Q5(b) · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2018 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks · 1 min read

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Construct a sociological narrative on the increasing trend of child abuse in India.

Topic: Industrialization and Urbanisation in India. Syllabus: Industrialization and Urbanisation in India: Evolution of modern industry in India; Growth of urban settlements in India; Working class: structure, growth, class mobilization; Informal sector, child labour; Slums and deprivation in urban areas. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2018 and Industrialization and Urbanisation in India.

Revision summary

Child abuse is organised in family, labour, and school, not only by strangers. Rising numbers mix better reporting with new urban and digital risks. Caste, gender, and poverty stack the harm. POCSO named what honour had hidden. The trend is social structure becoming public.

Model answer

Introduction

A sociological narrative of rising child abuse does not stop at monsters. It locates harm in the family, caste labour, school, and the informal economy. ‘Increasing’ is both more reporting after new laws and real exposure as households and cities change.

Body

Where abuse sits

  • The household, organised by Seed-and-Earth authority, can hide sexual and physical harm as discipline.
  • Child labour in farms, workshops, and domestic service is abuse as work, beyond a narrow informal-sector raid story.
  • Schools and hostels reproduce caste humiliation and corporal harm.
  • Digital circulation creates new images of harm and new reporting.

Why a trend appears now

  • POCSO and helplines name crimes that custom called family honour.
  • Migration splits care; children in slums and left-behind villages are less watched by kin and more by the street.
  • Media, like the fourth pillar at its best, makes cases public.

Stratification

  • Dalit, Adivasi, and girl children face stacked risk.
  • Middle-class silence in coaching hostels is a class variant, not an absence.

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  FAM[Patriarchal household] --> AB[Child abuse]
  LB[Child labour school] --> AB
  RP[POCSO media] --> VS[Visible trend]
  AB --> VS

Conclusion

The narrative is that child abuse is a structural product of patriarchal families, cheap child labour, and weak civic care. The increasing trend is partly visibility, partly new urban and digital settings. Law without wages, school, and a challenge to household sovereignty will not close it.

Quick related

Students also ask

  • Explain the dynamics of neo-farmers movement in contemporary India.

    Next question in the 2018 paper (Q5). View answer →

  • Is the increase only reporting?

    Reporting rose. Labour, migration, and digital harm also expanded the field.

  • Is the family the safest place?

    Statistically much abuse is intra-family. Sociology must not romanticise the home.

PYQ trend

When UPSC asked this

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  1. 2020 · Q7(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks

    Elaborate the causes, consequences and other concerns of growth of urban settlements in India.

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  5. 2017 · Q5(d) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks

    Do you agree that the issue of child labour raises questions about and beyond the informal sector ? Give reasons.

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  6. 2017 · Q6(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks

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More from this paper

Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2018 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks

Write a note on G.S.Ghurye's Indological perspective of understanding Indian society.

Perspectives on the study of Indian society

Ghurye’s Indological perspective reads India through texts and Hindu civilisation. Caste and Race listed structural features and rejected a crude race theory. Tribe was treated as a backward Hindu awaiting assimilation. Field sociologists showed living rank and power that books do not fix. Class and minority self-rule further limit the method.

Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2018 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks

Media is the fourth pillar of democracy. Discuss.

Perspectives on the study of Indian society

The fourth-pillar claim is that media watches the three official organs. Speech rights and investigative reporting sometimes fulfil it. Ownership, paid news, and communal frames weaken it. Women, caste, and rural poor are unevenly seen. The phrase is an ideal to enforce, not a fact already achieved.

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