LESSON - 1&2

Demography studies the trends and processes associated with

population including – changes in population size; patterns of
births, deaths, and migration; and the structure and composition of
the population, such as the relative proportions of women, men and
different age groups

There are different varieties of demography, including formal

demography which is a largely quantitative field, and social
demography which focuses on the social, economic or political
aspects of populations

The American census of 1790 was probably the first modern

census, and the practice was soon taken up in Europe as well in the
early 1800s. In India, censuses began to be conducted by the
British Indian government between 1867–72, and regular ten
yearly (or decennial) censuses have been conducted since 1881.
Independent India continued the practice, and seven decennial
censuses have been conducted since 1951, the most recent being in
2011. The Indian census is the largest such exercise in the world

Demographic data are important for the planning and

implementation of state policies, specially those for economic
development and general public welfare.

Formal demography is primarily concerned with the measurement

and analysis of the components of population change. Its focus is
on quantitative analysis

Robert malthus argued that human populations tend to grow at a

much faster rate than the rate at which the means of human
subsistence (specially food, but also clothing and other agriculture-
based products) can grow.‘

preventive checks’ such as postponing marriage or practicing

sexual abstinence or celibac.Malthus believed therefore that
‘positive checks’ to population growth – in the form of famines and
diseases – were inevitable because they were nature’s way of
dealing with the imbalance between food supply and increasing
population

Malthus’s predictions were proved false because both food

production and standards of living continued to rise despite the
rapid growth of population.

Malthus was also criticised by liberal and Marxist scholars for

asserting that poverty was caused by population growth.
The critics argued that problems like poverty and starvation were
caused by the unequal distribution of economic resources rather
than by population growth. An unjust social system allowed a
wealthy and privileged minority to live in luxury while the vast
majority of the people were forced to live in poverty.

Another significant theory in demography is the theory of

demographic transition. This suggests that population growth is
linked to overall levels of economic development and that every
society follows a typical pattern of development-related population
growth.

There are three basic stages of population growth.

The first stage is that of low population growth in a society that is
underdeveloped and technologically backward.
Growth rates are low because both the death rate and the birth
rate are very high, so that the difference between the two (or the
net growth rate) is low.
The third (and last) stage is also one of low growth in a developed
society where both death rate and birth rate have been reduced
considerably and the difference between them is again small.

Between these two stages is a transitional stage of movement from

a backward to an advanced stage, and this stage is characterised
by very high rates of growth of population.

In India too, the demographic transition is not yet complete as the

mortality rate has been reduced but the birth rate has not been
brought down to the same extent.

The rate of natural increase or the growth rate of population refers

to the difference between the birth rate and the death rate. When
this difference is zero (or, in practice, very small) then we say that
the population has ‘stabilised’, or has reached the ‘replacement
level’, which is the rate of growth required for new generations to
replace the older ones that are dying out.

The fertility rate refers to the number of live births per 1000
women in the child-bearing age group, usually taken to be 15 to 49
years

The infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of babies before

the age of one year per 1000 live births. Likewise, the maternal
mortality rate is the number of women who die in childbirth per
1,00,000 live births. High rates of infant and maternal mortality are
an unambiguous indicator of backwardness and poverty

life expectancy. This refers to the estimated number of years that

an average person is expected to survive. It is calculated on the
basis of data on age-specific death rates in a given area over a
period of time

The sex ratio refers to the number of females per 1000 males in a
given area at a specified time period

In fact the sex ratio is somewhat in favour of females, this seems to

be due to two reasons. First, girl babies appear to have an
advantage over boy babies in terms of resistance to disease in
infancy. At the other end of the life cycle, women have tended to
outlive men in most societies, so that there are more older women
than men

With development, quality of life improves and with it the life

expectancy also improves. This changes the age structure:
relatively smaller proportions of the population are found in the
younger age groups and larger proportions in the older age groups.
This is also referred to as the ageing of the population

The dependency ratio is a measure comparing the portion of a

population which is composed of dependents with the portion that
is in the working age group, generally defined as 15 to 64 years.

