Revision summary
Intermediary landlordism declined after land reform. A commercial rich-peasant layer grew in Green Revolution regions. Labour is more migrant and informal, as COVID reverse flows showed. Caste-land overlap and landlessness persist. The structure is changing, not ending.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Yes, India’s agrarian class structure is changing, but it is not becoming a simple two-class farm. Intermediaries fell, a rich-peasant layer thickened, and labour became more mobile and informal.
Body
What changed
- Zamindari abolition and later tenancy laws, as A. R. Desai noted, cut the old rentier top and strengthened occupancy peasants in many regions.
- Green Revolution belts produced a commercially oriented farmer class that hires labour, buys inputs, and uses the state, which Daniel Thorner’s malik–kisan–mazdoor map only partly captures now.
- Land ceilings were uneven, yet fragmentation, tenancy revival, and reverse tenancy by capital-rich farmers recast who commands the surplus.
Illustrations
- Operation Barga in West Bengal recorded bargadars and shifted bargaining against landlords.
- Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh show farmer unions and tractor capital beside landless Dalit labour.
- Circular migration and COVID reverse migration showed that many rural poor live as worker-peasants, not as a closed village class.
What persists
- Dominant castes still overlap with land control, as Srinivas’s Rampura insight still travels.
- SECC and other rural counts keep showing landless and deprived households, so change is real and incomplete.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD Z[Zamindari abolition] --> RP[Rich peasant and tenant] RP --> M[Migrant labour] DC[Dominant caste land] --> RP M --> I[Informal worker peasant]
Conclusion
- Agrarian class structure has changed: intermediaries declined, rich peasants and migrant labour rose. Caste and landlessness still organise who wins, so the change is transformation, not disappearance of class.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Discuss the changing nature of industrial working class.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2022 · Q8(c)). View answer →
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Has the landlord vanished?
The classic zamindar often has. Rent, reverse tenancy, and labour control continue in new forms.
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Is every farmer a capitalist?
No. Smallholders, tenants, and landless labourers remain the majority in many tracts.
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.
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2025 · Q5(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
'The transfer of land from cultivating to the non-cultivating owners is bringing about transformation in Indian society.' Justify your answer by giving suitable illustrations. -
2025 · Q1(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Justify that the Indian traditions are modernizing. Also discuss its contributing factors. -
2025 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Which measures would you suggest for preventing caste conflicts in India ? Justify your argument -
2024 · Q5(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Is there a connection between labour migration and informal sector? Justify your answer with reference to Indian context. -
2020 · Q1(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
How do you justify Dumont's deliberate stress on ideology that produce intellectualized account of Indian society?
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