Economic Organisation | ISC Class 12 Sociology Notes

This note covers the meaning of economic organisation and the distinction between economic and free goods, the different economies followed by Indian tribes (food gathering, agriculture, shifting axe cultivation, handicraft making, pastoralism, industrial labour and tribal industries) with the local terms used for shifting cultivation by different tribes, the role of bodies such as TRIFED and other agencies in promoting tribal industries, the agrarian economy and the relations between landowner, tenant and sharecropper, the Jajmani system between jajman and kamin, the features and implications of the MGNREGA Act, 2005, and traditional markets, including the features and sociological importance of weekly markets and the definition of barter exchange.

What is economic organisation, and how do economic goods differ from free goods?

Economic organisation refers to the way a society arranges the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services needed for the survival and comfort of its members.

Every society, however small or technologically simple, has to decide what to produce, how to produce it and how to share what is produced among its members.

This arrangement is never purely technical: it is shaped by kinship, caste, religion and custom, so sociologists treat the economy as a social institution and not merely a technical or financial system.

A basic distinction within economic organisation is between economic goods and free goods. Economic goods are scarce in relation to the demand for them, require effort or payment to obtain, and therefore have an exchange value in the market, for example food grain, cloth or tools.

Free goods are available in such abundance in nature that no one has to pay for them or compete for them, for example air or sunlight.

The distinction matters sociologically because it is scarcity, not just usefulness, that draws a good into systems of production, exchange and ownership, and therefore into social relationships of control and dependence.

Definition: Economic organisation. The socially organised arrangements by which a community produces, distributes and consumes goods and services, shaped by its kinship, caste and customary institutions and not only by market forces.

How do food-gathering and agricultural economies work among Indian tribes?

Among Indian tribes, the simplest and oldest form of livelihood is food gathering, in which people collect roots, fruits, leaves, honey and small game directly from the forest without cultivating land or domesticating large herds.

Hunting often accompanies food gathering as a related activity. This economy requires an intimate, detailed knowledge of the forest and its seasons, and it supports only small, usually mobile, bands because the forest can feed only a limited number of people in any one place.

Many tribal groups have, over time, taken up settled or semi-settled agriculture, growing food grains and other crops on fixed plots using the plough or the hoe.

Once a tribe settles into regular cultivation, its social organisation tends to become more stable, since fixed fields encourage permanent villages, inheritance of land, and closer ties with neighbouring non-tribal cultivators who buy, sell or lease land in the same region.

Settled agriculture among tribes exists alongside, and sometimes in tension with, older shifting forms of cultivation described below.

What is shifting axe cultivation, and why was it criticised?

Shifting cultivation, also called axe cultivation, is a method in which a patch of forest is cleared by cutting and burning the trees and undergrowth, crops are grown on the cleared patch for a few seasons until the soil loses its fertility, and the cultivators then move to a fresh patch, leaving the old one to lie fallow and regenerate as forest.

Different tribes across India have their own names for this practice, reflecting its deep place in their local culture and economy.

• The Naga tribe of the north-eastern hills calls this practice jhum.
• The Bhuiya tribe uses the terms dahi and koman for the same method.
• The Maria tribe calls it penda.
• The Khond tribe calls it podu.
• The Baiga tribe calls it bewar.

Shifting cultivation was heavily criticised by foresters and administrators, who argued that repeated clearing and burning of forest patches destroys tree cover, accelerates soil erosion, and reduces the long-term productivity of forest land.

Because of this criticism, the government banned this type of cultivation in several areas, forcing many tribal communities to shift towards settled agriculture or other occupations, often with considerable disruption to their traditional way of life.

What role do handicrafts and pastoralism play in tribal economies?

Handicraft making, such as basket weaving, pottery, wood carving and metal work, forms an important part of the economy of many tribes, both for the community's own use and, increasingly, for sale to outsiders.

These skills are usually passed down within families and are closely tied to local materials such as bamboo, clay or forest wood, making tribal handicrafts distinctive to each region.

Pastoralism, the rearing of livestock such as cattle, sheep or goats as the main source of livelihood, is followed by some tribal groups, particularly in hilly and semi-arid tracts where cultivation is difficult.

Pastoral tribes often move seasonally with their herds in search of pasture, which shapes a more mobile pattern of settlement than that of settled cultivators.

