Read the passage and answer the following questions.
Agricultural land is the single most important resource and form of property in rural society. Further, agrarian structure is often used to refer to the distribution of landholding which is highly unequal among households. Some families own land, while many family do not own any land at all. In most regions of India, women are usually excluded from ownership of land because of the prevailing patrilineal kinship system. Access to land shapes the rural class structure. Medium and large landowners are usually able to earn sufficient income from cultivation. But agricultural labourers are able to earn very little. They are mostly daily-wage workers and their incomes are low. Agrarian society in rural areas have a complex relationship between caste and class. In each region there are usually just one or two major land owning castes who are also numerically very important. Sociologist M.N. Srinivas termed them as dominant castes. Example of dominant land owning groups are Rajputs of U.P., the Lingayats of Karnataka and Kammas of Andhra Pradesh. While dominant landowning groups are usually middle or high ranked castes, most of the marginal farmers and landless belong to lower caste groups. Also, in most regions of the country, a proprietary caste group owns most of the resources and labour who work for them. Until recently, practices such as begar or free labour were prevalent in many parts of north India. Although such practices have been abolished by law, they continue to exist.
Most of the marginalised farmers and landless belong to:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → lower caste group
Option (3) lower caste group — Correct. Caste and class roughly correspond in rural India. While the dominant landowning groups are middle or high ranked castes, most of the marginal farmers and landless belong to lower caste groups, the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes or Other Backward Classes.
NCERT (2025-26): “4.1 Agrarian Structure: Caste and Class in Rural India … While dominant landowning groups are usually middle or high ranked castes, most of the marginal farmers and landless belong to lower caste groups. In official classification they belong to the Scheduled Castes or Tribes (SC/STs) or Other Backward Classes (OBCs). In many regions of India, the former ‘Untouchable’ or dalit castes were not allowed to own land and they provided most of the agricultural labour for the dominant landowning groups. This also created a labour force that allowed the landowners to cultivate the land intensively and get higher returns.” |