society over the years -
2016 · Q5(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Describe the nature of social organization of work in industrial society. -
2016 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
"Globalization has pushed the labour into informal organization of work." Substantiate your answer with suitable examples. -
2015 · Q5(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Distinguish between the social organization of work in feudal society and in capitalist society. -
2015 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
"Education helps in perpetuating social and economic inequalities." Critically examine the statement.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Is sociology a science? Give reasons for your answer.
Sociology as Science
Sociology is a science of patterned social relations, not a physics of persons. Comte, Durkheim, and Marx claimed laws, facts, and historical regularities. Weber, Mead, and Merton add meaning, interaction, and middle-range theory. The claim holds as systematic social science, not as laboratory naturalism.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Discuss the relevance of historical method in the study of society.
Sociological Thinkers: Karl Marx
Historical method treats institutions as dated products, not as timeless attitudes. Marx, Weber, and Durkheim all needed sequences of production, domination, and solidarity. Indian caste, law, and Census household forms show path dependence. It situates survey and ethnography; it is not a substitute for them.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
What are variables? Discuss their role in experimental research.
Research Methods and Analysis
A variable is a property with more than one value. Experiments isolate an independent condition and measure a dependent outcome, with controls. Durkheim and Merton already thought in relations among variables. Weber and Mead limit a stimulus–response reading of persons. Most sociology uses quasi-experiments and surveys, not a closed lab.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.