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Social Stratification

Notes 3. Trader-moneylenders
4. Cultivating tenants
5. Labourers
6. Others (halwais, pansaris, beggars, etc.).
A comparative study of Bombay and Poona (1650-1900) by Meera Kosambi (1991) provides details
regarding, occupational structure, ethnic composition, languages, religious composition, age-sex
structure, etc. However, Kosambi’s study focuses mainly on the ‘functions’ performed by the two
cities rather than on the system of social stratification.
Lipton (1982) argues : “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 out for the urban populace. But, in case
of India, the urban-rural balance is not as disappointing as it is implied in Lipton’s formulation.
Green revolution has brought about a considerable change in agrarian stratification having
implications for urban social structure. 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 (Griffin, 1977). Byres (1981), however, finds
‘rural bias’ as the main hindrance in industrialization.

What is called Varna Ratnakara ?
Two recent studies of sugar industry by Simon Commander and Ignatus Chithelen have thrown
up enough evidence to show the emergence of a new pattern of social stratification. Commander
(1985) writes about the sugar industry in North India : ‘The hub of the system was clearly
agricultural and the divorce from the means of production characteristic of the factory system
proper was never wholly engendered. Instead, the controls exercised by the zamindar-khandasari
over labour, land and credit, which provided the basis of the system were, in many respects,
antagonistic to a model of pure capitalism.”
The assimilability of the non-capitalist features of economy with the capitalist system of production
has produced a system of social stratification different from both the agrarian and the urban-
industrial. The growth of regional markets and the development of modern transportation networks
initially provided the requisite stimulus for the development of sugar industry. But the main
factors were the ample reservoir of cheap, unorganized labour and money-lending-debt-linkages
which generated significantly high profit margins. However, the emergence of a rich peasant
stratum in the early 1900s, and the spread of canal irrigation, coupled with financial support from
a co-operative credit infrastructure, enabled the rich peasants to cultivate sugarcane in the
Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra (Chithelen, 1985).
Stratification within Deccan peasantry in early 1900s contributed to the emergence of a rich peasant
stratum placing them in a commanding position. By the mid-1900s, the distinction between the
rich peasants and the mass of poor peasants had become distinctly clear. A rich peasant was one
who had control and ownership of land as well as ownership and mastery of agricultural
implements and techniques. The rich peasants also enjoyed independence and autonomy in the
credit relationship. They were themselves lenders of money and suppliers of credit to others. By
having control over debtors’s crop as wells as lands, the rich peasants expanded their commercial
links. These rich peasants belonged to the non-Brahmin upper castes of Maharashtra. They were
earlier traditional cultivating elites or members of former royal families or Inamdars and other

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