Practice questions and study articles for Indian Society.
Indian Society Articles (89)
ACash-Transfer Schemes for Women17
Cash-Transfer Schemes for Women: A State-by-State Directory
Fifteen Indian states now run their own cash-transfer scheme for women. Each pays a different amount, to different women, under a…
A.2Deendayal Lado Lakshmi Yojana: Haryana's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Exit polls said Haryana's ruling party would lose. It won a third term instead, then launched this scheme almost a year later.
A.3Delhi Lakshmi Yojana: Delhi's Planned Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
A party promised Rs 2,100 a month to Delhi's women, and lost the election anyway. The winner's own version took over a year, and …
A.4Griha Aadhar Scheme: Goa's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Homemakers
Most state cash schemes pay every eligible woman, working or not. Goa's pays only the ones who aren't earning a salary.
A.5Gruha Lakshmi: Karnataka's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Karnataka's Gruha Lakshmi has paid out over Rs 50,000 crore. In June 2026, the state's new Chief Minister asked every recipient t…
A.6Indira Gandhi Pyari Behna Sukh-Samman Nidhi Yojana: Himachal Pradesh's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Himachal Pradesh promised this scheme to every woman in the state. Over two years later, it's still being switched on one distric…
A.7Kalaignar Magalir Urimai Thogai: Tamil Nadu's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Unlike every other scheme in this series, this one didn't save the government that launched it. Tamil Nadu's ruling party lost an…
A.8Ladki Bahin Yojana: Maharashtra's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Maharashtra's Ladki Bahin Yojana is credited with winning its government a landslide. Two years later, the same government remove…
A.9Ladli Behna Yojana: Madhya Pradesh's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Madhya Pradesh promised women Rs 1,000 a month in 2023. By 2028, that figure is set to triple.
A.10Lakshmir Bhandar: West Bengal's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
West Bengal's ruling party changed in May 2026. Its signature welfare scheme survived, under a new name and roughly double the mo…
A.11Mahtari Vandan Yojana: Chhattisgarh's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Chhattisgarh's new government launched Mahtari Vandan Yojana within three months of taking office. Two years on, it still reaches…
A.12Mukh Mantri Mawan Dheeyan da Satkar Yojana: Punjab's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Punjab's new scheme doesn't pay every woman the same amount. Scheduled Caste women get 50% more each month than general-category …
A.13Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana: Bihar's Self-Employment Scheme for Women
Weeks before Biharis voted in 2025, the state gave 75 lakh women Rs 10,000 each. Women then outvoted men by nearly nine percentag…
A.14Mukhyamantri Maiya Samman Yojana: Jharkhand's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Jharkhand's Chief Minister more than doubled a scheme's payout just months before facing voters. His party then won a landslide r…
A.15Orunodoi: Assam's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Assam's Orunodoi scheme predates every other state's version of the same idea. Since 2020, its monthly payout has more than doubl…
A.16Sthree Suraksha: Kerala's Suspended Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Kerala's outgoing government launched a cash scheme for women, weeks before an election. The party lost anyway, and the new gover…
A.17Subhadra Yojana: Odisha's Cash-Transfer Scheme for Women
Odisha's BJP government cut one welfare scheme's payout in half. In the same year, it launched a brand-new one worth Rs 50,000 pe…
BEducation and Digital Governance2
National Academic Depository (NAD): India's Digital Degree Vault
India's education system produces millions of degrees, diplomas, and mark sheets every year. One digital system now stores them a…
B.2National Education Policy 2020
India replaced its 34-year-old education policy in 2020. But five years on, the biggest fight over the new policy isn't about cur…
CFamily and Population8
Census 2011: India's Population Data and the Population Pyramid
Census 2011 remains India's most recent full population count. Its numbers still shape planning, and its "pyramid" shows the coun…
C.2Child Marriage in India: From the Sarda Act to the 2006 Law
Child marriage has a long legal-reform history in India. Laws against it go back to the colonial period. Yet the practice has pro…
C.3Depopulation and South Asian Demographic Comparisons
India has spent decades worrying about overpopulation. Some regions now face the opposite concern: what happens when population s…
C.4Family Planning and Reproductive Health in India
India ran the world's first national family planning programme. Its approach, and its problems, shaped how the country thinks abo…
C.5India's Population Policy: From the 1952 Family Planning Programme to 2000
India was the first country in the world to launch an official population control programme. That effort began in 1952. Decades l…
C.6Jiyo Parsi Scheme
A scheme famous for funding fertility treatment spends most of its money on something else entirely: childcare and elder care.
