Revision summary
Béteille based agrarian class on land property and labour, not on caste rank. Owners, tenants and agricultural labourers are the main classes in his Tanjore study. Caste, class and power are three interacting dimensions. Ownership, control and labour remain the operational bases. Corporate farming, reverse tenancy and public works modify the actors without cancelling the scheme.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
André Béteille studied a Tanjore village as a system of caste, class and power. Agrarian class, for him, is not another name for jati. It is built on property in land: who owns, who controls tenancy and who sells labour. Those bases organise the village economy. Caste and panchayat power overlap them without being the same thing.
Body
Land as the class base
Béteille distinguished landowners, tenants and agricultural labourers as the principal agrarian classes, with finer grades of absentee owner, cultivating owner, sharecropper and attached labour. The base is rights in land and the product, not ritual rank. A Brahmin landowner and a non-Brahmin landowner can sit in the same class; a poor Brahmin may not. This was a deliberate break from treating the village as only a caste map, and from a crude Marxism that ignored status.
- Class rests on three practical bases: ownership (title and the power to alienate), control (who decides cropping, credit and tenancy), and labour (who must sell work to eat). Green Revolution machinery, reverse tenancy and peri-urban sale have shuffled these bases, but they are still Béteille’s questions.
Caste and power as related structures
In Caste, Class and Power, the three dimensions can diverge. Non-Brahmin owners could rise in the class map while Brahmins kept ritual status. Panchayat and party power could shift toward numerically strong cultivating groups. Analysis means using the three together: agrarian class explains surplus and dependence; caste explains marriage and honour; power explains who commands the local state.
What ‘bases’ still miss
Béteille wrote before contract farming, MNREGA, and widespread female agricultural labour statistics. The bases still work if we ask who commands machines, warehouses and mandi credit. A commission agent can control the crop without owning the plot. A woman who weeds all season without her name on the patta is in the labour class even when the household is recorded as a small owner. Caste still sorts gangs. The analysis is therefore: land rights as the class base, with caste and power as overlapping structures, updated for contractors and the welfare state.
Flow diagram
Conclusion
For Béteille, agrarian class structure rests on ownership, control and use of land, visible as owners, tenants and labourers. Caste and power interact with that structure but are not its definition. The triad still analyses rural India if we add new controllers of land and labour.
Quick related
Students also ask
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What are the different forms of untouchability still practised in India? Discuss with suitable illustrations
Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q4(c)). View answer →
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Did Béteille say caste is class?
No. He said they overlap in the village and must still be analysed as different dimensions.
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Is tenancy still a class base?
Yes, including reverse tenancy where small owners lease to machine-owning cultivators.
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(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the social bases of political mobilization in Independent India. Has some change occurred in these during the last 60-70 years? -
2025 · Q2(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
'Agrarian class structure has been undergoing changes due to modern forces.' Critically examine -
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2022 · Q1(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Do you agree that the agrarian class structure in India is changing ?Justify your answer with illustrations. -
2019 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Is industrial development in India a bane or a born to agrarian class structure ? Substantiate your answer with suitable examples
More from this topic
Q5(d) · UPSC Mains 2026 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks · Solution
How do Louis Dumont and André Beteille differ in their approaches in understanding caste system in India? Explain.
Caste System
Louis Dumont and André Beteille offer contrasting paradigms for studying the Indian caste system. Dumont applies a structuralist-ideological approach, viewing caste as a hierarchical system governed by the religious principle of purity and pollution, derived from classical texts. Conversely, Beteille adopts an empirical-sociological approach, focusing on village-level realities in Tamil Nadu to demonstrate how caste, class, and power often diverge, reflecting secular social stratification. While Dumont sees caste as an integrated whole of structural values, Beteille emphasizes structural pluralism and social mobility. Understanding both theorists is essential for analyzing the continuity and transformation of social inequality in contemporary India.
Q4(c) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks · Solution
What are the different forms of untouchability still practised in India? Discuss with suitable illustrations
Caste System
Untouchability is practised exclusion on grounds of hereditary pollution, abolished in Article 17 but not in social geography. Forms include water, food, temple, housing, school and marriage bans. Manual scavenging continues despite the 2013 Act. Urban cups, sewers and housing filters are contemporary illustrations. Guru’s humiliation and Ambedkar’s annihilation agenda still describe the structure.
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks · Solution
What, according to you, are the factors responsible for the continuance of caste system in India? Explain.
Caste System
Caste continues as organisation and ideology, not only as village custom. Ambedkar’s endogamy, Dumont’s hierarchy, and Ghurye’s features still describe marriage, food and stigma. Srinivas showed mobility inside caste; Béteille and Desai linked it to land, class and power. The Constitution and reservations recast caste as a political identity rather than simply erasing it. Markets and cities loosened occupation more than they loosened kinship.