How is modernisation an agent of change? Social Movements Discuss its positive and negative aspects. (1999)
Modernisation is not merely a label for change; it is a mechanism of it. Talcott Parsons, Marion J. Levy and Neil Smelser treated it as a shift in the very architecture of society, while Yogendra Singh (Modernisation of Indian Tradition, 1973) insisted it means a rational and universalistic attitude to issues rather than imitation of the West. India’s experience shows the mechanism working powerfully — and unevenly.
How modernisation acts as an agent of change
- Structural differentiation. For Smelser, modernisation splits multifunctional institutions into specialised ones: the family surrenders production, education, welfare and justice to factory, school, state and court. India’s family has travelled exactly this route.
- Value reorientation. Parsons’s pattern variables name the direction — ascription to achievement, particularism to universalism, diffuseness to specificity. Constitutional equality, competitive examination and contractual employment install these as public norms.
- Psychic mobility. Daniel Lerner (The Passing of Traditional Society, 1958) made empathy — the capacity to imagine oneself in another’s position — the psychological engine of modernisation, carried by literacy, urban residence and media. Wilbur Schramm (Mass Media and National Development, 1964) cast media as the multiplier of that process.
- The state as agent. In India the carrier was not the market first but the state: the Constitution, planning, land reform, reservations, elected panchayats and reformed personal law. Change was legislated before it was lived.
Positive aspects
- Expanded life chances. Literacy has risen from 74.04% (Census 2011) to 80.9% (PLFS 2023-24); life expectancy has roughly doubled since Independence; total fertility is 2.0, below replacement (NFHS-5, 2019-21).
- Democratisation of opportunity. Higher-education gross enrolment stands at 30.0 with a Gender Parity Index of 1.08, Scheduled Caste enrolment up 51.4% and Scheduled Tribe enrolment up 75.7% since 2014-15 (AISHE 2023-24).
- Political empowerment. Universal franchise and the 73rd and 74th Amendments (1992) made Dalit, tribal and women’s assertion institutionally possible; India now has over 14 lakh elected women in rural local bodies.
- Rational-legal universalism. Courts have used B. R. Ambedkar’s constitutional morality to strike at ascriptive exclusion — Navtej Singh Johar and Joseph Shine (both 2018).
Negative aspects
- Uneven and elite-captured gains. Urban internet penetration is 126.80 per 100 against rural 48.31 (TRAI, Q1 2026). PMKVY has trained over 1.65 crore candidates for roughly a 7% placement rate (2026 data) — training without transformation.
- Modernisation without modernity. Dipankar Gupta (Mistaken Modernity, 2000) argues consumption is mistaken for modernity while dignity of the individual, universalistic norms and public accountability remain unmet. Inter-caste marriages remain about 5%.
- Traditionalisation by modern means. Religious broadcasting, caste associations and matrimonial platforms with caste filters use modern instruments to harden ascription.
- Dislocation and anomie. Displacement, informality (56.2% self-employed, PLFS 2025), agrarian distress and ecological cost accompany growth. A. R. Desai held that modernisation theory silently accepts capitalist development as desirable, leaving distribution unexamined.
- Cultural homogenisation threatens tribal and vernacular lifeworlds; S. C. Dube (Modernization and Development, 1988) urged alternative, culturally rooted paradigms instead.
Conclusion
Modernisation is an agent of change but not a neutral one: it redistributes chances while reproducing hierarchy in modern dress. The Indian verdict is Singh’s — tradition did not retreat before it, but learned to perform its functions.