C.7The Empowered Action Group (EAG) States: India's Health and Population Priority List
Some Indian states have lagged behind on health and population indicators for decades. The government grouped eight of them under…
C.8The Joint Family System: India's Changing Basic Institution
Family is one of the most basic institutions in any society. India has long been associated with one particular family form. That…
DGovernment Welfare and Empowerment Schemes8
CapaCITIES: Urban Climate Resilience Programme
Switzerland has spent a decade quietly funding climate-readiness inside Indian city governments. It isn't a household name, but C…
D.2Eklavya Model Residential Schools (EMRS)
A scheme meant to give every tribal-majority block its own residential school has taken almost three decades to reach two-thirds …
D.3KALIA and CM-KISAN: Odisha's Farmer Income-Support Schemes
Other states raised their welfare payouts after a change of government. Odisha's new government cut its farmer scheme's payout in…
D.4Lakhpati Didi and SHE-LEAPS: Tracking Rural Women's Income Growth
The government just doubled one of its own targets, mid-mission. Lakhpati Didi set out to create 3 crore women earning ₹1 lakh or…
D.5Menstrual Hygiene Scheme (MHS)
A pack of six sanitary napkins, sold for six rupees. That small transaction is the core of one of India's longest-running rural h…
D.6NTR Bharosa Pension: Andhra Pradesh's Social Security Scheme
Andhra Pradesh's pension scheme has changed its name twice, following whichever party wins power. In 2024, the name that lost in …
D.7PM SVANidhi
Street vendors have no collateral to offer a bank. COVID-19 stopped their income overnight anyway. PM SVANidhi answered with a wo…
D.8SMILE Scheme: Building a Bhiksha Vritti Mukt Bharat
India doesn't often name a welfare scheme after an emotion. SMILE does. Behind that acronym sit two very different communities: t…
ESocial Movements and Issues8
Communalism in India: Concept, Causes, and Challenges
Communalism is a recurring theme in Indian society and politics. Understanding it as a concept helps explain many ongoing debates…
E.2Cultural Globalization in India: Satellite TV, Fast Food, and Consumer Culture
The 1991 economic reforms opened India's markets. They also opened Indian homes to a wave of new media and consumer brands. This …
E.3Indian Secularism: Sarva Dharma Sambhava and the Bommai Doctrine
India's secularism is often misunderstood as simply separating religion from the state. The founding fathers actually built somet…
E.4Partition's Human Cost: Mass Migration, Violence, and Refugee Resettlement
India's 1947 Partition is often studied as a political and constitutional event. It was also one of the largest human displacemen…
E.5Regionalism in India: Causes, Expressions, and the Federal Balance
India is a huge country with many languages, cultures, and regional identities. Sometimes those regional identities create real p…
E.6Sanskritization and the Dominant Caste: M. N. Srinivas's Theory
Caste in India is often treated as a rigid, unchanging system. Sociologists have long argued this picture is incomplete. One infl…
E.7Special Category Status: India's Response to Regional Development Gaps
Some Indian states face challenges that ordinary development funding formulas do not capture well. Difficult terrain, sparse popu…
E.8The Gorkhaland Movement: A Persistent Demand for Statehood
In the hills above West Bengal's plains, a distinct community has long felt culturally and administratively distant from the stat…
FSocial Reformers and Changemakers7
Baba Amte
Baba Amte gave up a successful legal career to build a self-sufficient community for leprosy patients, out of barren land. Anandw…
F.2Bindeshwar Pathak: Two Pits, One Mission
He spent his life fighting to end a practice that stripped people of their dignity. On 15 August 2023, he hoisted the national fl…
F.3Ela Bhatt: Founder of SEWA
In 1972, a young lawyer in Ahmedabad organised a union for women nobody else counted as workers: street vendors, rag-pickers, hom…
F.4Laxmi Narayan Tripathi
India's Supreme Court recognised a third legal gender in 2014. Laxmi Narayan Tripathi was one of the people who petitioned for it…
F.5Mahasweta Devi: The Writer Who Fought for the Forest
Mahasweta Devi wrote more than 100 novels, mostly about people genteel Bengali literature had ignored. Then she left the writing …
F.6Mary Roy
Before 1986, a Syrian Christian daughter in Kerala could inherit only a quarter of what her brother got, capped at Rs 5,000. Mary…
F.7Rajendra Singh: Reviving Rivers with Mud and Community
A river in Rajasthan had been dry for more than 60 years. In 1990, it began flowing again — not because of a dam or a government …
GSocial Structure9
Caste as a Tool of Social Stratification
Caste is often called India's most distinctive form of social stratification. What that actually means has changed a great deal o…
G.2Evolution of Indian Society: From Ancient to Modern
Indian society didn't emerge fully formed. It evolved across millennia, absorbing waves of new peoples, religions, and ideas alon…
G.3Personal Laws: Syrian Christian and Tribal Customary Law