The dependency ratio is equal to the population below 15 or above

64, divided by population in the 15-64 age group. This is usually
expressed as a percentage. A rising dependency ratio is a cause for
worry in countries that are facing an ageing population, since it
becomes difficult for a relatively smaller proportion of working-age
people to carry the burden of providing for a relatively larger
proportion of dependents.

On the other hand, a falling dependency ratio can be a source of

economic growth and prosperity due to the larger proportion of
workers relative to non-workers. This is sometimes refered to as
the ‘demographic dividend’,

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is

the latest state initiative to tackle the problem of hunger and
starvation in rural areas
Unlike the death rate, the birth rate has not registered a sharp fall.
This is because the birth rate is a sociocultural phenomenon that is
relatively slow to change

The bias towards younger age groups in the age structure is

believed to be an advantage for India

India is supposed to be benefi tting from a ‘demographic dividend’.

This dividend arises from the fact that the current generation of
working-age people is a relatively large one, and it has only a
relatively small preceding generation of old people to support

The demographic advantage or ‘dividend’ to be derived from the

age structure of the population is due to the fact that India is (and
will remain for some time) one of the youngest countries in the
world.

A third of India’s population was below 15 years of age in 2011. In

2020, the average Indian was only 29 years old, compared with an
average age of 37 in China and the United States, 45 in Western
Europe, and 48 in Japan. This implies a large and growing labour
force, which can deliver unexpected benefi ts in terms of growth
and prosperity

The sex ratio is an important indicator of gender balance in the

population.Several factors may be held responsible for the decline
in the child sex ratio, including severe neglect of girl babies in
infancy, leading to higher death rates; sex-specific abortions that
prevent girl babies from being born; and female infanticide

Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of

Misuse) Act, this law has been in force since 1996, and has been
further strengthened in 2003

Recently, the Government of India has introduced the programme,

‘Beti-Bachao, Beti-Padhao’. It can prove to be an important policy
to increase the child sex ratio in the country.

The vast majority of the population of India has always lived in the
rural areas, and that continues to be true

It is not a question of numbers alone; processes of modern

development ensure that the economic and social significance of
the agrarian-rural way of life declines relative to the significance of
the industrialurban way of life. This has been broadly true all over
the world, and it is true in India as well

Mass transit and mass communication are bridging the gap

between the rural and urban areas. Even in the past, the rural
areas were never really beyond the reach of market forces and
today they are being more closely integrated into the consumer
market

Considered from an urban point of view, the rapid growth in

urbanisation shows that the town or city has been acting as a
magnet for the rural population.
Sometimes the city may also be preferred for social reasons,
specially the relative anonymity it offers. The fact that urban life
involves interaction with strangers can be an advantage for
different reasons.
For the socially oppressed groups like the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes, this may offer some partial protection from the
daily humiliation they may suffer in the village where everyone
knows their caste identity.
The anonymity of the city also allows the poorer sections of the
socially dominant rural groups to engage in low status work that
they would not be able to do in the village. All these reasons make
the city an attractive destination for the villagers.
The swelling cities bear testimony to this flow of population. This is
evident from the rapid rate of urbanisation in the post-
Independence period.

While urbanisation has been occurring at a rapid pace, it is the

biggest cities – the metropolises – that have been growing the
fastest. These metros attract migrants from the rural areas as well
as from small towns.

the public face of India is becoming more and more urban rather
than rural. Yet in terms of the political power dynamics in the
country, the rural areas remain a decisive force

Population momentum refers to a situation, where a large cohort of

women of reproductive age will fuel population growth over the
next generation, even if each woman has fewer children than
previous generations did

Important Goals of National Health Policy 2017:

Increase health expenditure by Government as a percentage of
GDP from the existing 1.15% to 2.5 % by 2025.
stablish primary and secondary care facility as per norms in high
priority districts (population as well as time to reach norms) by
2025. Ensure district–level electronic database of information on
health system components by 2020.

The Family Planning Programme suffered a setback during the

years of the National Emergency (1975–76).To down the growth
rate of population by introducing a coercive programme of mass
sterilisation.