How are tribal communities involved in industrial labour and tribal industries?

With the growth of mining and plantation industries in colonial and post-colonial India, large numbers of tribal people were drawn into industrial labour.

Many Santhal, Kond and Gond workers migrated to the tea gardens of the north-east, where plantation labour offered wage employment outside the tribal homeland.

The large mineral resources of coal, iron and steel found in Bengal, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh also drew tribal labour into industry: the Santhal and the Ho, for example, worked in pick-mining, coal-cutting, and in the mica and the iron and steel industries of this belt.

This movement into wage labour marked a significant change for tribal economies that had earlier depended mainly on forest produce, cultivation or pastoralism, because it introduced cash wages, factory discipline and migration away from the home village, often under difficult working and living conditions.

How do organisations such as TRIFED promote tribal industries?

To support tribal economies against the pressures of outside traders and moneylenders, the government has promoted bodies such as TRIFED, which works to develop and market tribal handicrafts and other tribal produce, to preserve tribal material culture, and to assist tribal communities in selling their agricultural and forest produce at fair prices.

Such organisations aim to give tribal producers a more direct and secure link to wider markets, reducing their dependence on middlemen who had often exploited them in the past.

Alongside TRIFED, other agencies also work for tribal development and for the marketing of tribal products. The Large Area Multipurpose Societies (LAMPS) are cooperative bodies that supply tribal households with essential goods and help them market their produce. Special Central Assistance is a grant given to states to support tribal development programmes, and the Tribal Panchsheel is the set of five principles of tribal development that guide official policy towards tribal communities.

Note: Promotion of tribal industries through bodies such as TRIFED and other agencies is meant to protect tribal handicrafts and material culture while helping tribal producers sell their agricultural and forest produce more fairly in wider markets.

What is the agrarian economy, and how do landowner, tenant and sharecropper relate to each other?

The agrarian economy describes the pattern of relations that develop around the ownership, control and use of agricultural land.

Land is not just a means of production but also the most important form of property in rural society, and it is distributed highly unequally: in many regions a substantial share of households own little or no land, while a few families are well to do.

Three positions define agrarian land relations. The landowner holds legal title to the land and may cultivate it directly, lease it out, or employ labourers on it.

The tenant is a cultivator who leases land from the landowner and pays rent for its use, often as much as 50 to 75 per cent of the income from the crop, which leaves tenants with lower incomes than owner-cultivators.

The sharecropper is a particular kind of tenant who pays the landowner a share of the harvested crop itself, rather than a fixed cash rent, so that the risk of a poor harvest is shared between landowner and cultivator rather than falling only on the tenant.

Access to land shapes the wider rural class structure: medium and large landowners can usually earn comfortable incomes from cultivation, while agricultural labourers, who are more often than not paid below the statutory minimum wage, face insecure, underemployed daily-wage work.

In most regions, a rough correspondence exists between caste and class, with the dominant landowning castes also being the most powerful group economically and politically in that locality.

What is the Jajmani system, and what are its merits and demerits?

The Jajmani system is a traditional, caste-based arrangement of exchange found in many Indian villages, in which specialist and service castes provide fixed occupational services to landholding families in exchange for a customary share of grain or other produce, rather than for cash payment at each transaction.

In this system, the jajman is the patron, usually a landholding or dominant-caste family that receives services, while the kamin is the service-providing specialist, such as the carpenter, potter, weaver, barber, washerman or priest, who performs a particular occupational role for the jajman's household, generation after generation.

The system rests on a long-term, hereditary relationship rather than a one-off market exchange: a particular kamin family serves a particular jajman family year after year, receiving a customary share of the harvest, food, clothing and other support in return for continuous services through the year, including at festivals and life-cycle ceremonies.

Definition: Jajmani system. A hereditary, caste-based system of exchange between a landholding patron (jajman) and a specialist service-caste family (kamin), in which customary services are repaid mainly in kind rather than in cash.

What are the features and implications of the MGNREGA Act, 2005?

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, passed in 2005, is a rural employment programme that legally guarantees wage employment to rural households whose adult members are willing to do unskilled manual work.

Its central feature is the entitlement to a fixed minimum number of days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural household that demands it, implemented mainly through the local Gram Panchayat.

