indentify and discuss some of the social problems in india in 200 words
Answers
Answer:
Explanation:
India emerged as an independent nation-state on 15th August 1947, after a long struggle against the British colonial yoke. The country is a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic with a parliamentary system of government. Though India has shown tremendous growth in all spheres of national life in the years after independence, yet many problems plague the everyday social life; the problems, many a time, are interrelated.
Poverty, Population, Pollution, Illiteracy, Corruption, Inequality, Gender discrimination, Terrorism, Communalism, Lack of Infrastructure, Unemployment, Regionalism, Casteism, Alcoholism, Drugs Abuse, Violence against Women are the major ones.Contemporary Indian society is flecked with numerous issues that are labelled as social problems. Some of them are age-old, and some are of recent origin that have erupted owing to the change in global socio-political order.
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A social problem, in general, is the condition which is not ideal and disrupts the balance of a society. A dictionary of sociology defines social problems as, “any undesirable condition or situation that is judged by an influential number of persons within a community to be intolerable and to require group action toward constructive reform”.
Another widely used definition specifies that “no condition, no matter how dramatic or shocking to someone else, is a social problem unless and until the values of a considerable number of people define it as a problem”.
Some of the other definitions of social problems given by sociologists are:
1. Horton and Leslie:
It is often defined as the condition which many people consider undesirable and wish to correct.
2. Lindbergh:
It is any deviant behaviour in a disapproved direction of such a degree that it exceeds the tolerance limit of the community.
3. L.K. Frank:
It is defined as any difficulty of misbehaviour of a fairly large number of persons which we wish to remove or correct.
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4. Fuller and Mayer:
A social problem starts with the awakening of people in a given locality, with the realisation of certain cherished values that are threatened by the conditions which have become acute.
Emergence of Sociology as a Discipline:
Sociology has emerged as a discipline which systematically studies social behaviour or society, including its origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions and problems. The American Sociological Association defines Sociology as “the study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behaviour”. To a sociologist, a social problem is an issue that negatively affects a person’s state of being in a society.
To understand social problems, sociologists look “from outside” at individuals rather than looking them “from inside”, to examine the thoughts, cause, and action. This is due to the fact that for the sociologist, many problems that appear as personal are actually social problems, because personal experience in one way or another is influenced by social forces. Prominent American sociologist C. Wright Mills uses the term “sociological imagination” to refer to this ability to see the impact of social forces on individuals, especially on their private lives.
He argues that people must understand how extraneous factors contribute to individual situations. To understand this, we must apply sociological imagination— the ability to look beyond the individual as the only cause of action and see how society influences a person’s outcome. Mills noted that this macro (large-scale) point of view helps us understand how history and societal organisations influence people.
We often see social issues from our personal viewpoints, interpreting actions at face value, i.e. a micro (small- scale) view. Using only a micro point of view is detrimental to a holistic and genuine understanding of the world. It can negatively influence our understanding of events while applying sociological imagination, and considering that an individual might act and respond because of a number of reasons.
As Mills argued, the goal of sociology is to move beyond our own perceptions and toward a sociological imagination. Without connecting what we know about society to the individual, we run the risk of wrongly placing blame and misconstruing the way we interpret events.
The shift then is to look at social problems in relation to other aspects of society like economy, culture, or religion. The sociological imagination is stimulated by a willingness to view the social world from the perspective of others. It involves moving from thinking about the individual and his problems, and focusing on social, economic, and historical circumstances that produce the problem. Sociological study is not the same as our everyday “common sense.”