Agrarian Class Structure
Class in Indian Society
The concept of class is central to the sociological understanding of stratification and inequality. Unlike caste, which is rooted in hereditary and religious norms, class refers to a social group characterized by shared socioeconomic conditions. It is primarily defined by factors such as income, wealth, occupation, education, and lifestyle, and often reflects one’s position in the broader economic hierarchy. Class divisions indicate varying levels of access to power, prestige, and resources, and are marked by social distance, often manifesting in different life chances, consumption patterns, and political affiliations.
Definition of Class
In its broadest sense, class represents a group of people sharing similar economic and social positions. This includes:
Material indicators such as income, ownership of property, and occupation
Non-material attributes like educational qualifications, skill sets, and cultural prestige
Class boundaries are not always rigid, but they do reflect structural inequalities, which get reproduced through institutions like the economy, education system, and political apparatus. Class-based stratification operates through both visible economic differences and more subtle forms of social exclusion and distinction.
Thinkers’ Views on Class
The understanding of class has evolved through the contributions of major sociological thinkers:
Karl Marx saw class as rooted in relations to the means of production. According to him, society is fundamentally divided between the bourgeoisie (owners of capital) and the proletariat (workers). Class struggle between these two groups drives historical change and social conflict.
Max Weber provided a more multidimensional approach to class. While he acknowledged the economic basis of class, he also emphasized status groups (social honor and prestige) and party affiliations (political power) as significant. For Weber, class is not only about economic position but also about how people are viewed and treated in society.
Pierre Bourdieu expanded the definition further by introducing the concepts of economic, cultural, and social capital. He argued that class is sustained through a combination of material wealth, educational credentials, cultural tastes, and social networks. Thus, class distinctions persist through both tangible and symbolic resources.
Class in Indian Society
India’s class structure is deeply shaped by its unique socio-historical context, where caste and class often intersect. The country exhibits a hybrid model where tribal, feudal, and industrial economies coexist. This diversity results in overlapping and fluid class boundaries, where traditional caste-based occupations still influence modern class positions, yet are increasingly altered by education, urbanization, and economic liberalization.
The evolution of the Indian middle class is especially notable. It has grown through the interaction between:
Colonial administrative systems, which introduced salaried employment and bureaucratic hierarchies
Industrial and service sector growth, especially in urban areas
Caste-based roles, where traditional elites adapted to modern professions, while marginalized castes used affirmative action to access education and jobs
Despite formal distinctions between caste and class, in practice, class positions in India are heavily inflected by caste location, particularly in rural areas.
Major Class Structures in India
1. Agrarian Class Structure
In rural India, class is largely determined by land ownership, access to credit, and type of labor performed. The typical class categories include:
Landlords: Owners of large tracts of land, often upper caste
Rich/Middle peasants: Cultivators with some land and capital
Small/Marginal farmers: Limited resources, often dependent on loans
Landless laborers: Usually Dalits or marginalized castes, dependent on wage labor
This structure has seen gradual transformation due to land reforms, mechanization, and rural-urban migration, but remains central to India’s socioeconomic inequalities.
2. Industrial Class Structure
In urban and industrial contexts, class is shaped by one’s position in the labor market:
Capitalist/Business class: Owners of industries and capital-intensive enterprises
Managerial and professional classes: High-skill, high-income occupations (e.g., engineers, doctors, corporate executives)
Skilled and unskilled workers: Factory labor, construction workers, and informal sector employees
The informal sector, which includes casual labor, street vendors, and gig workers, forms a large part of India’s urban working class. Despite being employed, these workers often lack job security, social protection, and a stable income, reflecting deep class vulnerabilities.
3. Middle Classes in India
The Indian middle class is highly diverse and has expanded significantly, especially post-liberalization. It includes:
Lower middle class: Clerical workers, teachers, small shopkeepers, often aspiring for upward mobility
Upper middle class: IT professionals, doctors, bureaucrats, enjoying consumer comforts and social influence
The middle class plays a key role in shaping national discourse, from consumer trends to electoral politics. However, it is also stratified internally along lines of caste, gender, and regional inequalities.
Agrarian Societies: Meaning, Background, and Class Structure
Agrarian societies are social formations primarily sustained through agriculture, animal husbandry, and rural economic activities. These societies are not merely economic entities but are deeply embedded in social, cultural, and kinship relations. Historically, the agrarian way of life has structured human civilization for centuries, predating industrialization and urbanization. The relations of production, land ownership, and labor in agrarian societies have been key in shaping their stratification and social organization.
Meaning and Types of Agrarian Relationships
Agrarian societies derive their livelihood from land-based activities. Within them, a variety of relationships exist between people and the land, giving rise to a spectrum of agrarian roles:
Owner-cultivators till their own land and form the economic backbone of many traditional rural economies.
Landlords own land but do not cultivate it themselves, instead leasing it to others.
Tenants and sharecroppers cultivate rented land, typically giving a portion of the output to the landowner.
Wage laborers are landless or marginal farmers who sell their labor, often seasonally.
Service providers, often from lower castes in India, supply essential occupational services—such as blacksmiths, carpenters, and barbers.
