SERICUL TURE AND THE PROCESS OF CHANGE - Institute for ...

The family of Mahendran in K K Pura (case no. 3) can be a case of illustration. He
has made it a point that his daughter and son should study in an English medium
school. He has chosen this school for his children, which is located four kilometres
away from his place, foregoing the local school. He believes that he has to impart
the best education possible to his children. He insists that it is a manifestation of
one's socio-economic status in the village.
Similar is the case with many young sericulturists in Salem and in
other villages, who have consolidated their gains from sericulture.
The spread of education among the youngsters in the villages is
sometimes detrimental to agriculture as the educated youth do not want
to involve in purely manual labour and work in the fields in the hot sun.
The advent of sericulture has, however, helped retaining some of the
educated youth in the village itself by adopting sericulture as a
productive occupation. The positive attraction in sericulture for the
youth is that it not only provides a productive occupation for them, but
also requires skill and is mostly indoors. This is eveident form the
preference of the educated youth in the rural areas for sericulture over
agriculture. This is especially true of those who have completed
secondary schooling or high school or college drop-outs. Better
performance in sericulture could also be observed among the educated
youths than others.
Untouchability and Notions of Purity and Pollution: The
interaction with the so-called polluted castes is still an area that is kept
alive in the village context. Today, the traditional barriers of caste are
breaking gradually, if not radically. It is, indeed, 'drastically remodelled'
(Mencher 1970: 199). Such a change is a result of the changes taking
place both among the oppressed sections and among the dominant ones.
It is both as a result of attitudinal maturity and economic prosperity.
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