Change and Development in Rural Society — Sociology STD 12 Humanities — Question

In rural areas there is a complex relationship between class and caste structure. We might expect higher castes to own more land and have higher incomes which will go down as the caste comes down. But this may not exactly be true. For instance, in most areas the highest caste i.e. Brahmins are not major landowners, and so they fall outside the agrarian structure though they are part of the rural society. In most regions, the major landowning groups belong to the upper castes. In each region there existed a dominant caste, which is economically and politically very powerful and dominates local society.
Example: Vokkaligas and Lingayats in Karnataka, Kammas and Reddis in Andhra Pradesh.

• Most of the marginal farmers and landless belong to lower caste groups. In official ST T classification, they belong to Scheduled Castes or Tribes or Other Backward Classes.
• In many regions of India, the dalit castes are not allowed to own land and they provided most of the labour force that allowed the landowners to cultivate the land intensively and get high returns.