Change and Development in Industrial Society - Test Papers

 CBSE Class-12 Sociology Test Paper-01

Part-2 (Ch-05 Change and Development in Industrial Society)

General Instruction:

  • Question 1-5 carries two marks each.
  • Question 6-8 carries four marks each.
  • Question 9-10 carries six marks each.
  1. What is urbanisation associated with?
  2. Define ‘alienation’.
  3. Does industrialisation lead to greater form of equality?
  4. What are the different perspectives on understanding industrialisation?
  5. Highlight the characteristic features of an organised sector.
  6. How is the experience of industrialisation in India different from that of the developed countries?
  7. What are the social implications of having a small sized organised sector?
  8. How has liberalization affected the employment patterns in India?
  9. What are the social features that thinkers like Marx, Weber and Durkheim associated with industry?
  10. Define liberalisation. What were the resultant changes that occurred in the industrial society in India as a result of liberalisation? Explain using examples.

CBSE Class-12 Sociology Test Paper-01
Part-1 (Ch-05 Change and Development in Industrial Society)

  1. The feature of urbanisation is associated with the loss of face-to-face relationships that were found in rural areas where people worked on their own and their substitution by anonymous professional relationships in modern factories and workplaces.
  2. Karl Marx defines alienation as a process when people do not enjoy work and see it as something they have to do only in order to survive. This happens when work becomes repetitive and exhausting. The possibility of the survival too depends on whether technology has room for any human labour.
  3. Industrialisation leads greater equality at least in some spheres. For example, caste distinctions do not matter anymore in public places like trains, buses or in cyber cafes. However, older forms of discrimination may still persist in new factory or workplace. Though social inequalities have reduced, economic or income inequality is growing in the world and many a time social inequality and income inequality overlap, for example, women often get paid less than men for similar work.
  4. The early sociologists saw industrialisation as both positive and negative. However, by the mid 20th century, under the influence of modernisation theory, industrialisation came to be seen as positive and inevitable for the society’s growth and development. Modernisation theory argues that societies are at different stages on the road to modernisation, but they are all heading towards the same direction. Modern society for these theorists is represented by the West.
  5. The following are the characteristic features of an organised sector:
    1. The organised sector consists of all units employing ten or more people throughout year
    2. They have to be registered with the government to ensure that their employees get proper salaries or wages, pension and other benefits.
  6. The experience of industrialisation in India is in many ways similar to the western model but in many ways different. The first point of difference is in relation to the kind of work people are doing. In developed countries, the majority of people are in the services sector, followed by industry and less than 10% are in agriculture. Whereas in India, nearly 60% were employed in the primary sector, 17% in the secondary sector, and 23% were in the tertiary sector. The agricultural sector where the maximum people are employed is not able to generate much income though maximum people are employed there. Another major difference between developing and developed countries is the number of people in regular salaried employment. In developed countries, the majority are formally employed. In India, over 50% of the population is self-employed, only about 14% are in regular salaried employment, while approximately 30% are in casual labour.
  7. A small segment of the organised sector in India has strong social implications.
    Firstly, very few people have the experience of employment in large firms where they get to meet people from other regions and backgrounds. Work for most Indians is still in small-scale workplaces where personal relationships determine many aspects of work. For instance, if the employer likes you, you may get a salary raise, and if you have a fight with him or her, you may lose your job.
    Secondly, very few Indians have access to secure jobs with benefits. Of those who do, two-thirds work for the government. This is why government jobs are so popular. The rest are forced to depend on their children in their old age.
    Third, despite of the government having laws to monitor conditions in the unorganised sector, in practice the workers in unorganised sector are left to the whims and fancies of the employer or contractor.
  8. Though India is still largely an agricultural country, liberalisation has affected the employment patterns in India both positively and negatively.
    On the one hand, more and more people in urban areas are now employed in the service sectors like shops, banks, the IT industry, hotels and other services. However, we also see that very few people in India have access to secure jobs, with even the small number in regular salaried employment becoming more insecure due to the rise in contract labour. So far, employment by the government was a major avenue for increasing the well-being of the population, but now even that is coming down.
  9. Thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim associated a number of social features with industry, such as urbanisation, the loss of face-to-face relationships that were found in rural areas where people worked on their own farms or for a landlord they knew and their substitution by anonymous professional relationships in modern factories and workplaces.
    Secondly, industrialisation involves a detailed division of labour where people often do not see the end result of their work. The work is often repetitive and exhausting. Marx called this situation alienation, when people do not enjoy work, and see it as something they have to do only in order to survive, and even that survival depends on whether the technology has room for any human labour.
    Industrialisation leads to greater equality, at least in some spheres. For example, caste distinctions do not matter anymore on trains, buses or in cyber cafes. On the other hand, older forms of discrimination may persist even in new factory or workplace settings. And even as social inequalities are reducing, economic or income inequality is growing in the world. Often social inequality and income inequality overlap, for example, in the domination of upper caste men in well-paying professions like medicine, law or journalism. Women often get paid less than men for similar work.
  10. Liberalisation refers to the process where private companies, especially foreign firms, are encouraged to invest in sectors earlier reserved for the government. Licenses are no longer required to open industries. The government has followed the policy of liberalisation in India since 1990s.
    The resultant changes that occurred in the industrial society in India as a result of liberalisation were both positive and negative.
    Positive changes
    1. Foreign products are now easily available in Indian shops creating wider choices for consumers. 
    2. As a result of liberalisation, many Indian companies have been bought over by multinationals. At the same time some Indian companies are becoming multinational companies. 
    3. The next major area of liberalisation may be in retail.
    Negative changes
    1. Government has adopted the policy of disinvestment and trying to sell its share in several public sector companies. This has increased fear amongst many government workers that after disinvestment, they will lose their jobs.
    2. More and more companies are reducing the number of permanent employees and outsourcing their work to smaller companies or even to homes. 
    3. Small companies have to compete for orders from the big companies and due to this, they keep wages low, and working conditions are often poor. 
    4. It is more difficult for trade unions to organise in smaller firms. Almost all companies, even government ones, now practice some form of outsourcing and contracting. But the trend is especially visible in the private sector.