1. A rural household applies to the Gram Panchayat for registration and is issued a job card listing its adult members.
2. Any registered adult member may then demand work under the scheme at any time.
3. The local authority is required to provide unskilled manual work within a set period of the demand being made.
4. If employment is not provided within this period, the household is entitled to an unemployment allowance instead.
5. Wages are paid for work done, mainly on rural infrastructure projects such as water conservation, land development and rural roads.

The Act has important implications for rural society: it provides a wage floor and a fallback source of income for landless and marginal households during the agricultural off-season, it strengthens the bargaining position of agricultural labourers relative to landowners, and it reduces, to some extent, the kind of dependence that older systems such as bonded or hereditary labour arrangements created between landless workers and dominant landowning families.

Comparing the Jajmani system versus MGNREGA as rural livelihood arrangements

Although both the Jajmani system and MGNREGA concern the livelihood of rural workers, they differ fundamentally in their basis, their mode of payment and the relationship they create between worker and provider of work.

What are traditional markets, and what is barter exchange?

Weekly markets, often called haats, are periodic markets held on a fixed day in a particular village or locality, drawing people from surrounding villages to sell agricultural, forest or craft produce and to buy goods, such as salt, implements, cloth, bangles and jewellery, that are not available locally.

Their main features can be listed as follows.

1. They are periodic: they are held on a fixed day of the week rather than every day, so buyers and sellers gather at a known interval.
2. They draw people from surrounding villages, who come to sell their own produce and to buy manufactured goods and items not available locally.
3. They attract traders from outside the local area, as well as moneylenders, entertainers, astrologers and other specialists offering services and wares.
4. They are held in the open, on a fixed ground, and are the major institution for exchange where settlements are scattered and roads and communications are poor.
5. They are linked to wider networks: periodic markets connect different regional and local economies to the wider national economy and to towns and metropolitan centres.

Draw an open ground crossed by a road, with stalls of local tribal sellers of tamarind, oil-seeds and bamboo baskets on one side and stalls of outside traders selling salt, cloth and trinkets on the other. Mark a tea shop, a place where moneylenders and forest officials sit, and a crowd of visitors who have come mainly to meet kin and exchange news.

In hilly and forested tribal tracts, where settlements are scattered and roads and communication are poor, the weekly market is often the single most important institution for the exchange of goods, as well as for social contact, since many visitors come as much to meet kin, arrange marriages or exchange news as to trade.

Sociologically, such markets are important not only for their economic function but for their social role: they bring together local tribal and non-tribal people, outside traders, moneylenders, and specialists such as entertainers and astrologers, and they link the local economy to wider regional and national networks of exchange.

A weekly tribal market has been shown to attract local tribals and caste Hindu traders, with forest officials also coming to conduct business, so that the market becomes a meeting point of several different groups and interests at once.

Barter exchange is the direct exchange of one good or service for another without the use of money as a medium of exchange. In barter, the value of what is given and what is received is settled directly between the two parties, rather than being expressed in a common currency.

Going beyond the syllabus

The ideas in this section extend the unit and are not needed for the questions on it. They are included to show how the study of economic organisation connects with wider changes in rural society.

How did the colonial land system and land reform change agrarian relations?

The colonial zamindari system gave zamindars strong property rights over land and allowed them to extract heavy revenue from cultivators, which in many areas caused agricultural production to stagnate.

After independence, the abolition of the zamindari system removed this layer of intermediaries between cultivators and the state, strengthening the position of actual landholders.

Tenancy abolition and regulation acts tried either to end tenancy altogether or to regulate rents and give tenants more security, though in most states they were not implemented very effectively.

Land Ceiling Acts set an upper limit on the land a family could own, with the state meant to take surplus land above the ceiling and redistribute it to landless households, although many landowners evaded this through loopholes such as benami transfers.

How did rural labour relations shift from patronage to cash wages?

The decline of arrangements such as the Jajmani system is linked to wider changes in the rural economy: as cultivation becomes more commercialised and crops are grown mainly for sale rather than for the jajman's household use, payment for labour tends to shift from kind, such as grain, to cash wages, and hereditary ties between landowning and service-caste families loosen.

