Rural Community Power Structure in India

Abstract

The main focus of studies on community power structure, hitherto, has been on the methodological aspects of the problem. This has led to the relative negligence of the substantive dimensions in the study of community power. While a number of important contributions on community power structure have come from the United States, this is a relatively virgin area of research in non-American, particularly non-Western societies. The present article attempts to fill this gap, to a limited extent, with reference to one of the non-Western societies, namely India. Power structures in four Indian villages are studied with the objective of understanding the relationship between community characteristics and power dispersion. The importance of variables such as community size, caste structure, occupational variations, educational and organizational innovations are examined.