Read the passage carefully and answer the questions based on the passage:
The term agrarian structure is often used to refer to the structure or distribution of landholding. Because agricultural land is the most important productive resource in rural areas, access to land shapes the rural class structure. Access to land largely determines what role one plays in the process of agricultural production. Medium and large landowners are usually able to earn sufficient or even large incomes from cultivation. But agricultural labourers are more often than not paid below the statutory minimum wage and earn very little. Their incomes are low. Their employment is insecure. Most agricultural labourers are daily-wage workers. And do not have work for many days of the year. This is known as underemployment. Similarly, tenants have lower incomes than owner-cultivators. Because they have to pay a substantial rent to the landowner – often as much as 50 to 75 per cent of the income from the crop. Agrarian society, therefore, can be understood in terms of its class structure. But we must also remember the structure is itself through the caste system. In rural areas, there is a complex relationship between caste and class. We might expect that the higher castes have more land and higher incomes. And that there is a correspondence between caste and class as one moves down the hierarchy. In many areas this is broadly true but not exactly. For instance, in most areas the highest caste, the Brahmins, are not major landowners, and so they fall outside the agrarian structure although they are a part of rural society. In most regions of India, the major landowning groups belong to the upper castes. In each region, there are usually just one or two major landowning castes, who are also numerically very important. Such groups were termed by the sociologist M.N. Srinivas as dominant castes. In each region, the dominant caste is the most powerful group, economically and politically, and dominates local society.
What kind of jobs do the agricultural labourers have?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Precarious jobs
Option (4) Precarious jobs — Correct. A precarious job is one that is uncertain and insecure, with no guarantee of income from one day to the next. The passage gives every sign of it: pay below the minimum wage, low incomes, insecure employment, daily-wage work and many days in the year without work.
Note: The passage of Q1-Q5 is taken from section 4.1, ‘Agrarian Structure: Caste and Class in Rural India’, of the NCERT chapter ‘Change and Development in Rural Society’, with a few words left out. All five questions are answered by two paragraphs of this one section, so a careful reading of every paragraph of the chapter is the surest preparation.
NCERT (2025-26): “4.1 Agrarian Structure: Caste and Class in Rural India … The term agrarian structure is often used to refer to the structure or distribution of landholding. Because agricultural land is the most important productive resource in rural areas, access to land shapes the rural class structure. Access to land largely determines what role one plays in the process of agricultural production. Medium and large landowners are usually able to earn sufficient or even large incomes from cultivation (although this depends on agricultural prices, which can fluctuate greatly, as well as other factors such as the monsoon). But agricultural labourers are more often than not paid below the statutory minimum wage and earn very little. Their incomes are low. Their employment is insecure. Most agricultural labourers are daily-wage workers. And do not have work for many days of the year. This is known as underemployment. Similarly, tenants (cultivators who lease their land from landowners) have lower incomes than owner-cultivators. Because they have to pay a substantial rent to the landowner – often as much as 50 to 75 per cent of the income from the crop.” |