Revision summary
Green Revolution and irrigation split rural India into surplus and labour-export zones. Dams and mines displace Adivasis in the name of national growth. Cities concentrate wealth and dump workers into underserved slums. Women and ecology carry unpaid costs. Urgent attention means rights before projects, not compensation after.
Model answer
Introduction
Development in India has raised national output and split regions, classes, and ecologies. The striking imbalances are not accidents. They are how dams, mines, Green Revolution belts, and cities have grown. Urgent attention means treating displacement and inequality as the development question, not as side effects.
Body
Agrarian imbalance
- Irrigated Green Revolution pockets accumulated surplus while rainfed districts remained labour-exporting, a path A. R. Desai already saw as uneven bourgeois development.
- Farmer debt and suicide sit beside export plenty.
- Land concentration and landless Dalit labour persist under dominant castes.
Displacement and tribe
- Mines, dams, and sanctuaries in Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and the Narmada valley turn Adivasi land into national assets.
- G. S. Ghurye’s assimilation path becomes dispossession when ‘integration’ arrives as a project fence.
- PESA and Forest Rights titles lag behind the bulldozer.
Urban and regional imbalance
- Metropoles pull capital and skilled work. Small towns and slums absorb cheap labour without services.
- SECC-type rural deprivation and slum tenure insecurity are two faces of the same surplus labour.
Gender and ecology
- Women lose commons and get fewer titles after resettlement, a Seed-and-Earth outcome in project colonies.
- Groundwater crash and pollution dump costs on those who did not take the profit.
What needs urgent attention
- Enforceable consent and rehabilitation before extraction.
- Regional agro-ecology, not only more of the same input package.
- Urban services for the working poor, not only elite infrastructure.
- Caste and gender audits of who gains from ‘growth’.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD DV[Development projects markets] --> AG[Agrarian regional split] DV --> DP[Tribal displacement] DV --> UR[Metropole slum] DV --> GD[Gender ecology costs]
Conclusion
Development-induced imbalances are agrarian, tribal, urban, gendered, and ecological. They need urgent attention because they are the structure of Indian growth, not a delay in trickle-down. Sociology’s task is to name who pays for the dam and the mall.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Examine the impact of heritage tourism on urban socio-spatial patterns in India
Next question in the 2017 paper (Q6). View answer →
-
Is imbalance only regional?
Region matters. Class, caste, and gender split every region as well.
-
Can growth first, justice later work?
Lost land and lost groves are not easily repaid later. Sequence is the issue.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2017 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Write a critique of the structural and functional perspective used by M.N. Srinivas in the understanding of Indian society -
2017 · Q1(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Which is more significant, the principle of 'hierarchy' or the principal of difference; in inter caste relations in the present day ? -
2017 · Q1(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the distinct features of islam as practised in India, and how have they changed over time ? -
2017 · Q3(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Indebtedness is one of the serious issues leading to farmers suicides Discuss reasons and suggest solutions -
2017 · Q4(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Explain the concepts of dominant caste' and ' vote ' bank giving examples from specific regions -
2017 · Q5(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Give an account of the problems relating to the "creamy layer". -
2017 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the causes and solutions for the low female sex-ratio in the DEMARU States of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, and Gujarat ? -
2017 · Q7(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
To what extent does nation building depends on strengthening of pluralities in Indian society?
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2017 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Write a critique of the structural and functional perspective used by M.N. Srinivas in the understanding of Indian society
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Srinivas studied India as an observed village structure, not a book of sacred rules. Function explained how custom held groups together. Desai’s class reading and Beteille’s disharmony expose the harmony bias. The village monograph cannot stand for mill, city, and tribe. Keep the field tools; refuse the closed-system claim.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2017 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Which is more significant, the principle of 'hierarchy' or the principal of difference; in inter caste relations in the present day ?
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Hierarchy still ranks bodies through honour, endogamy, and atrocity. Difference organises caste as political identity and rights. Srinivas’s dominant caste already split ritual rank from local power. Beteille’s disharmony names equality as value beside ranked practice. Public life leans to difference; intimacy still leans to hierarchy.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2017 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the distinct features of islam as practised in India, and how have they changed over time ?
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Indian Islam is regional, often shrine-centred, and internally ranked. Minority status after Partition made community a political fact. Reform and print pushed scriptural uniformity against custom. Caste-like divisions and dargah practice persist. Change is toward a firmer boundary, not toward one identical piety.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.