India's personal laws don't apply uniformly. Syrian Christian and tribal customary law show how marriage and inheritance rules st…
G.4Social Stratification, Demography and Pluralism in Globalization
Indian society organizes itself along many overlapping lines at once. Understanding how sociologists study these divisions is its…
G.5Structure of Indian Society: Villages, Tribes and Rural-Urban Linkages
Indian society's basic units go beyond family and caste. Villages, tribes, and the ties between rural and urban India shape daily…
G.6The Gond Tribe: A Tribe That Once Ruled Kingdoms
India's largest tribal group once ruled its own kingdoms, not just villages. This article covers the Gond people, their history, …
G.7The Jarawa Tribe of the Andaman Islands: The Road Through Their Forest
A single road cuts straight through one of the world's last isolated hunter-gatherer homelands. This article covers the Jarawa tr…
G.8The Rise of India's Middle Class
India's middle class was once a small, narrow group. Economic reforms changed that dramatically. Its rapid growth has reshaped co…
G.9Tribal Groups and Welfare in India: PVTGs and Protection
One tribe's population has fallen to just 43 people. Another has never let an outsider count them at all. This article covers Ind…
HUrban and Rural Development3
PMAY (Urban) and Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban): Housing and Sanitation Missions
Two more flagship urban missions launched in 2015, alongside Smart Cities and AMRUT. One targeted housing shortages in cities. Th…
H.2PURA and JNNURM: India's Rural and Urban Development Strategies
Not every urban development idea has focused on cities themselves. One influential scheme instead tried to bring city-like amenit…
H.3The Smart Cities Mission and AMRUT: India's Urban Infrastructure Push
India's cities are growing fast, and their infrastructure often struggles to keep up. The government launched two major missions …
IWelfare Laws2
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015
India's law on children in conflict with the law was rewritten in 2015. The change followed public anger after a juvenile was inv…
I.2The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007
As India's population ages, more elderly parents need legal protection and support. Parliament responded with a dedicated law in …
JWomen and Gender15
Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana: Girl-Child Schemes
India's child sex ratio kept declining for decades. The government launched two flagship schemes to address it. Together, they co…
J.2Feminism: Western Origins and the Indian Perspective
Feminism arrived in India with its own Western history attached. Indian thinkers didn't simply adopt it; they adapted it to local…
J.3From Vishaka to the POSH Act: Workplace Sexual Harassment Law in India
For years, Indian workplaces had no specific law against sexual harassment. A Supreme Court case changed that. The Court's guidel…
J.4Gender Gap in India: Census and NSSO Data
Census and survey data give India's gender gap a precise, measurable shape. The numbers reveal patterns that broad statements abo…
J.5Girl-Child Education in India
Educating India's girl child has closed one gap while other, subtler gaps persist. The full picture requires looking past enrollm…
J.6Status of Women in India: From Mythology to Modern Times
Women's status in India hasn't followed one straight line. It has shifted across mythology, colonial rule, and independence, in c…
J.7The Hindu Code Bill: Ambedkar's Reform and the Four Acts of 1955-56
Ambedkar drafted one bill to reform Hindu personal law. It never passed as a single bill. Instead, Parliament split it into four …
J.8The Justice Verma Committee and the 2013 Criminal Law Reforms
A brutal 2012 gang rape in Delhi triggered nationwide protests. The government responded by setting up an expert committee within…
J.9The Triple Talaq Ban: From Shayara Bano to the 2019 Law
A practice that let a Muslim husband instantly end a marriage stayed legal in India for decades. Courts and Parliament eventually…
J.10The Women's Movement in India: Origins and Growth
Organized women's activism in India didn't begin with independence. It grew across a full century, through distinct, overlapping …
J.11The Women's Reservation Bill: From 1996 to the 2023 Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam
For nearly three decades, Parliament debated reserving seats for women in India's legislatures. The bill kept stalling. It finall…
J.12Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019
The law recognises a person's own sense of their gender. But it still asks for surgery, and a District Magistrate's signature, be…
J.13Urbanization, Self-Help Groups and Women's Economic Empowerment
Moving to a city changes more than a woman's address. It reshapes her access to work, income, and independence, though not always…
J.14Women Achievers and Reformers in Indian History
Beyond the well-known freedom-struggle names, Indian women have shaped literature, science, and social reform across two centurie…
J.15Women's Safety Helplines and Support Systems in India
A woman in distress in India has more than one way to reach help. Two separate helplines, and a network of physical support centr…