A prominent example of such embedded social roles is the Jajmani system of Indian villages. It was a traditional patron-client network, where dominant caste landowners relied on lower caste occupational groups for daily services. This system reflected the interweaving of caste and agrarian production, reinforcing a hereditary division of labor.
Class Identification in Agrarian Societies
Class in agrarian societies cannot be understood in purely economic terms, unlike in industrial capitalist systems. It is intertwined with caste, kinship, and religion, making class boundaries fluid and overlapping. For example, a wealthy landlord may derive prestige from both his economic standing and upper-caste status, while a tenant farmer’s exploitation may be compounded by his caste subordination. Therefore, agrarian class relations are multidimensional, reflecting both material and symbolic hierarchies.
Models of Agrarian Class Structure
1. Classical Notion: Undifferentiated Peasant Society
Early anthropological studies viewed peasant societies as homogeneous, subsistence-oriented, and self-sufficient. These communities were thought to lack internal class divisions, with most families cultivating their own land for survival. However, this romanticized view overlooked external forces of domination and surplus extraction.
Key Thinkers on Peasant Societies:
Eric Wolf challenged the view of peasants as isolated. He argued that peasant societies produced surplus, which was often appropriated by ruling classes through mechanisms such as taxation or rent. For Wolf, peasants were not primitive but part of larger exploitative political-economic systems.
Robert Redfield emphasized the cultural embeddedness of peasant life. He described peasants as deeply tied to land, motivated more by tradition and sentiment than by economic profit. To him, agriculture was a way of life, reflecting continuity and rootedness.
Theodor Shanin developed an ideal-type model of peasant society. He emphasized the central role of the family in production and social life. Peasant households performed multiple functions—economic, social, cultural, and reproductive. These societies were patriarchal, technologically backward, and characterized by face-to-face social interactions. Peasants were politically subordinate and lacked institutional power.
2. Agrarian Class Structure under Feudalism
Feudal agrarian systems were marked by rigid hierarchies and dependency relationships. Cultivators had only usufructuary rights—they could use the land but did not own it. Ownership lay with feudal lords, who exercised both economic and political control.
Under feudalism:
Peasants owed customary duties and showed loyalty to their overlords.
The begar system forced peasants into unpaid labor, reinforcing their subjugation.
The feudal class structure was asymmetrical, with landlords extracting surplus and enjoying privileges while peasants remained impoverished and dependent.
Contemporary Agrarian Society under Modern Capitalism
The onset of industrialization and capitalist modernization transformed agrarian structures. With mechanization and the integration of agriculture into market systems, traditional modes of production eroded.
Modern capitalist agriculture introduced:
Advanced machinery like tractors, threshers, and irrigation systems
A shift from subsistence to market-oriented farming, with a focus on cash crops
Dependence on external inputs (fertilizers, pesticides), institutional credit, and volatile market prices
These changes led to:
Commercialization of agriculture: Production is now geared towards profit, not consumption.
Marginalization of small and traditional farmers: Many cannot afford the inputs required for modern farming.
Growing market dependency: Farmers are now vulnerable to price fluctuations, debt cycles, and agrarian distress.
Land Tenure Systems under British Rule in India
The British colonial administration fundamentally transformed the Indian agrarian landscape through the imposition of land tenure systems designed primarily to maximize revenue extraction. These systems reshaped traditional land relations, disrupted rural social structures, and had long-lasting effects on peasant livelihoods, agrarian class structures, and agricultural productivity. The three principal land tenure systems introduced were the Zamindari, Ryotwari, and Mahalwari systems, each implemented in different regions and with distinct administrative mechanisms.
Zamindari System
The Zamindari system was first formalized through the Permanent Settlement of Bengal in 1793, spearheaded by Lord Cornwallis. Under this system, Zamindars were recognized as landowners, and peasants—who traditionally had customary rights over land—were reduced to the status of tenants. Zamindars were responsible for collecting land revenue from the peasants and remitting it to the British.
Taxation under Zamindari rule was rigid and exploitative. Peasants were required to pay revenue in cash, regardless of the actual agricultural yield, making them vulnerable to crop failure and market fluctuations. The revenue structure was sharply skewed: only 1/11th of the collected tax remained with the Zamindar, while 10/11ths went to the East India Company. This incentivized intensified exploitation of the peasantry by the Zamindars, leading to land alienation, rising rural indebtedness, and widespread impoverishment of cultivators. Over time, the system concentrated land and power in the hands of a few, creating a landed elite with feudal control over rural life.
Ryotwari System
Introduced in regions like Madras, Bombay, Assam, and Coorg, the Ryotwari system was conceptualized by Thomas Munro and others as an alternative to intermediary-based revenue collection. Unlike the Zamindari system, the Ryotwari model granted ownership rights directly to the peasants, known as ‘ryots’. The state dealt directly with the cultivators, collecting land revenue without the mediation of landlords.