Here sterilisation refers to medical procedures like vasectomy (for

men) and tubectomy (for women) which prevent conception and
childbirth. Vast numbers of mostly poor and powerless people were
forcibly sterilised and there was massive pressure on lower level
government officials (like school teachers or office workers) to
bring people for sterilisation in the camps that were organised for
this purpose. There was widespread popular opposition to this
programme, and the new government elected after the Emergency
abandoned it.

The National Family Planning Programme was renamed as the

National Family Welfare Programme after the Emergency, and
coercive methods were no longer used
LESSON - 3
As is well-known, the English word ‘caste’ is actually a borrowing
from the Portuguese casta, meaning pure breed. The word refers to
a broad institutional arrangement that in Indian languages
(beginning with the ancient Sanskrit) is referred to by two distinct
terms, varna and jati. Varna, literally ‘colour’, is the name given to
a four-fold division of society into brahmana, kshatriya, vaishya and
shudra

Jati is a generic term referring to species or kinds of anything,

ranging from inanimate objects to plants, animals and human
beings

Ayyankali, born in Kerala, was a leader of the lower castes and

Dalits. With his efforts, Dalits got the freedom to walk on public
roads, and Dalit children were allowed to join schools.

. In its earliest phase, in the late Vedic period roughly between 900
— 500 BC, the caste system was really a varna system and
consisted of only four major divisions
Jotirao Govindrao Phule denounced the injustice of the caste
system and scorned its rules of purity and pollution. In 1873 he
founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth Seekers Society), which
was devoted to securing human rights and social justice for low-
caste people

The hierarchical ordering of castes is based on the distinction

between ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’. This is a division between
something believed to be closer to the sacred (thus connoting ritual
purity), and something believed to be distant from or opposed to
the sacred, therefore considered ritually polluting.
Historians believe that those who were defeated in wars were often
assigned low caste status

Savitri Bai Phule was the first headmistress of the country’s first
school for girls in Pune. She devoted her life to educating Shudras
and Ati-Shudras. She started a night school for agriculturists and
labourers. She died while serving plague patients.
The present form of caste as a social institution has been shaped
very strongly by both the colonial period as well as the rapid
changes that have come about in independent India.

But by far the most important official effort to collect information

on caste was through the census. First begun in the 1860s, the
census became a regular ten-yearly exercise conducted by the
British Indian government from 1881 onwards. The 1901 Census
under the direction of Herbert Risley was particularly important as
it sought to collect information on the social hierarchy of caste

Before this kind of intervention, caste identities had been much

more fluid and less rigid; once they began to be counted and
recorded, caste began to take on a new life.

In colonialism The administration also took an interest in the

welfare of downtrodden castes, referred to as the ‘depressed
classes’ at that time. It was as part of these efforts that the
Government of India Act of 1935 was passed which gave legal
recognition to the lists or ‘schedules’ of castes and tribes marked
out for special treatment by the state. This is how the terms
‘Scheduled Tribes’ and the ‘Scheduled Castes’ came into being.
Castes at the bottom of the hierarchy that suffered severe
discrimination, including all the so-called ‘untouchable’ castes,
were included among the Scheduled Castes

Periyar (E.V. Ramasami Naickar) is known as a rationalist and the

leader of the lower caste movement in South India. He aroused
people to realise that all men are equal, and that it is the birthright
of every individual to enjoy liberty and equalit

Thus colonialism brought about major changes in the institution of

caste. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the institution
of caste underwent fundamental changes during the colonial
period.