This broader shift, from patronage to a more cash-based and impersonal wage relationship, has been described by sociologists as part of a wider transition in rural labour relations, alongside the rise of migrant, seasonal wage labour moving between poorer and more prosperous agricultural regions.

How is the market itself studied as a social institution?

Sociologists view markets as social institutions that are constructed in culturally specific ways, often controlled or organised by particular social groups or classes and connected to other institutions and structures. They express this by saying that economies are socially embedded.

In most agrarian or peasant societies, periodic markets are a central feature of social and economic organisation, and rural India also has specialised markets held at less frequent intervals, such as cattle markets.

The weekly market in tribal areas is a very old institution, but its character changed after these areas were brought under colonial control and linked to wider regional and national economies. Traders, moneylenders and other non-tribal people from the plains moved in, forest produce was sold to outsiders, and money and new kinds of goods entered the system.

Tribals were also recruited as labourers on plantations and in mines established under colonialism, so that a market for tribal labour developed and local tribal economies became linked into wider markets, usually with very negative consequences for local people.

How did caste and kinship networks organise trade and business?

Trade and commerce often operate through caste and kinship networks, because businessmen are more likely to trust others of their own community or kin group and tend to do business within such networks rather than with outsiders, which tends to create a caste monopoly within certain areas of business.

The Nakarattars of Tamil Nadu loaned and deposited money with one another in caste-defined social relationships based on business territory, residential location, descent, marriage and common cult membership. It was the reputation, decisions and reserve deposits shared among these exchange spheres, and not a government-controlled central bank, that assured public confidence in individual Nakarattars as representatives of the caste as a whole.

An important instrument of exchange and credit was the hundi, or bill of exchange, like a credit note, which allowed merchants to engage in long-distance trade. Because trade took place primarily within the caste and kinship networks of these communities, a merchant in one part of the country could issue a hundi that would be honoured by a merchant in another place.

The traditional business communities of India include not only Vaisyas, such as the banias of North India, but also groups with distinctive religious or other community identities, such as the Parsis, Sindhis, Bohras and Jains. Merchant communities did not always have high status: during the colonial period the long-distance trade in salt was controlled by a marginalised tribal group, the Banjaras.

How did colonialism create new markets and new business communities?

The advent of colonialism produced major upheavals in the economy, causing disruptions in production, trade and agriculture. A well-known example is the demise of the handloom industry due to the flooding of the market with cheap manufactured textiles from England.

Before colonisation India was a major supplier of manufactured goods to the world market; afterwards she became a source of raw materials and agricultural products and a consumer of manufactured goods, both largely for the benefit of industrialising England.

Rather than completely overturning existing economic institutions, the expansion of the market economy provided new opportunities to some merchant communities, which improved their position by re-orienting themselves to changing circumstances. The Marwaris are the best-known example of a community that moved from small migrant traders to merchant bankers to industrialists.

What is capitalism as a social system?

Karl Marx understood capitalism as a system of commodity production, or production for the market, through the use of wage labour, and wrote that all economic systems are also social systems.

Each mode of production consists of particular relations of production, which give rise to a specific class structure. The economy does not consist of things but of relations between people connected through the process of production.

Under capitalism labour itself becomes a commodity, because workers must sell their labour power to earn a wage. This gives rise to two basic classes: capitalists, who own the means of production such as factories, and workers, who sell their labour. The capitalist class profits by paying workers less than the value of what they produce, extracting surplus value from their labour.

What are commodification, consumption and status symbols?

Commodification occurs when things that were earlier not traded in the market become commodities, for instance when labour or skills become things that can be bought and sold. Critics of capitalism argue that this process has negative social effects, and there is controversy about the sale of kidneys by the poor to rich patients who need transplants.

In capitalist society consumption becomes more and more important, not just for economic reasons but because it has symbolic meaning: consumption is an important way in which social distinctions are created and communicated, and companies try to sell goods by appealing to symbols of status or culture.

Max Weber was among the first to point out that the goods people buy and use are closely related to their status in society, and he coined the term status symbol to describe this relationship. Among the middle class in India today, the brand of cell phone or the model of car one owns are important markers of socio-economic status.

What does globalisation mean for markets?

Since the late 1980s India has entered a new era in its economic history, following a change in economic policy from state-led development to liberalisation. This shift ushered in the era of globalisation, a period in which the world is becoming increasingly interconnected, not only economically but also culturally and politically.

