Revision summary
New inequalities grow around private school, health, and metro work. Informal labour is the structure of that split. Acute poverty remains landless, Adivasi, Dalit, and female-headed. Illness and displacement turn poverty sharp. Transformation must join growth to rights in land, wage, and care.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Social transformation in India now meets new inequalities of skill, city, and private service, together with acute poverty that is no longer only a village calorie story. The challenge is dual: glittering growth and a leftover India.
Body
Emerging inequalities
- Post-1991 private education and health split capabilities, which Sen would call unfreedom beside GDP.
- Formal cores with informal peripheries, as Breman’s labour shows, create a two-speed workplace.
- Digital, English, and metro rents add a spatial class. Beteille’s disharmony is now mall versus basti.
Acute poverty
- Landless Dalit and Adivasi households, displaced peasants, and female-headed families remain in depth poverty, which SECC-type counts still catch.
- Urban slum poverty is cash-poor and service-poor at once.
- Feminization of poverty and missing social security make illness an acute trap.
Challenge for transformation
- Sanskritization and planning-era mobility do not map these forms.
- Transformation fails if it is only a larger middle class on a caste-informal base.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD LB[Liberalisation] --> IQ[Private skill metro split] LN[Land caste gender] --> AP[Acute poverty] IQ --> CH[Challenge of transformation] AP[AP] --> CH[CH]
Conclusion
Emerging inequality is credential, metro, and informal dualism. Acute poverty is still caste-land-gender. Social transformation must treat both, or growth will only rearrange the queue.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
What are the major concerns of ethnic identity and religious identity in India?
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q6(b)). View answer →
-
Has poverty vanished with growth?
Headcount poverty fell in many series. Acute pockets and new urban poverty remain.
-
Is inequality only income?
Income matters. Caste humiliation, spatial exclusion, and care burdens are inequalities too.
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.
-
2024 · Q6(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Discuss the major challenges related to women's reproductive health in India. What measures would you suggest to overcome these challenges? -
2017 · Q7(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Despite gains from the women's gender movement and states policy of women empowerment, gender equality is far from achieved. Identify two major challenges the prevent this goal from being reached -
2025 · Q8(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Do you think that forced displacement of labourers has caused their deprivation and resultant inequalities during the recent past years? Elaborate -
2016 · Q4(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Privatization of education and increasing inequalities -
2024 · Q1(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Is patriarchy a key to understanding different forms of inequalities in Indian society? Elaborate.
More from this topic
Q7(b) · UPSC Mains 2026 · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks · Solution
Give a sociological explanation of violence against women in India. What suggestions would you give to mitigate these violences?
Challenges of Social Transformation
• Rooted in structural patriarchy, unequal socialization, and institutionalized gender roles within public and private spheres. • Sustained by family, marriage, and religion, which normalize male dominance and control over women's autonomy. • Intersecting factors like class, caste, and religion expose marginalized women to multiple layers of structural violence. • Requires rigorous legal enforcement and gender-sensitizing law enforcement to improve justice delivery. • Demands stronger institutional support, including one-stop crisis centers, helplines, and accessible legal aid. • Calls for educational reforms and community engagement to dismantle toxic masculinity and promote gender equality. • Grounded in Articles 14 and 21, demanding a shift toward transformative social engineering and substantive equality.
Q8(b) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks · Solution
Do you think that forced displacement of labourers has caused their deprivation and resultant inequalities during the recent past years? Elaborate
Challenges of Social Transformation
Forced displacement strips land, commons and urban foothold, then cheapens labour. Cernea’s impoverishment risks and Fernandes’s undercounting still describe Indian projects. Recent drivers include mining, highways, city beautification, conflict, climate and COVID reverse migration. Women, ST, SC and migrants lose most; land-value winners gain. R&R law exists; deprivation remains the modal outcome when consent and livelihoods are thin.
Q8(a) · UPSC Mains 2025 · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks · Solution
Is it possible to have sustainable development in India? Cite major environmental issues and suggest a few measures to achieve the sustainability
Challenges of Social Transformation
Sustainable development is possible in India only if growth is decoupled from dumping costs on the poor. Main issues are climate risk, air and water stress, forest loss, land conversion and inequality. Guha–Gadgil’s sociology of ecosystem people versus omnivores still explains who suffers. Measures include just energy transition, FRA, crop and city reform, and SDG-consistent budgets. Possibility is a political path, not a technical guarantee.