SOCIAL CHANGE IN INDIA
Change is a reality. Human society too experiences changes in different domains from time to time. However, all types of changes are not covered by the term of social change which has a definite meaning in sociology. Social change refers to change in social structure. Thus change in per capita income, if not accompanied by changes in social relationships, is not a part of social change.
BOX 2.1
Ironically, despite our profession of socialistic pattern of society, our policies in social and economic fields have been most detrimental to the prosperity of the weaker sections of society, such as the dalits, the women, the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and the minorities. It is reflected also in the failure of our education policy. The mass illiteracy in the forty per cent of the population still persists. It is higher still in the case of women. There is a vicious circular relationship between poverty, susceptibility of a victim to exploitation, proneness to health morbidity, high fertility rate and illiteracy. Education is the single most effective factor which breaks this process of vicious cumulative causation. We find that wherever educational achievements, whether within a region or a social group are higher, the indicators of economic growth as also of the quality of life are higher. …Our failure in the field of removal of illiteracy, and universalization of education is indeed at the root of the most facets of our “crisis of failures”.
From: Singh, Yogendra, 1993, Social Change in India: Crisis and Resilience . New Delhi : Har-Anand Publications, p.15. |
Sociologists have developed several concepts to study social change in India : development, modernization, Westernization, universalization, social development, great and little traditions are some of them. For a long time sociologists and anthropologists in India used the concepts of parochialization and universalization, and great and little tradtions which were developed by McKim Marriot and Robert Redfield in studies of Indian and Mexican villages. Among such concepts Sanskritization and Westernization hold special significance. |
