Development and Social Change in Rural India

Development and Social Change in Rural India offers a clear insight into changing rural society as a result of the modernizing impact of community development programmes in East U.P. The author has collected his data from two villages in the Manihari Block of Ghazipur district in Uttar Pradesh. The book begins with a survey of the theoretical literature on the concept of social change and goes on to show how the villagers have been adopting and accepting modern techniques of animal husbandry, family planning, western medicine, agricultural tools and fertilisers etc. In all these spheres we find a confrontation between modernity and tradition in which the former has been slowly winning the battle. The author shows that the educated, functionally literate and illiterate accept innovations in relation to their level of education. Similarly, the caste is an important factor in adoption of modernity. While the book, like others on this subject, highlights the modernising process, it also shows the “traditionalisation of modernity” the Indianisation of Western institutions and methods when these interact with the traditional society.