The term includes the increase in international movement of commodities, money, information and people, and the development of technology, transport and communication that makes this movement possible. Software and business process outsourcing industries such as call centres are major avenues through which India is connected to the global economy, providing low-cost services and labour to customers in the developed countries of the West.

Under globalisation, money, goods, people, cultural products and images circulate rapidly, and products, services or elements of culture that were earlier outside the market system are drawn into it, for example the marketing of Indian spirituality and knowledge systems such as yoga and ayurveda in the West.

A market can itself become a commodity: the traditional annual cattle market and fair at Pushkar in Rajasthan is sold in the market for international tourism, and Hindu pilgrims, camel traders and foreign tourists mingle there, exchanging livestock and money but also cultural symbols and religious merit.

What is the debate between market and state under liberalisation?

Liberalisation includes the privatisation of public sector enterprises, loosening of government regulations on capital, labour and trade, a reduction in tariffs and import duties, and easier access for foreign companies to set up industries in India. Another word for such changes is marketisation, the use of markets or market-based processes rather than government regulations to solve social, political or economic problems.

Advocates believe these steps promote growth and prosperity because private industry is more efficient than government-owned industry. The impact has been mixed: some sectors such as software and information technology, or agriculture such as fish and fruit, may benefit from access to a global market, while others such as automobiles, electronics or oilseeds may lose because they cannot compete with foreign producers.

Indian farmers are now exposed to competition because imports of agricultural products are allowed, while support prices, at which the government agrees to buy commodities to ensure a minimum income, and subsidies, which lower the cost of inputs such as fertilisers or diesel oil, are reduced or withdrawn. Small manufacturers have also been exposed to global competition, and the privatisation or closing of public sector industries has led to loss of employment and growth of unorganised sector employment at the expense of the organised sector.

Glossary

• Economic organisation — the socially arranged system by which a community produces, distributes and consumes goods and services.
• Economic good — a good that is scarce relative to demand, requires effort or payment to obtain, and has exchange value.
• Free good — a good so abundant in nature that it has no price, such as air or sunlight.
• Food gathering — a livelihood based on collecting roots, fruits and other forest produce without cultivation.
• Shifting (axe) cultivation — clearing and burning a forest patch for temporary cultivation, then moving to a fresh patch once fertility declines.
• Jhum — the Naga tribe's term for shifting cultivation.
• Dahi and koman — the Bhuiya tribe's terms for shifting cultivation.
• Penda — the Maria tribe's term for shifting cultivation.
• Podu — the Khond tribe's term for shifting cultivation.
• Bewar — the Baiga tribe's term for shifting cultivation.
• Pastoralism — a livelihood based mainly on rearing and moving with livestock.
• TRIFED — an organisation that promotes and markets tribal handicrafts and produce to support tribal economies.
• Jajmani system — a hereditary, caste-based exchange between a patron (jajman) and a service-caste family (kamin), paid mainly in kind.
• Jajman — the patron, usually a landholding family, who receives customary services under the Jajmani system.
• Kamin — the service-caste specialist who provides hereditary occupational services to a jajman family.
• Sharecropper — a tenant cultivator who pays the landowner a share of the harvested crop rather than a fixed cash rent.
• Barter exchange — the direct exchange of goods or services for other goods or services without using money.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: shifting cultivation has the same name everywhere in India. Correct: different tribes use different local names, such as jhum among the Naga, penda among the Maria, podu among the Khond and bewar among the Baiga.
• Misconception: a tenant and a sharecropper are the same thing. Correct: a tenant typically pays a rent fixed in advance regardless of the harvest, often as much as 50 to 75 per cent of the crop's income, while a sharecropper hands over an actual share of the harvested crop itself, so the harvest risk is shared differently.
• Misconception: the Jajmani system involved payment mainly in cash. Correct: the kamin was typically paid in kind, such as a customary share of grain, rather than in cash for each service.
• Misconception: MGNREGA guarantees a job to anyone in any part of India. Correct: it guarantees wage employment to adult members of registered rural households who demand unskilled manual work, through the Gram Panchayat.
• Misconception: free goods have no social importance because they have no price. Correct: free goods still matter to survival; they simply are not scarce enough to need market exchange.
• Misconception: all tribal communities followed the same economy. Correct: tribal economies varied considerably, including food gathering, settled agriculture, shifting cultivation, handicrafts, pastoralism and industrial wage labour.
• Misconception: weekly markets are purely economic events. Correct: weekly markets also serve a strong social function, bringing people together to meet kin, arrange marriages and exchange news.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Define barter exchange. [2 marks]

1. Barter exchange is the direct exchange of one good or service for another.
2. No money is used as a medium of exchange; the value of what is given and received is settled directly between the two parties.

