Revision summary
Landless and marginal farmers lose fields, commons, and village wages. Compensation follows title, so the landless are structurally excluded. Dalit and Adivasi households are hit hardest. Women’s work and water vanish with the commons. Resettlement that ignores livelihood recreates urban poverty.
Model answer
Introduction
Development displacement hits the rural landless and marginal farmers first because they have the least title and the weakest voice. Dams, mines, highways, and SEZs turn them from poor peasants into informal migrants.
Body
Who loses
- Marginal farmers lose tiny plots and common-property grazing and forest that actually fed them.
- The landless lose wages on those fields and access to commons; compensation usually follows patta, not labour.
- Adivasi and Dalit households are over-represented, as Narmada and coal belts showed.
Effects
- A. R. Desai’s class lens: surplus is nationalised as growth, risk is privatised as poverty.
- Women lose fuel, water, and field work; feminization of poverty follows the move.
- Cities receive slum labour. The village loses a generation of agrarian security.
Policy gap
- Resettlement that counts acres, not livelihoods, fails Thorner’s mazdoor.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD DV[Dam mine SEZ] --> LF[Loss of plot and commons] LF --> MG[Migrant informal labour] LL[Landless no patta] --> MG
Conclusion
Displacement through development proletarianises the already weak. Without commons, wages, and consent, growth is a class project against the landless and the marginal farmer.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Issues relating to the informal labour market in urban India.
Next question in the 2015 paper (Q5). View answer →
-
Do jobs in the project repair the loss?
A few skilled posts appear. Most displaced become casual labour.
-
Is this only an Adivasi issue?
Adivasis are central. Dalit landless and small peasants in plains projects suffer too.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2019 · Q5(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the challenges in Implementing the Rural Development Programmes in India -
2019 · Q5(d) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Comment on the changing democratic profile of India -
2018 · Q6(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Has Green Revolution led to the formation of new power elite in rural India? Elaborate your answer. -
2018 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Write a note on Basic Services to Urban Poet (BSUP) and Integrated Housing and Slum Development (IHSD) programme provided for the urban poor. -
2017 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Write a short note a changing means of production and increased rural poverty -
2017 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Compare the pressing problems of a dalit poor family living in an urban slum with a similar type of family living in a rural setting -
2016 · Q4(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for rural development -
2016 · Q5(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Write a note on the uneven impact of 'Green Revolution' on rural society.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Verrier Elwin's views on freedom for the tribals
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Elwin defined tribal freedom as protection of land, language, and self-rule. He rejected Ghurye’s assimilation of tribe into Hindu society. Isolation was a shield, not a museum, until contact was fair. Nehruvian Panchsheel borrowed this caution. Law now tries to keep that freedom as rights inside the state.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Jyotirao Phule as an agrarian radical
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Phule linked caste domination to the robbery of the peasant. Gulamgiri and the cultivator’s whip made tillers the centre of critique. Satyashodhak schools attacked the knowledge monopoly that kept the field unfree. He is closer to anti-caste agrarian politics than to mild temple reform. Class language came later; the landlord-priest pair was already his target.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2015 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Louis Dumont's perspective on Indian caste system
Caste System
Dumont treats caste as a hierarchical ideology of purity and impurity. Power and wealth are real but encompassed by ritual rank. Homo hierarchicus contrasts with Western equality as a value. Sripuram and Rampura show class and dominant caste that the ideology does not fix. The perspective is necessary for values, insufficient for land and politics.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.