SOCIOLOGY (039) SAMPLE QUESTION PAPER CLASS XII TERM 2

SECTION A

1. A model of the South Asian colonial city
The European town…had spacious bungalows, elegant apartment houses,planned streets, trees on both sides of the street,…clubs for afternoon and evening get togethers…The open space was reserved for…Western recreational facilities, such as race and golf courses, soccer and cricket. When domestic water supply, electric connections, and sewage links were available or technically possible, the European town residents utilised them fully, whereas their use was quite restricted to the native town. (Dutt 1993: 361)
Read the source and answer the following question.
Did the model of the South Asian colonial city cater to the needs of the natives? Give a reason for your answer.

Ans: No.
When domestic water supply, electric connections, and sewage links were available or technically possible, the European town residents utilised them fully, whereas their use was quite restricted to the native town.

2. Kumudtai’s journey into Sanskrit began with great interest and eagerness with Gokhale Guruji, her teacher at school…At the University, the Head of the Department was a well-known scholar and he took great pleasure in taunting Kumudtai…Despite the adverse comments she successfully completed her Masters in Sanskrit…. Source: Kumud Pawade (1938)
Read the source and answer the following question.
Do you think sanskritisation is a gendered process? Give a reason for your answer.

Ans: Yes. She felt that the study of Sanskrit can help her break into a field that was not possible for her to enter on grounds of gender and caste. As she proceeds with her studies, she meets with varied reactions ranging from surprise to hostility, from guarded acceptance to brutal rejection.

SECTION B

3. Agricultural productivity increased sharply because of the new technology. India was able to become self-sufficient in food grain production for the first time in
decades. It was primarily the medium and large farmers who were able to benefit from the new technology.

3. A) What is subsistence agriculture?
Ans: When agriculturists produce primarily for themselves and are unable to produce for the market, it is known as subsistence agriculture

3. B) Who were able to reap the most benefits from Green Revolution and commercialisation of agriculture?

Ans: It was the farmers who were able to produce a surplus for the market who were able to reap the most benefits from the Green Revolution and from the commercialisation of agriculture that followed.

4. In the mid–1970s, there was a renewal of the women’s movement in India which was called the second phase of the Indian women’s movement. There was the growth of what is termed as the autonomous women’s movements.

4. A) How can these movements be called autonomous?
Ans: The term ‘autonomy’ referred to the fact that they were ‘autonomous’ or independent from political parties as distinct from those women’s organisations that had links with political parties.

4. B) Write about any one ideological change that was noticed in the autonomous women’s movement.

Ans: • There has been a recognition too that while all women are in some way disadvantaged vis-a-vis men, all women do not suffer the same level or kind of discrimination.
• There has also been greater recognition that both men and women are constrained by the dominant gender identities. (Any one)

5. Compare the impact of just-in-time for the company vis-à-vis the worker.

Ans: Just-in-time keeps costs low for the company,
• but the workers are very tense, because if the supplies fail to arrive, their production targets get delayed,
• and when they do arrive they have to run to keep up which exhausts
them.

6. Can we apply the distinction between old and new social movements in the Indian context?

Ans: No.
• New social movements are not just about ‘old’ issues of economic
inequality. Nor are they organised along class lines alone. Often, these
social movements unite participants across class boundaries.
• Identity politics, cultural anxieties and aspirations are essential elements in creating social movements and occur in ways that are difficult to trace to class-based inequality.

7. Often it is thought that imparting knowledge of ‘scientific’ farming methods will improve the condition of Indian farmers. Is this statement true? Give one reason for your answer.

Ans: • No
• Much of traditional knowledge about the land they till and the crops
they sow is being lost as hybrid, high-yielding, and genetically modified
varieties of seeds are being promoted as more productive and
‘scientific’.

8. Differentiate between the organized and unorganized sector.

Ans:

OR

What are the social consequences of the long working hours in the IT sector?

Ans: • If both husband-and-wife work, then children have to be put in crèches.
• The joint family, which was supposed to have disappeared with
industrialisation, seems to have re-emerged, as grandparents are roped in to help with children.

9. Labour is more free in an industrial society. How?

Ans: • By moving to casual industrial work through contractor system, the labour while they are still in debt, they are not bound by other social
obligations to the contractor.
• They can break the contract and find another employer.

SECTION C

10. Compare the experience of industrialization in the West with that of the Indian experience.

Ans: • Unlike Britain where the impact of industrialisation led to more people moving into urban areas, in India the initial impact of the same British industrialisation led to more people moving into agriculture.
• Just as manufacturing boomed in Britain, traditional exports of cotton
and silk manufactures from India declined in the face of Manchester
competition. This period also saw the further decline of cities such as
Surat and Masulipatnam.
• When the British took over Indian states, towns like Thanjavur, Dhaka,
and Murshidabad lost their courts and, therefore, some of their artisans
and court gentry.
• Industrialization in the west was accompanied by the growth of a
western middle class. However, in India, it could not create any genuine middle class. We know only too well that the zamindars become parasites in land and the graduates job hunters.

