Social Change and Development in India: Modernisation, Globalisation and Social Movements
What the exam tests
This domain examines how Indian society changes through modernisation, globalisation and collective movements. Questions often ask for impacts of globalisation, features of social movements, or the difference between development and growth.
Core rules and concepts
- Modernisation involves adoption of modern values, technology and institutions such as education, industry and urban living.
- Globalisation involves liberalisation, foreign investment, IT, media flows and migration; it has economic, cultural and political effects.
- Development is broader than economic growth; it includes human development, equity and sustainability.
- Social movements are sustained collective actions for change: peasant, labour, women's, environmental, tribal and backward-class movements.
- Old movements often focus on economic issues; new movements often focus on identity, environment and rights.
Worked example
Kerala's Gulf migration and IT-enabled services show globalisation through remittances, consumerism and new work cultures. But migration also changes gender roles and creates dependence on remittances. A good answer links globalisation to both opportunity and inequality.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating modernisation with Westernisation.
- Treating globalisation as only economic.
- Assuming all social movements are violent.
- Ignoring development-induced displacement.