Question

what was the effect of industrialisation on the caste system in india

Answer 1

Industrialisation has resulted in a wide range of changes in society and social institutions, such as family, kinship functions, marriage and community relations.

We shall discuss these changes later. However, the immediate impact of industrialisation was the creation of a new class structure.

This resulted in new social types such as wage workers, entrepreneurs, management, and so on. There was also a great deal of professionalism in managing these institutions. Hence, a cadre of trained managers came into existence.

Industrialisation also resulted in changes in work orientation and the concept of time. Workers working on machines had to keep pace with the way the machines functioned; this is known as machine- pacing. It results in short-cycle work; in other words, the same action is repeated over and over again, keeping pace with the machine. This type of short-cycle work existed even before the industrial revolution.

Women engaged in transplanting of rice performed short-cycle work as their actions were repetitive. Similarly, weavers, potters and other artisans had to repeat the same types of actions in sync with their tools of work. However, all these were controlled by the people concerned; the weavers loom or the potter’s wheel was controlled by the person operating it. Under industrialisation, the short-cycle work is a result of machine-pacing and these machines are controlled not by the worker performing the work, but by the supervisors who operated those through inanimate power (electricity or steam).