11. Elucidate the phenomena of modernity. 4

Ans: • ‘Modernity’ assumes that local ties and parochial perspectives give way to universal commitments and cosmopolitan attitudes;
• that the truths of utility, calculation, and science take precedence over
those of the emotions, the sacred, and the non-rational;
• that the individual rather than the group be the primary unit of society
and politics;
• that the associations in which men live and work be based on choice not birth;
• that mastery rather than fatalism orient their attitude toward the
material and human environment;
• that identity be chosen and achieved, not ascribed and affirmed;
• that work be separated from family, residence, and community in
bureaucratic organisation (any 4 points)

OR

19th century reform initiated a period of questioning, reinterpretations and both intellectual and social growth. Using suitable examples, justify the given statement.

Ans: • The  idea of female education was debated intensely. Reformers argued that for a society to progress women have to be educated. Some of them believed that in pre-modern India, women were educated. Others contested this on the grounds that this was so only of a privileged few. Thus, attempts to justify female education were made by recourse to both modern and traditional ideas.
• They actively debated the meanings of tradition and modernity. Jotiba
Phule thus recalled the glory of pre-Aryan age while others like Bal Gangadhar Tilak emphasised the glory of the Aryan period.
• Muslim social reformers actively debated the meaning of polygamy and purdah. For example, a resolution against the evils of polygamy was proposed by Jahanara Shah Nawas at the All India Muslim Ladies
Conference.
• Debates within communities were common during this period. For
instance, sati was opposed by the Brahmo Samaj. Orthodox members of the Hindu community in Bengal formed an organisation called Dharma Sabha and petitioned the British arguing that reformers had no right to interpret sacred texts.

12. Identify and discuss the plight of the various stakeholders in the Bombay Textile strike of 1982.

Ans: • The Bombay Textile strike of 1982, which was led by the trade union leader, Dr. Datta Samant, and affected nearly a quarter of a million workers and their families. The strike lasted nearly two years.
• Women workers participated actively in the strike. However, they
experienced a conflict between their role as a participant in the strike
and their responsibility towards their families and children.
• Members of the RMMS played a role in breaking the strike by bringing
people to work.
• Nearly one lakh workers lost their jobs and went back to their villages,
or took up casual labour.

SECTION D

13. Jharkhand is one of the newly formed states of India, carved out of south Bihar in the year 2000. Describe the social movement that led to the creation of this state.

Ans: • The social movement for Jharkhand had a charismatic leader in Birsa Munda, an adivasi who led a major uprising against the British.
• Literate adivasis began to research and write about their history and
myths. They documented disseminated information about tribal
customs and cultural practices. This helped create a unified ethnic
consciousness and a shared identity as Jharkhandis.
• Literate adivasis were also in a position to get government jobs so that, over time, a middle-class adivasi intellectual leadership emerged that formulated the demand for a separate state and lobbied for it in India and abroad.
• Within south Bihar, adivasis shared a common hatred of dikus –migrant traders and moneylenders who had settled in the area and grabbed its wealth, impoverishing the original residents.
• Adivasi experiences of marginalisation and their sense of injustice were mobilised to create a shared Jharkhandi identity and inspire collective action that eventually led to the formation of a separate state.
• The issues against which the leaders of the movement in Jharkand
agitated were: acquisition of land for large irrigation projects and firing
ranges; survey and settlement operations, which were held up, camps
closed down, etc., collection of loans, rent and cooperative dues, which
were resisted; and nationalisation of forest produce which they boycotted.

OR

Using an example, explain an ecological movement.

Ans: • The Chipko Movement, an example of the ecological movement, started in the Himalayan foothills.
• When government forest contractors came to cut down the trees,
villagers, including large number of women, stepped forward to hug the
trees to prevent their being felled.
• All of them relied on the forest to get firewood, fodder and other daily
necessities. This conflict placed the livelihood needs of poor villagers
against the government’s desire to generate revenues from selling
timber.
• The economy of subsistence was pitted against the economy of profit.
Along with this issue of social inequality (villagers versus a government
that represented commercial, capitalist interests), the Chipko Movement also raised the issue of ecological sustainability.
• In addition, the Chipko Movement also expressed the resentment of hill villagers against a distant government headquartered in the plains that seemed indifferent and hostile to their concerns.
• So, concerns about economy, ecology and political representation
underlay the Chipko Movement.

14. Show the relation between circulation of labour and feminization of agricultural labour force.

Ans: • As ‘traditional’ bonds of patronage between labourers or tenants and landlords broke down, and as the seasonal demand for agricultural
labour increased in prosperous Green Revolution regions such as the
Punjab, a pattern of seasonal migration emerged in which thousands of
workers circulate between their home villages and more prosperous
areas where there is more demand for labour and higher wages.
• Migrant workers come mainly from drought-prone and less productive
regions, and they go to work for part of the year on farms in the Punjab
and Haryana, or on brick kilns in U.P., or construction sites in cities such as New Delhi or Bangalore.
• Wealthy farmers often prefer to employ migrant workers for harvesting
and other such intensive operations, rather than the local working class, because migrants are more easily exploited and can be paid lower wages.
• This preference has produced a peculiar pattern in some areas where
the local landless labourers move out of the home villages in search of
work during the peak agricultural seasons, while migrant workers are
brought in from other areas to work on the local farms.
• The large-scale circulation of labour has had several significant effects on rural society, in both the receiving and the supplying regions. For instance, in poor areas where male family members spend much of the year working outside of their villages, cultivation has become primarily a female task.
• Women are also emerging as the main source of agricultural labour,
leading to the ‘feminisation of agricultural labour force.’