Efforts to organise the “depressed classes” and particularly the

untouchable castes predated the nationalist movement, having
begun in the second half of the nineteenth century.
This was an initiative taken from both ends of the caste spectrum –
by upper caste progressive reformers as well as by members of the
lower castes such as Mahatma Jotiba Phule and Babasaheb
Ambedkar in western India, Ayyankali, Sri Narayana Guru,
Iyotheedass and Periyar (E.V. Ramaswamy Naickar) in the South.
Both Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar began organising
protests against untouchability from the 1920s onwards. Anti-
untouchability programmes became a significant part of the
Congress agenda so that, by the time Independence was on the
horizon, there was a broad agreement across the spectrum of the
nationalist movement to abolish caste distinctions.The dominant
view in the nationalist movement was to treat caste as a social evil
and as a colonial ploy to divide Indians

At a level, the state assumed that if it operated in a caste-blind

manner, this would automatically lead to the undermining of caste
based privileges and the eventual abolition of the institution. For
example, appointments to government jobs took no account of
caste, thus leaving the well-educated upper castes and the ill-
educated or often illiterate lower castes to compete on “equal”
terms. The only exception to this was in the form of reservations for
the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Sri Narayana Guru, born in Kerala, preached brother-hood for all

and fought against the ill effects of the caste system. He led a quiet
but significant social revolution and gave the watchwords ‘One
Caste, One Religion, One God for all men’

Meritocracy - thakuthi

M y s o r e N a r a s i m h a c h a r Srinivas was one of India’s

foremost sociologists and social anthropologists. He was known for
his works on the caste system and terms such as ‘sanskritisation’
and ‘dominant caste’. His book The Remembered Village is one of
the best known village studies in Social Anthropology.

Sanskritisation’ refers to a process whereby members of a (usually

middle or lower) caste attempt to raise their own social status by
adopting the ritual, domestic and social practices of a caste (or
castes) of higher status.

Tribes were communities that did not practice a religion with a

written text; did not have a state or political form of the normal
kind and did not have sharp class divisions.

In terms of positive characteristics, tribes have been classified

according to their ‘permanent’ and ‘acquired’ traits. Permanent
traits include region, language, physical characteristics and
ecological habitat.

In terms of language, tribes are categorised into four categories.

Two of them, Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, are shared by the rest of
the Indian population The other two language groups, the Austric
and Tibeto-Burman, are primarily spoken by tribals,. In physical-
racial terms, tribes are classified under the Negrito, Australoid,
Mongoloid, Dravidian and Aryan categories. The last two are again
shared with the rest of the population of India.
cquired raits Classifications based on acquired traits use two main
criteria – mode of livelihood, and extent of incorporation into Hindu
society – or a combination of the two

On the basis of livelihood, tribes can be categorised into fishermen,

food gatherers and hunters, shifting cultivators, peasants and
plantation and industrial workers.

Some Indian “tribes” like Santhal, Gonds, and Bhils are very large
and spread over extensive territory. Certain tribes like Munda, Hos
and others have long since turned to settled agriculture, and even
hunting gathering tribes, like the Birhors of Bihar employ
specialised households to make baskets, press oil etc.

LESSON - 4
The discipline of economics is aimed at understanding and
explaining how markets work in modern capitalist economies –

The most famous of the early political economists was Adam Smith,
who in his book, The Wealth of Nations, attempted to understand
the market economy that was just emerging at that time.

Sociologists often express this idea by saying that economies are

socially ‘embedded’. This is illustrated by two examples, one of a
weekly tribal haat, and the other of a ‘traditional business
community’ and its trading networks in colonial India.

The Wealth of Nations’ which explained how rational self-interest

in a free-market economy leads to economic well being

The weekly market as a social institution, the links between the

local tribal economy and the outside, and the exploitative economic
relationships between adivasis and others, are illustrated by a
study of a weekly market in Bastar district

For instance, an important instrument of exchange and credit was

the hundi, or bill of exchange (like a credit note), which allowed
merchants to engage in long-distance trade.

there are some caste groups that have entered into trade. Such
groups tend to acquire or claim ‘Vaisya’ status in the process of
upward mobility.

In some cases, new communities emerged to take advantage of the

economic opportunities provided by colonialism, and continued to
hold economic power even after Independence.

A good example of this process is provided by the Marwaris,

probably the most widespread and best-known business community
in India. Represented by leading industrial families such as the
Birlas, the community also includes shopkeepers and small traders
in the bazaars of towns throughout the country. The Marwaris
became a successful business community only during the colonial
period,

This story of the emergence of a new business community under

colonialism, and its transformation from small migrant traders to
merchant bankers to industrialists, illustrates the importance of the
social context to economic processes.

