Social change in rural India : a study of two villages in Maharashtra

India is predominantly a country of villages which comp rises eighty percent of her population. The traditions of India are rooted in the villages and it is the transformation of the social life at village level that can really contribute to change in Indian society as such. In the Post-Independence era, deliberate attempts on a national plane have been and are being made through Community Development Programmes, decentralization of political structure and Five Year Plan Programmes to introduce such changes in the Indian rural society as are either indices of or compatible with the modern industrial-urban trends. The process of urbanization which has far influenced the Indian urban life also influences the villages in a significant way. Many villages in India which are thus exposed to the external forces of change and thereby subject to the impact of these forces vary in pace and extent of social change.

The investigation on which the original study was based was conducted in two villages-Kolghar and Golatgaon of the Aurangabad taluka in the region of Marathwada over a period of eight months-July-November in 1971. The region of Marathwada which consists of five districts of the Maharashtra State was under the erstwhile princely rule of H. E. H. Nizam of Hyderabad up to 1948, one year after the Independence. This region has only lately come under the influences of the external forces of Social Change. It may safely be presumed that it has awakened to the echoes of industrialism-urbanism ringing in the country since 1960, the year in which it became a Part of Maharashtra.

This Study, is the first of its kind in the whole region. The broad objective of the study was to understand the social structure of the Marathwada Village and to locate and bring together some of the responses of the rural areas of the region to industrial- urban influence.