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
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
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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 →
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Is the Green Revolution Western patriarchy?
It was a technocratic package that strengthened male landholders. Local caste power used it.
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Does disagreement mean defending current development?
No. It means the critique needs caste, class, and Indian patriarchy too.
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