5 Sociological Importance of Village Communities in India

In Indian society the major feature of the sociological importance of the village community are given below.

1) Unit of society:

In India there are more than half a million villages. According to Max Weber, the German scholar India has always been a country of village 76 percent of the Indian population lives in villages. India is predominantly an agricultural country. Thus in every respect the future of India depends upon villages.

2) Intensity of primary and familiar relations:

The relations between the primary groups and families in the villages are intimate. The family fulfils the needs of its members in all aspects of their life and exercises control over them. It is through the family that the new members are initially introduced to the customs, conventions and culture of the society. In this way the village people hold family as an institution having revered status and the result is that individuality does not develop properly in the members of a family.

Due to limited contact with the external world, their viewpoint is narrow and they are aggressively opposed to violent charge. In the village the relations among the people are direct and intimate so that often the entire village is organised like a family.

3) Simple and economical life:

The lie of the villagers is simple and economical. They have very limited needs. The spirit of ambition and competition is generally absent and they are not constantly devoured by a consuming desire for progress as is the case with their counterparts.

4) Preservers of the ancient culture of the community:

From the sociological viewpoint also the village is important because they preserve the ancient culture of society. India is an agricultural country. The life of the villagers depends considerably upon natural process due to their occupation which is agriculture, and thus the worship natural forces like the sun, rain etc, they are sometimes observed resorting to image in order to gain the assistance of these forces.

The villages in India still exhibit faith in the doctrine of Karma, a fundamental principle in Indian culture, and lead a simple and natural life dominated by sacrifice, theistic tendency and the importance of religion in every aspect of life.

5) Ideal democracy:

In ancient times the Indian village was an ideal democracy. Life in each village is self-dependent. Most of the people are agriculturists and besides agriculture the farmers is quite capable of handling the work generally done by a carpenter, blacksmith, mason veterinary surgeon, woodcutter and sometimes even a weaver. In some developed villages these occupations are carried on by different people but whatever the conditions all the needs of the villages are generally fulfilled in the village itself.

In the village even today the sense of neighborhood is not ignored and is given considerable importance. The community of ideals and customs and social for durance is even today an important feature of the village. It its long history, the Indian society retained its strength and organisation as long as the villages were well knit and well organised. From the medieval ages till now the condition of the village has continuously deteriorated.

But now after the country has become independent the work of social reconstruction is being implemented with the village as the unit and the basis. Thus, form the sociological point of view, the villages are more important that the towns.

Thus the importance attributed to the villages is for greater than the importance which may be attributed to the towns of India. It is for this reason that thinkers like Mahatma Gandhi accorded a central place to rural reconstruction in the overall plan for the reconstruction of the entire country. The Ram Rajya of Mahatma Gandhi is based on the uplift of the village.

The Indian Government has also accepted the importance of the development of rural industries and rural reconstruction. Social and economic reconstruction of India’s rural communities is being implemented through the establishment of co-operative societies and community development plans.

India is a democracy hence the future of the country depends upon the villages and the country cannot hope to achieve and progress without removing the social and economic backwardness of the village’s social and economic reconstruction of the country can be achieved only by a social and economic reconstruction of the villages.