COUNTRY TOWN NEXUS: Studies in Social Transformation in Contemporary India

The essays in this volume, whether conceptual or empirical, or a blend of both, all reinforce the claim that the term “country-town nexus” makes a sociological category. It is unimportant to emphasize the advantages of employing the category “country-town nexus” as opposed to “modernization” or “rural-urban interaction”.
Firstly, the “country-town nexus” forces one to visualise the town and country as mutually implicated. Secondly, the “nexus” also sensitises the scholar to the fact that the interaction between the town and country is fraught with contradictions and that is why it influences different social classes differently. Thus there is a very self-conscious move away from the “modernization” scheme which is partial to the so-called benevolent effects of modernization and tends to ignore the elements of tension and social conflict that come with it. Finally, “the country-town nexus” aspires to supersede the perspectives hitherto provided by the conventional frame-works of “modernization” and of “rural-urban interaction”.

K.L. Sharma is Professor of Sociology at the Centre for the Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Dipankar Gupta is currently Associate Professor at the Centre for the Study of social Systems Jawaharlal Nehru University.