Social Problems and Social Change in India

Societies often face problems because of the imbalance in the forces of caste, race, gender, class, and so on. Social change is change in the patterned roles, or a change in the network of social relations, or in the structures and organisation of a society. Social change is never complete or total; it is always partial. It can be minor or fundamental. Further, the change can be spontaneous or planned. Planned change is to achieve some set of collective ideals. For example, after Independence, India also had set some collective goals to achieve.

Some of the important changes that we find in our society since Independence are:

1. Change from tradition to modernity in certain values and institutions
   
2. Change from ascribed status to achieved status
   
3. Change from predominance of primary groups to predominance of secondary groups
   
4. Change from non-formal means of control to formal means of control
   
5. Change from collectivity to individualism
   
6. Change from non- and anti-scientific methods of investigation to scientific methods of investigation
   
7. Change from folkloric knowledge to rationalist knowledge
   
8. Change from homogeneity to heterogeneity
   
9. Change in the increasing awareness of rights among various sections of society due to the spread of education, weakening of the caste system and religious fundamentalism (needs critical debating), weakening of traditional sources of security, occupational mobility, enactment of several social laws, and so on.

Though we have achieved many of the set collective goals, many contradictions have also set into our system. For example, accessibility to the legal system has become a problem for the common masses of our country. At times the forces of fundamentalism and parochialism destroy the ethos of nationalism by practising casteism, regionalism, communalism, linguism, extremism, terrorism, and so on.

Many laws have been enacted but either these laws are full of loopholes or they are not properly implemented. Egalitarianism is enshrined in the Preamble of the Constitution of India but the State enforces discrimination in more ways than one. The State preaches cultural pluralism but falls prey to the fundamentalism of all hues. All these contradictions have increased discontent and pessimism among people which in turn have resulted in many social problems.