State, Politics and Development Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Both statements are true and the Reason correctly explains the Assertion.

A political subculture is the set of political orientations shared by a section of society within the wider political culture. The Assertion says such subcultures are rarely homogeneous, that is, they rarely hold uniform views.

The Reason gives the cause: the politically conscious sections of society differ significantly among themselves by class, caste, region, religion, ideology and interest. Because those who share a subculture are themselves internally divided, the subculture cannot be uniform. The Reason therefore accounts for the Assertion, which rules out the option saying it does not, and both options declaring one statement false.

Answer: A

Mendha Lekha is known for its strong local self government.

Mendha (Lekha) is a Gond village in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra whose gram sabha governs village affairs by consensus. Its long campaign of village self-rule over its forests made it one of the first villages in India to receive community forest rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and to manage and sell its own bamboo.

The village is cited in studies of decentralisation and tribal self-governance, not for a distinctive art form, for a women's empowerment programme as such, or for agricultural development. Its fame rests on the gram sabha's control over decisions and resources.

Answer: D

The new social movement is the LGBT movement.

New social movements, analysed by Alain Touraine, Alberto Melucci and Claus Offe, arose from the 1960s onwards. They centre on identity, culture, lifestyle and rights rather than on economic class interest, and include the women's, environmental, peace and gay and lesbian movements. The LGBT movement, with its focus on sexual identity, recognition and dignity, is a standard example.

The trade union and peasant movements are classic 'old' movements organised around class and material interests. The backward class movement in India mobilised castes for status, education and reservation and is treated in Indian sociology as a traditional, caste-based movement rather than a new social movement.

Answer: A

Commodities and Capabilities (1985) was written by Amartya Sen.

In this book Sen developed the capability approach: well-being should be judged not by the commodities a person owns or the utility they yield, but by the capabilities a person has, the real freedoms to achieve valued functionings such as being healthy, educated and taking part in community life. The approach underlies the UNDP's Human Development Index.

M.N. Srinivas, D.P. Mukerji and A.R. Desai are Indian sociologists known for work on caste and village life, tradition and modernity, and Marxist analysis of nationalism respectively. None wrote on capabilities.

Answer: C

Marshall's idea entails civil rights, political rights and social rights.

In Citizenship and Social Class (1950), T.H. Marshall described citizenship in Britain as developing in three stages: civil rights, such as freedom of speech and equality before the law, in the eighteenth century; political rights, such as the vote, in the nineteenth; and social rights, to welfare, education and a minimum standard of living, in the twentieth. The welfare state is the expression of social rights.

Options with only two kinds of rights leave one of the three out. Marshall did not treat economic rights as a separate fourth category; economic security falls within his social rights.

Answer: B

The correct chronological order is (2), (4), (1) and (3).

1. Champaran movement (2): 1917, Gandhi's satyagraha against forced indigo cultivation in Bihar.
2. Kheda movement (4): 1918, the no-revenue campaign in Gujarat after crop failure.
3. Tebhaga movement (1): 1946-47, sharecroppers in Bengal demanding two-thirds of the crop.
4. Naxalbari movement (3): 1967, the peasant uprising in north Bengal.

Options starting with (4) or (1) put Kheda or Tebhaga before Champaran, and option C puts Naxalbari before Tebhaga, which reverses two decades.

Answer: A

The key credits Robert Hardgrave with seeing caste in its pressure-group dimension.

Hardgrave's study The Nadars of Tamilnad (1969) traced how the Nadar caste organised itself through caste associations to press for social and political advancement, acting in politics much like an interest or pressure group. This line of work, with that of Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, is the source of the idea that caste associations function as pressure groups in modern Indian politics.

Milton Singer is known for his work on the great and little traditions and on Indian business families, Joan Mencher for agrarian studies in South India, and Satish Saberwal for Mobile Men, a study of social mobility in urban Punjab; none of them is known for this thesis.

Answer: D

The statement that is not true is that the Dalit Chamars' demand for separate electorates was accepted by the colonial rulers.

The Ad Dharm movement, led by Mangoo Ram from the mid-1920s, claimed that the untouchables of Punjab formed a distinct religious community with its own faith, older than Hinduism. It won recognition as a separate religion in the 1931 census, but the separate electorate for the depressed classes was dropped after the Poona Pact of 1932 in favour of reserved seats in joint electorates.

The other statements fit the standard account of the movement, best known from Mark Juergensmeyer's study: it grew out of the economic openings and secular education that colonial rule brought to upwardly mobile Dalits, and Mangoo Ram argued that untouchables were a separate religious community.

Answer: C

The Dalit Panthers were established in 1972.

The organisation was founded in Bombay in 1972 by young Dalit writers and activists including Namdeo Dhasal, J.V. Pawar and Arun Kamble, taking its name and militant style from the Black Panther Party in the United States. Its 1973 manifesto defined 'Dalit' broadly to include all the oppressed.

1970 and 1971 are too early, and by 1974 the group was already active and beginning to split over ideology, so none of the other years fits its founding.

Answer: D

The statement that is not true is that backward class movements prevented the emergence of Dalit movements.

Dalit movements arose alongside the backward class movements and often drew on the same critique of caste. Jotirao Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj in Maharashtra, for example, addressed both the Shudra and the Ati-Shudra castes, and the Dalit movement led by Ambedkar developed in the same region and period.

The other statements are accepted: the backward class movements began in the colonial period, were led by middle-ranking agrarian castes such as the Marathas, Vokkaligas and Ezhavas, and attacked caste hierarchy and Brahmin supremacy.