Revision summary
Longevity and fewer children make ageing demographically visible. Household fission and migration weaken traditional care. Widows and informal workers are the sharp edge. Honour ideology hides neglect and work in old age. Welfare pensions and health must supplement family duty.
Model answer
Introduction
Ageing is an emerging Indian issue because longevity is rising while the joint household that was supposed to care is thinning. The elderly are more visible, more female at the oldest ages, and less guaranteed a son’s roof.
Body
Why emerging
- Fertility decline and better survival produce a larger old-age share, first in the south and among the middle class.
- Urbanisation and migration empty the village house that ideology still calls the ashrama of care.
- Informal work means no pension for most, so ageing is a poverty risk, especially for widows under Seed and Earth.
Social form of the issue
- Loneliness, abuse, and medical cost meet a cultural claim that old age is honoured.
- Feminization of later life: more widows, less property.
- Policy (Maintenance Act, sparse pensions, homes) is catching up slowly, a welfare lag Yogendra Singh would call incomplete modernization of tradition.
Not only a rich-country issue
- Poor elderly continue to work. Ageing is not retirement; it is weaker bodies in the same informal market.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD DEM[Longevity low fertility] --> AG[Ageing] MIG[Migration small household] --> AG INF[No pension widowhood] --> AG
Conclusion
Ageing emerges as a social issue where demography meets a mobile, informal, still-patrilineal family. It will thicken unless public care matches the missing joint roof.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Is ageing only a southern states issue?
It appeared earlier there. It is spreading with fertility decline elsewhere.
-
Will more old-age homes Indianise badly?
For the abandoned, homes are a right. The larger need is pension and public health.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2016 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Salient features of A.R. Desai's Marxist Sociology -
2016 · Q1(e) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Patriarchy as a form of dominance. -
2016 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Elucidate the concepts of 'majoritarianism' and 'minoritarianism' in accentuating communal tensions in India. -
2016 · Q3(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Comment on the increasing significance of caste in politics. -
2016 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Different forms of Dalit assertion -
2016 · Q4(d) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Empowerment through 'Right to Education' -
2016 · Q4(e) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Differential sex-ratio and its implications. -
2016 · Q7(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Bring out the impact of the declining significance of the agrarian economy.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2016 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Salient features of A.R. Desai's Marxist Sociology
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Desai applied Marxism to nation, agrarian structure, and the Indian state. Nationalism is read as a bourgeois project in a colonial economy. Village harmony is rejected for landlord–peasant–labour relations. The state and planning are class instruments, not neutral tools. Caste is real but not the first mover in his scheme.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2016 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Significance of Village Studies in Indian Sociology
Rural and Agrarian Social Structure
Village studies established the field view against book-view Indology. Rampura and Sripuram supplied core concepts of Indian sociology. They linked caste to land, faction, and later to class and power. They shaped policy talk about rural change. Migration and gender gaps now bound their claim to represent India.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2016 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
'Isolationism' as a dominant feature of colonial tribal policy
Tribal communities in India
Colonial policy used excluded areas and inner lines as isolation. The aim mixed protection of custom with forest and frontier control. Isolation was never total; markets and missions entered. Elwin inherited protection; Ghurye attacked it as stagnation. Schedules today still carry this spatial exception.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.