Structural changes include ______.

The correct answer is Option (1) → Industrialisation and Urbanisation

Note: The given answer is as per the official NTA Answer Key. However, Option (2) can also be considered correct, as explained below.

Option (1) Industrialisation and Urbanisation — Correct as per NTA. Structural change is a change in the basic structure of the economy and society: how goods are produced and where people live and work. Colonialism brought into being new structural changes, and industrialisation and urbanisation are the two processes through which they came, changing production systems, technology, the density of settlements and the way of life.

Option (2) De-industrialisation — Can also be considered correct. The chapter ‘Structural Change’ says that in India the impact of the very same British industrialisation led to deindustrialisation in some sectors, and decline of old urban centres, so it is part of the same structural change. As manufacturing boomed in Britain, India’s traditional exports of cotton and silk manufactures declined in the face of Manchester competition, and old urban centres declined with them. This decline of manufacturing is the other face of the same change in how and where goods were produced.

Option (3) Colonialism — Incorrect. Colonialism is the system of rule that brought the structural changes into being, not one of those changes. It is the cause; industrialisation and urbanisation are the changes it set in motion.

Option (4) Alienation — Incorrect. Alienation is Marx’s term for the condition in which people do not enjoy work and see it only as something they must do to survive. It describes the worker’s experience, not a change in the structure of society.