Revision summary
Dams, mines, and productivist farming have been masculinist and often Western-technocratic. That part of the view is fair. Indian kinship patriarchy predates and partners that project. Class and caste cannot be reduced to lost feminine principles. Remedy is rights, care, and ecology, not a romance of the pre-colonial.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
The view is partly right as a critique of a certain development model, and too simple as a full sociology of India. Large dams, mines, and Green Revolution packages did privilege control, extraction, and male property. India also has its own Seed-and-Earth patriarchy that did not wait for the West.
Body
Where I agree
- Colonial and Nehruvian high modernism treated nature and village as resources to command, a masculine engineer ethic.
- Displacement in Narmada-type projects drowned feminine-coded commons: grove, water, seed diversity.
- Formal jobs and the 1991 office often copied a Western male breadwinner while dumping care on women.
- Ecofeminist readings of Chipko and similar struggles name this well.
Where I disagree or qualify
- Leela Dube’s Seed and Earth is an Indian kinship patriarchy, not a Western import.
- Champaran peasants fought a colonial planter; the gender order of the peasant household was still local.
- A. R. Desai’s class path explains surplus and the state without reducing all of it to ‘the West’.
- Dalit and Adivasi women face caste and tribal patriarchies that a single ‘Western feminine principle’ misses.
- Women’s movements, Me Too in 2018, and girl-education schemes are also modern, not a return to a lost goddess order.
My position
- Agree that development has been patriarchal and often Western-technocratic.
- Do not agree that surrendering ‘feminine principles’ is the whole project, or that the remedy is a romantic pre-colonial feminine.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD DV[Development project] --> MS[Masculinist extraction] WS[Western technocracy] --> MS SE[Indian Seed Earth] --> MS EF[Ecofeminist critique] --> MS CST[Caste class] --> Q[Qualify the view]
Conclusion
- I partly agree: India’s development project has often been a masculinist, Western-styled conquest of land and care. I do not agree that indigenous patriarchy is innocent, or that feminine principle language can replace class, caste, and constitutional equality as the full critique.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Assess the impact of ban on 'Triple Talak' on marriage and divorce among the Muslim community in India.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2018 · Q8(c)). View answer →
-
Is the Green Revolution Western patriarchy?
It was a technocratic package that strengthened male landholders. Local caste power used it.
-
Does disagreement mean defending current development?
No. It means the critique needs caste, class, and Indian patriarchy 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.
-
2019 · Q6(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Highlight the main features of the 'Inter-linking of Rivers' project in India. What could be its probable advantages to Indian agriculture?
More from this topic
Q7(a) · UPSC Mains 2026 · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks · Solution
Urbanisation in Independent India has been characterized by over-urbanization and rural push. Explain with demographic and sociological dimensions
Systems of Kinship in India
• Indian urban growth is driven by distress migration from rural areas rather than industrial pull factors, creating over-urbanization. • The tertiary sector expands faster than secondary manufacturing, resulting in a large informal workforce, underemployment, and slum proliferation. • Urban population crossed 31% by 2011, fuelled by net migration and the reclassification of rural settlements into urban areas. • Primate city concentration in Tier-I metros causes lopsided regional development and severe strain on civic infrastructure. • Migration streams remain male-selective, leading to skewed sex ratios in cities and remittance-dependent rural households. • Caste, kinship networks, and primordial ties heavily mediate urban entry and occupational placement. • Cities exhibit deep socio-spatial dualism, separating formal enclaves from precarious informal settlements while altering family structures and gender roles.
Q1(e) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks · Solution
Despite the efforts of the government, bonded labour still continues in India. Discuss.
Systems of Kinship in India
The 1976 Act abolished bonded labour in law; neo-bondage continues in kilns, farms and migration streams. Advances and contractors tie Dalit, Adivasi and other poor households season after season. Breman’s neo-bondage is market unfreedom, not only old agrestic serfdom. Rescue without credit and work leads to re-bondage. Informal capitalism and caste together explain why government effort has not ended the practice.
Q1(d) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks · Solution
Do you think that family bondings are being affected by the changing kinship patterns in India? Comment.
Systems of Kinship in India
Kinship patterns in India are changing through migration, law, education and marriage markets. Shah and I. P. Desai separate residential nuclearisation from continuing joint family obligations. Bonds are stressed around care, authority and marriage choice. Remittances, caste weddings and digital contact keep translocal jointness alive. The family remains the main care institution for most groups.