The growth of capitalism around the world has meant the extension
of markets into places and spheres of life that were previously
untouched by this system.
Commodification occurs when things that were earlier not traded
in the market become commodities. For instance, labour or skills
become things that can be bought and sold.

According to Marx and other critics of capitalism, the process of

commodification has negative social effects. The commodification
of labour is one example, but there are many other examples in
contemporary society. For instance, there is a controversy about
the sale of kidneys by the poor to cater to rich patients who need
kidney transplants

Another important feature of capitalist society is that consumption

becomes more and more important

One of sociology’s founders, Max Weber, was among the fi rst to

point out that the goods that people buy and use are closely related
to their status in society. He coined the term status symbol to
describe this relationship

culture also become a commodity by globalisation

The globalisation of the Indian economy has been due primarily to

the policy of liberalisation that was started in the late 1980s.

Liberalisation includes a range of policies such as the privatisation

of public sector enterprises (selling government-owned companies
to private companies); loosening of government regulations on
capital, labour, and trade; a reduction in tariffs and import duties
so that foreign goods can be imported more easily; and allowing
easier access for foreign companies to set up industries in India.
Another word for such changes is marketisation, or the use of
markets or market-based processes (rather than government
regulations or policies) to solve social, political, or economic
problems.
These include relaxation or removal of economic controls
(deregulation), privatisation of industries, and removing
government controls over wages and prices. Those who advocate
marketisation believe that these steps will promote economic
growth and prosperity because private industry is more efficient
than government-owned industry.

The changes that have been made under the liberalisation

programme have stimulated economic growth and opened up
Indian markets to foreign companies.
For example, many foreign branded goods are now sold, which
were not previously available. Increasing foreign investment is
supposed to help economic growth and employment.

The privatisation of public companies is supposed to increase their

efficiency and reduce the government’s burden of running these
companies. However, the impact of liberalisation has been mixed.
Many people argue that liberalisation and globalisation have had,
or will have, a negative net impact on India – that is, the costs and
disadvantages will be more than the advantages and benefits.

Some sectors of Indian industry (like software and information

technology) or agriculture (like fish or fruit) may benefit from
access to a global market, but other sectors (like automobiles,
electronics or oilseeds) will lose because they cannot compete with
foreign producers

LESSON - 5
In every society, some people have a greater share of valued
resources – money, property, education, health, and power – than
others. These social resources can be divided into three forms of
capital – economic capital in the form of material assets and
income; cultural capital such as educational qualifications and
status; and social capital in the form of networks of contacts and
social association

Patterns of unequal access to social resources are commonly called

social inequality.Sociologists use the term social stratification to
refer to a system by which categories of people in a society are
ranked in a hierarchy

Social stratification is a characteristic of society, not simply a

function of individual differences. Social stratification is a society-
wide system that unequally distributes social resources among
categories of people.

Stereotype - ore maadhiriyana

Stereotypes are often applied to ethnic and racial groups and to
women. In a country such as India, which was colonised for a long
time, many of these stereotypes are partly colonial creations

It is important to emphasise that the three main dimensions of

untouchability – namely, exclusion, humiliation-subordination and
exploitation – are all equally important in defining the phenomenon

In Indian languages, the term Dalit literally means ‘downtrodden’

and conveys the sense of an oppressed people.

The most important state initiative attempting to compensate for

past and present caste discrimination is the one popularly known
as ‘reservations’

The 93rd Amendment is for introducing reservation for the Other

Backward Classes in institutions of higher education, while the
1850 Act was used to allow entry of Dalits to government schools

The 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act (ST ACT) revised and

strengthened the legal provisions punishing acts of violence or
humiliation against Dalits and adivasis

The first government of independent India under Jawaharlal Nehru

appointed a commission to look into measures for the welfare of
the OBCs. The First Backward Classes Commission headed by Kaka
Kalelkar submitted its report in 1953.

