Many of the great works of sociology were written at a time when industrialisation was new and machinery was assuming great importance. Thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim associated a number of social features with industry, such as urbanisation, the loss of face-to-face relationships that were found in rural areas where people worked on their own farms or for a landlord they knew, and their substitution by anonymous professional relationships in modern factories and workplaces. Industrialisation involve a detailed division of labour. People often do not see the end result of their work because they are producing only one small part of a product. The work is often repetitive and exhausting. Yet, even this is better than having no work at all, i.e., being unemployed. Marx called this situation alienation, when people do not enjoy work, and see it as something they have to do only in order to survive, and even that survival depends on whether the technology has room for any human labour.
The fish processing plants along the coastline employ mostly single young worker from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. Choose the reason that justifies this statement
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Young women are seen as submissive workers
Option (1) Young women are seen as submissive workers — Correct. A submissive worker is one who obeys and accepts hard conditions without protest. The fish processing plants house ten or twelve of these migrant women in a small room, and sometimes one shift has to make way for another. Employers prefer them because young women are seen as submissive workers who will put up with such conditions.
NCERT (2025-26): “5.5 Working conditions … In many industries, the workers are migrants. The fish processing plants along the coastline employ mostly single young women from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. Ten-twelve of them are housed in small rooms, and sometimes one shift has to make way for another. Young women are seen as submissive workers. Many men also migrate singly, either unmarried or leaving their families in the village. These migrants have little time to socialise and whatever little time and money they can spend is with other migrant workers.…” |