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
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
flowchart TD OWN[Land ownership] --> CLS[Agrarian class] CON[Control of tenancy] --> CLS LAB[Sale of labour] --> CLS CAS[Caste status] -.-> CLS POW[Local power] -.-> CLS
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
-
Why is the study of marriage important in Sociology? Analyse the implications of changing marriage patterns for Indian society
Next question in the 2024 paper (Q3). View answer →
-
Did Béteille say caste is class?
No. He said they overlap in the village and must still be analysed as different dimensions.
-
Is tenancy still a class base?
Yes, including reverse tenancy where small owners lease to machine-owning cultivators.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2024 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What, according to you, are the factors responsible for the continuance of caste system in India? Explain. -
2024 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the different forms of untouchability still practised in India? Discuss with suitable illustrations -
2023 · Q1(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Analyse the differences between the attributional and interactional approach in studying the caste system -
2023 · Q2(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Do you agree with the view of Andre Beteille that India's villages are representative of Indian society's basic civilizational values ? Present a sociological overview -
2023 · Q3(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Contextualize Louis Dumont's concept of 'binary opposition' with reference to caste system in India -
2022 · Q1(d) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
In the context of changing Indian society, how do you view Andre Beteille's conceptions of harmonic and disharmonic social structures ? -
2022 · Q2(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Elaborate on changing nature of caste system with suitable illustrations. -
2022 · Q3(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Explain the different forms of untouchability in India.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
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.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the changes taking place in the industrial class structure in India.
Social Classes in India
The older industrial class was a minority organised mill and PSU workforce. Mills declined; contract labour, circular migration and job work expanded. Services and IT added a salariat above a large informal industrial and logistics workforce. Caste and gender still sort who enters secure versus hazardous work. Unions lost the mill colony world and have only partly regrouped.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2024 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Is patriarchy a key to understanding different forms of inequalities in Indian society? Elaborate.
Perspectives on the study of Indian society
Patriarchy is a structure of control over labour, sexuality and status, not only prejudice. Uma Chakravarti’s Brahmanical patriarchy links caste honour to the regulation of women. Ambedkar’s endogamy thesis makes gender central to caste reproduction. Class inequalities run through unpaid care and segmented female work. The state both reforms and reproduces gender through personal law and welfare.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.