The OBC issue returned to the central level in the late 1970s after
the Emergency when the Janata Party came to power. The Second
Backward Classes Commission headed by B.P. Mandal was
appointed at this time. However, it was only in 1990, when the
central government decided to implement the ten-year old Mandal
Commission report, that the OBC issue became a major one in
national politics

upper OBCs (who are largely landed castes and enjoy dominance in
rural society in many regions of India) and the lower OBCs (who
are very poor and disadvantaged, and are often not very different
from Dalits in socio-economic terms)

After the Independence of India in 1947 the government’s

monopoly over forests continued.

The policy of capital-intensive industrialisation adopted by the

Indian government required mineral resources and power-
generation capacities which were concentrated in Adivasi areas.
Adivasi lands were rapidly acquired for new mining and dam
projects. In the process, millions of adivasis were displaced without
any appropriate compensation or rehabilitation. Justified in the
name of ‘national development’ and ‘economic growth’, these
policies were also a form of internal colonialism, subjugating
adivasis and alienating the resources upon which they depended

Projects such as the Sardar Sarovar dam on the river Narmada in

Western India and the Polavaram dam on the river Godavari in
Andhra Pradesh displaced hundreds of thousands of adivasis from
their original habitats

In 1931, the Karachi Session of the Indian National Congress

issued a declaration on the Fundamental Rights of Citizenship in
India whereby it committed itself to women’s equality

As we enter the twenty-first century, new sites of gender injustice

are emerging. You will recall the discussion of the declining sex
ratio in Chapter 2. The sharp fall in the child sex ratio and the
implicit social bias against the girl child represents one of the new
challenges of gender inequality

LESSON - 6
Our community provides us the language (our mother tongue) and
the cultural values through which we comprehend the world. It also
anchors our self-identity

A nation is a peculiar sort of community that is easy to describe but

hard to define.In short, today it is hard to define a nation in any
way other than to say that it is a community that has succeeded in
acquiring a state of its own. Interestingly, the opposite has also
become increasingly true

today, ‘the nation’ is the most accepted or proper justification for a

state, while ‘the people’ are the ultimate source of legitimacy of the
nation. In other words, states ‘need’ the nation as much or even
more than nations need states.

After Independence, initially the Indian state continued with the

BritishIndian arrangement dividing India into large provinces, also
called ‘presidencies’. (Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta

Language coupled with regional and tribal identity – and not

religion – has therefore provided the most powerful instrument for
the formation of ethnonational identity in India. However, this does
not mean that all linguistic communities have got statehood.

For instance, in the creation of three new states in 2000, namely

Chhatisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand, language did not play a
prominent role. Rather, a combination of ethnicity based on tribal
identity, language, regional deprivation and ecology provided the
basis for intense regionalism resulting in statehood.

One of key issues that led to the formation of Bangladesh was the
unwillingness of the Pakistani state to recognise the cultural and
linguistic rights of the people of Bangladesh. One of the many
contentious issues that formed the backdrop of the ethnic conflict
in Sri Lanka was the imposition of Sinhalese as a national language

Article 29: (1) Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of
India or any part there of having a distinct language, script or
culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same. (2) No
citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution
maintained by the State or received out of State funds on grounds
only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them.

Article 30: (1) All minorities, whether based on religion or

language, shall have the right to establish and administer
educational institutions of their choice. (2) The State shall not, in
granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any
educational institution on the ground that it is under the
management of a minority, whether based on religion or language

Communalism by definition – as inferior, illegitimate and opposed.

Thus, to simplify further, communalism is an aggressive political
ideology linked to religion

It is important to emphasise that communalism is about politics,

not about religion. Although communalists are intensely involved
with religion, there is in fact no necessary relationship between
personal faith and communalism. A communalist may or may not be
a devout person, and devout believers may or may not be
communalists.

However, all communalists do believe in a political identity based

on religion. The key factor is the attitude towards those who
believe in other kinds of identities, including other religion-based
identities. Communalists cultivate an aggressive political identity,
and are prepared to condemn or attack everyone who does not
share their identity

Civil liberties organisations have been particularly important in

keeping a watch on the state and forcing it to obey the law