Q2. State the local term used for shifting cultivation by the Khond tribe and by the Baiga tribe. [2 marks]

1. The Khond tribe calls shifting cultivation podu.
2. The Baiga tribe calls it bewar.

Q3. Explain, with examples, why shifting axe cultivation was criticised and banned in several areas. [4 marks]

1. Shifting cultivation involves clearing a forest patch by cutting and burning trees, which destroys forest cover over the cleared area.
2. Once the soil's fertility falls after a few seasons, cultivators move to a fresh patch, so the method requires repeated clearing of new forest land.
3. Critics argued that this repeated clearing and burning accelerates soil erosion and reduces the long-term productivity of forest land.
4. Because of this criticism the government banned this type of cultivation in several areas, which disrupted the livelihoods of tribes such as the Naga, Bhuiya, Maria, Khond and Baiga, who practised it as jhum, dahi and koman, penda, podu and bewar respectively.

Q4. State the role of organisations such as TRIFED and other agencies in tribal economies. [4 marks]

1. TRIFED works to develop and market tribal handicrafts so that tribal producers can reach wider markets.
2. It helps protect and preserve tribal material culture associated with these handicrafts.
3. It assists tribal communities in selling their agricultural and forest produce at fairer prices.
4. Other agencies also support tribal development: LAMPS supply essential goods and help market produce, Special Central Assistance funds tribal development programmes, and the Tribal Panchsheel sets out the principles of tribal development policy.

Q5. Describe the jajman-kamin relationship in the Jajmani system, with its merits and demerits. [7 marks]

1. In the Jajmani system, the jajman is the patron, usually a landholding family, who receives customary occupational services from a fixed service-caste family.
2. The kamin is the service-caste specialist, such as the carpenter, potter, weaver or barber, who provides these services to the jajman's household year after year.
3. The relationship is hereditary: a particular kamin family serves the same jajman family across generations rather than offering services in an open market.
4. Payment is made mainly in kind, typically as a customary share of the harvested grain, along with other support, rather than in cash for each service.
5. A merit is that it gives the kamin a guaranteed, if modest, livelihood without depending on an unpredictable cash market, and it builds a stable long-term relationship between castes in the village.
6. A further merit is that it preserves traditional craft and service skills across generations within the kamin families.
7. A demerit is that it ties the kamin permanently to one patron family, limiting freedom to seek better-paid work elsewhere, and it reinforces caste hierarchy since the jajman usually belongs to a dominant landowning caste, which can make the relationship exploitative when harvests are poor.

Q6. Outline the main features of the MGNREGA Act, 2005. [4 marks]

1. It is a rural employment programme that legally guarantees wage employment to willing adult members of registered rural households.
2. Work is sought through the local Gram Panchayat, which issues a job card to the registered household.
3. If work is not provided within the set period after a demand is made, the household is entitled to an unemployment allowance instead.
4. Wages are paid for unskilled manual work, mainly on projects such as water conservation and rural infrastructure.

Q7. A weekly market in a forested tribal district is held every Friday on an open ground. Tribal families bring tamarind, oil-seeds and bamboo baskets; traders from the plains bring salt, cloth and trinkets; moneylenders and forest officials also attend. (i) Identify two features of weekly markets shown in this example. (ii) Analyse the sociological importance of this market for the local people. [4 marks]

1. Feature one: the market is periodic, held on a fixed day, Friday, rather than every day.
2. Feature two: it draws people from surrounding villages and outside traders, moneylenders and officials, linking the local economy to wider networks.
3. Sociologically, it is a place of social contact where people meet kin, arrange marriages and exchange news, not only a place of trade.
4. It brings local tribal people and non-tribal traders and officials together in one place, so it is a meeting point of different groups and interests.

