What is your understanding of the jajmani system?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → It is a non-market exchange system.
Option (1) It is a modern exchange system. — Incorrect. The jajmani system is a traditional village arrangement that existed long before modern markets.
Option (2) It is a colonial exchange system. — Incorrect. It did not come with colonial rule; it existed in many villages and regions in the pre-colonial period too.
Option (3) It is a market exchange system. — Incorrect. In a market exchange, goods and services are bought and sold for money at a price set by demand and supply. The jajmani system does not work through a market price.
Option (4) It is a non-market exchange system. — Correct. Under the jajmani system, families of different castes exchanged services and goods on the basis of caste duties and long-standing ties: the service castes worked for landowning families and were paid in grain and other goods, not at a market price. It is a non-market exchange system.
NCERT (2025-26): “Caste-based markets and trading networks in precolonial and colonial India … While colonialism certainly brought about major economic transformations, for example due to the demand that land revenue be paid in cash, recent historical research has shown that much of India’s economy was already extensively monetised (trade was carried out using money) in the late pre-colonial period. And while various kinds of non-market exchange systems (such as the ‘jajmani system’) did exist in many villages and regions, even during the precolonial period villages were incorporated into wider networks of exchange through which agricultural products and other goods circulated (Bayly 1983, Stein and Subrahmanyam 1996). It now seems that the sharp line that was often drawn between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’ (or the pre-capitalist and capitalist) economy is actually rather fuzzy.…” |