As you are familiar, Comte and Durkheim explained social change as inevitable laws of history. For materialists, social change is caused by changes in the mode of production leading to changes in human experiences of social relations. If you believe in this then change is natural and one just have to wait and watch. Using this approach, Kosambi (Chattopadhyaya, 2009) viewed the process of social change in India as the fusion of tribal elements into a general society, achieved “by accommodating various social groups, representing different historical stages” and not “through violent military aggression or cultural homogenization”. This process of change has given rise to different myths, religions and ideas from time to time. This is true that ultimately when change in mode of production occurs everything changes. In India, Gandhi gave more importance to character building. He was a moralist. Nehru thought that using a new constitutional approach social structure of India can be changed and a new era of development and equality will begin. He followed the third approach. Moralists focus on man, institutionalists on social structure. If you are interventionists then you want to take active part in the process of social transformation which requires change in leadership or change in the laws. Are there not many people who think that the institution of Lokpal will remove corruption? There are many social scientists in India who think that to transform the nature of society in India we have to develop effective civil society institutions. A synthetic view would be that any permanent change is as much technological as moral and institutional. Thus to create a better society we have to work at various levels. We have to apply scientific wisdom for right, humanitarian cause, changing the value system and also changing the social customs and traditions.

We will avoid discussion of the evolutionary approach here because it aims at explanation rather than transformation although from study of objective, materialistic and socio-economic causes of change many lessons regarding restructuring of society can be learnt. After all, Marxism is not only a scientific theory of capitalist society it also suggests need for and means of building an egalitarian communist society.