Page 287 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes stratification in India is a consequence of macro-structural processes of change, rural to urban
migration, social mobility and increase in the number of urban industrial towns. The main points
in the studies of urban industrial social stratification are : class and caste, occupation, income,
education and class, social mobility and elite formation, professionals and working classes, middle
classes, process of social change and status crystallization, dissonance and inconsistency,
associations and trade unions. Workers, supervisors and managers, along with trade unions,
informed groups and owners of industry, are the main units of the studies of industry.
Michel Lipton adds a new dimension to the understanding of urban industrial stratification.
“Inequalities within rural areas also owe much to the urban biased nature of the development
policy.” Rural-born doctors, teachers, engineers and administrators serve the urban population.
Surpluses from rural areas are extracted for the urban populace. Urban social stratification in
terms of capital/labour relation can be characterized by capitalists, administrators, professionals,
labour aristocracy and large landowners. On the contrary, there are small farmers and tenants,
landless agricultural workers and members of the informal sector in the countryside. T.J. Byres
contradicts Lipton’s hypothesis by pinpointing rural bias as the main hinderance in India’s
industrialization. The sugar industry of India shows emergence of a mixed pattern of social
stratification as it combines both agricultural and industrial elements.
The urban industrial classes are comprised of (a) the bourgeoisie/capitalist class, (b) middle classes
and professional elites, and (c) working class.

Bourgeoisie/Capitalist Class
The bourgeoisie/capitalist class is characterized by :
1. concentration and private ownership of the means of production;
2. a free market for the sale and purchase of commodities and services;
3. formally free labour sold in the market as commodity;
4. the pursuit of profits by entrepreneurs for wages; and
5. the division of society into two opposed and antagonistic classes as a consequence of the
exploitation and alienation of the labour from the means of production.
The property-owning, entrepreneurial, capitalist employer has emerged from a variety of sources,
including the decline of the feudal system. Along with the bourgeoisie, the capitalist system has
produced a working class. The worker is treated as a commodity. Though Marx refers to the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the main antagonistic classes, he realizes the transition of society
and the emergent role of the intermediate strata, situated between the workers and the industrial
capitalists. He also realizes the increasing role of the managerial and ministerial classes, and the
trade unions as a result of the transition from capitalism to socialism.
There is differentiation between and within the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie and the working
class. Class inequality is not simply economistic. However, economic groupings in the form of
classes and domination of one class over the other are found in all societies irrespective of the
level of their industrialization. Capitalist society has undergone vast changes over a period of its
long journey. Professional salaried management and middle classes have grown quite fast due to
new economy and state apparatus.
The Indian bourgeoisie has never been a monolith and its character has partly been determined by
the colonial rule and partly by the class character of the Indian National Congress. India’s freedom,
industrial policy of India and the re-creation of India’s economy have reinvented the Indian
bourgeoisie in the post-independence period. The Indian bourgeoisie comprises two categories :
(a) the comprador, and (b) small and medium national bourgeoisie. The comprador character of
the big bourgeoisie and a similar though latent tendency of the national bourgeoisie resulted in
guided industrialization.

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