While seemingly progressive, the Ryotwari system had serious drawbacks. The land revenue was often set at high rates and revised arbitrarily, failing to account for local conditions or crop performance. The cash-based taxation regime, coupled with periodic crop failures, pushed many peasants into chronic indebtedness. Although ryots were landowners in theory, their ownership was insecure in practice, as failure to pay taxes could result in the forfeiture of land.
Mahalwari System
The Mahalwari system was implemented in northern and central India, including the Central Provinces, Agra, Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, and the Gangetic Valley. This system treated the village (or Mahal) as the unit of revenue assessment. Land revenue was to be collected collectively from the village community, with the assumption that villages had a cohesive organizational structure capable of mutual accountability.
While the peasants retained formal ownership rights, the responsibility of tax collection fell on the village headmen or elders. In practice, this often led to collusion between the tax collectors and moneylenders, who advanced cash to peasants at high interest rates, leading to widespread land mortgaging and indebtedness. The excessive tax burden and lack of institutional credit mechanisms further destabilized agrarian life.
Impact of Colonial Land Policies
Across all three systems, the colonial land tenure policies had severe consequences for rural India. One of the most significant outcomes was the emergence of moneylenders and absentee landlords as dominant rural classes, often displacing traditional cultivators from their land. The peasants lost ownership and security, leading to cycles of debt, land alienation, and rural pauperization. Furthermore, the heavy taxation and neglect of agrarian infrastructure contributed to a decline in agricultural productivity, as peasants had neither the resources nor the incentives to invest in land improvement.
In conclusion, the British land tenure systems, though administratively varied, shared a common logic of revenue maximization at the cost of rural welfare. They altered India’s agrarian structure in ways that entrenched inequality, weakened peasant autonomy, and sowed the seeds for future agrarian discontent and movements. The legacy of these systems continued to influence post-independence land reforms and rural development initiatives.
Agrarian Class Change in Post-Independence India
The agrarian landscape of India underwent profound changes after independence, marked by shifts in land relations, rural leadership, and socio-economic dynamics. These transformations were driven by both state-led initiatives and organic processes rooted in the wider modernization of Indian society. While the colonial land tenure systems created a rigid and exploitative agrarian structure, post-independence India sought to reform and democratize the countryside. However, the results were complex, producing new patterns of dominance, mobility, and stratification.
Key Drivers of Agrarian Change
Four major factors contributed to the transformation of agrarian class structures in post-independence India: land reforms, Panchayati Raj and parliamentary politics, rural development programmes, and peasant movements.
Land reforms aimed at abolishing zamindari, redistributing surplus land, and securing tenancy rights. Although their implementation varied across states, they facilitated a modest shift of power from large landlords to intermediate and small landowners. Panchayati Raj institutions created a formal space for political participation at the village level, allowing emerging groups to assert leadership. Development programmes, including the Green Revolution, altered the economic basis of farming, enabling certain castes and classes to prosper. Lastly, peasant movements challenged land monopolies, demanded rights, and mobilized the rural poor into collective action.
B.S. Cohn: Land and Dominance
In his 1962 study of twelve Indian villages, B.S. Cohn emphasized that land ownership remained the most crucial determinant of social and political dominance. He showed that castes such as Jatts in Punjab, Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and Lingayats in Karnataka emerged as dominant agrarian classes. These groups controlled both land and the institutions of rural governance, demonstrating that while zamindars were formally abolished, rural hierarchies persisted through new configurations.
Emerging Rural Leadership
Post-independence also witnessed the emergence of a new class of rural leaders, especially after the introduction of Panchayati Raj. Educated youth from dominant and upwardly mobile castes began participating in local governance. A notable example is Chhavi Rajawat, an MBA graduate who became the youngest Sarpanch in Rajasthan, symbolizing the modernization and democratization of rural leadership. These leaders often brought technocratic ideas and urban aspirations to the management of village affairs, though not without contestation from entrenched interests.
M.S.A. Rao: Urban Impact on Rural India
Sociologist M.S.A. Rao (1974) identified three major types of urban influence on rural society, which further altered agrarian class structures.
1. Labour Migration and Remittances:
Large-scale migration from villages to urban or overseas locations led to the flow of remittances back into rural economies. These funds were used to build concrete houses, purchase consumer goods, and invest in agriculture or businesses. Migrant families gained new forms of prestige, even in distant villages, leading to the monetization and gentrification of rural spaces.
2. Proximity to Industrial Towns:
Villages located near industrial centres such as Pune, Surat, or Jamshedpur experienced land acquisition, influx of labor, and a surge in local markets. Traditional agrarian structures were disrupted, and many landowners capitalized on the booming real estate and rental economy. This led to the growth of a rural bourgeoisie while simultaneously displacing small farmers.
3. Urban Expansion and Village Absorption:
The urban sprawl of metropolitan cities like Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru led to the absorption of peripheral villages. The construction of infrastructure, such as the Noida Airport in Uttar Pradesh, resulted in the loss of agricultural land and cash compensations for villagers. While some used the money to buy land elsewhere or start businesses, others squandered it, falling into economic insecurity. Villagers often transitioned to urban jobs or engaged in market gardening, dairy, and poultry farming, especially in fringe villages not entirely acquired by the state.