Q8. Distinguish between the position of a landowner, a tenant and a sharecropper in the agrarian economy. [5 marks]

1. The landowner holds legal title to the land and may cultivate it directly, lease it out, or employ labourers on it.
2. The tenant is a cultivator who leases land from the landowner and pays rent for its use, often as much as 50 to 75 per cent of the income from the crop.
3. Because of this rent, tenants have lower incomes than owner-cultivators.
4. The sharecropper is a particular kind of tenant who pays the landowner a share of the harvested crop itself rather than a fixed cash rent.
5. In sharecropping the risk of a poor harvest is shared between landowner and cultivator rather than falling only on the tenant, while agricultural labourers who own little or no land work for insecure daily wages.

Q9. Evaluate the sociological importance of weekly markets in rural and tribal India. [7 marks]

1. Weekly markets, or haats, are periodic markets held on a fixed day, drawing people from surrounding villages to sell produce and buy goods not available locally.
2. Economically, they are the major institution for exchange where settlements are scattered and roads and communications are poor.
3. They attract traders from outside the local area, as well as moneylenders, entertainers, astrologers and other specialists, so they widen the range of goods and services available.
4. They link different regional and local economies to the wider national economy and to towns and metropolitan centres.
5. Socially, many visitors come primarily to meet kin, arrange marriages and exchange gossip, so the market is also a social institution.
6. They bring local tribal people, caste Hindu traders and forest officials together, making the market a meeting point of several groups and interests.
7. Their character has changed over time as remote areas were linked to wider economies, and outside traders and moneylenders sometimes impoverished local people, so their sociological importance includes both integration and exploitation.

Key takeaways

• Economic organisation covers how a society produces, distributes and consumes goods, shaped by custom as well as the market.
• Economic goods are scarce and have exchange value; free goods, such as air, are abundant and have no price.
• Indian tribes have followed varied economies: food gathering, agriculture, shifting axe cultivation, handicrafts, pastoralism and industrial labour.
• Different tribes use different local names for shifting cultivation: jhum (Naga), dahi and koman (Bhuiya), penda (Maria), podu (Khond) and bewar (Baiga).
• Shifting cultivation was criticised for destroying forests and causing soil erosion, leading the government to ban it in several areas.
• Organisations such as TRIFED, LAMPS and other agencies promote tribal handicrafts and help market tribal produce more fairly.
• The agrarian economy involves unequal relations between landowner, tenant and sharecropper, each paying or receiving rent in a different way.
• The Jajmani system is a hereditary caste-based exchange between jajman and kamin, paid mainly in kind, with both security and exploitative demerits.
• MGNREGA, 2005, legally guarantees rural households wage employment through the Gram Panchayat, with an unemployment allowance if work is denied.
• Weekly markets are periodic, draw surrounding villages and outside traders, and combine economic with social functions; barter is direct exchange without money.

Test yourself

What is the difference between an economic good and a free good?

An economic good is scarce and must be paid for, giving it exchange value; a free good is so abundant, such as air, that it needs no payment.

Name the term the Maria tribe uses for shifting cultivation.

The Maria tribe calls shifting (axe) cultivation penda.

Why was shifting cultivation banned by the government in several areas?

Because repeated clearing and burning of forest patches was criticised for causing deforestation and soil erosion, reducing the land's long-term productivity.

What is the main role of TRIFED?

TRIFED promotes and markets tribal handicrafts, protects tribal material culture, and helps tribal communities sell their agricultural produce fairly.

Name one agency other than TRIFED that works for tribal development.

LAMPS, the Large Area Multipurpose Societies, are cooperative bodies that supply tribal households with essential goods and help them market their produce.

How does a sharecropper's payment differ from a tenant's rent?

A sharecropper pays the landowner a share of the harvested crop, while a tenant typically pays a fixed cash rent for the land.

Who are the jajman and the kamin in the Jajmani system?

The jajman is the landholding patron who receives services; the kamin is the service-caste specialist who provides hereditary occupational services, usually paid in kind.

What happens if MGNREGA work is not provided within the set period of a demand?

The household is entitled to an unemployment allowance instead of the guaranteed wage employment.

What is barter exchange?

The direct exchange of goods or services for other goods or services, without using money as a medium of exchange.