Breaking down the question
The directive word is examine, which asks you to investigate causes critically rather than simply list them. The subject is rural unrest in contemporary India — note both qualifiers. Rural unrest covers a spectrum from farmer agitations and agrarian movements to caste conflict and out-migration born of distress, so you should not reduce it to a single episode. Contemporary directs you to the post-liberalisation and recent period rather than to peasant revolts of the colonial era, though a brief historical anchor is useful.
The examiner wants a structured analysis of factors — economic, social, ecological and political — showing how they interlock. A list of grievances is not enough; the marks come from explaining why these grievances translate into unrest and mobilisation.
How to approach it
Organise the factors into clear categories rather than a flat enumeration. Economic factors — indebtedness, falling profitability, the crisis of the small and marginal farmer, and the squeeze between rising input costs and uncertain output prices. Structural factors — the unequal agrarian class structure, tenancy insecurity and the condition of landless labour. Ecological factors — water stress, land degradation and the vulnerabilities exposed by climate variability. Social and political factors — caste tensions in the countryside, the sense of relative deprivation as rural India compares itself to a prospering urban middle class, and the rise of organised farmers' movements.
Ground the answer in Indian agrarian sociology. A. R. Desai's work on rural sociology and agrarian struggles, D. N. Dhanagare on peasant movements, and T. K. Oommen on agrarian mobilisation all supply usable frames. For the condition of rural labour that underlies much of the distress, see the note on rural labour, bonded labour and migration.
Model answer
Rural unrest in contemporary India is not the product of a single cause but of several interlocking pressures on agrarian life, and examining it requires disaggregating those pressures.
The most immediate factors are economic. Agriculture has become increasingly unremunerative for the small and marginal farmers who form the bulk of the cultivating population. The commercialisation of agriculture has raised the cost of seeds, fertiliser and irrigation, while output prices remain volatile and often fail to cover costs. Caught in this squeeze, many cultivators fall into cycles of debt, frequently to informal lenders, and the resulting agrarian distress — visible in episodes of farmer suicide in several states — is a direct source of anger and mobilisation.
Underlying these immediate pressures is the agrarian class structure. Land remains unequally distributed, and a large mass of landless labourers and insecure tenants has little stake in, and little protection under, the existing order. A. R. Desai emphasised that rural unrest cannot be understood apart from these relations of production. Where the gains of commercial farming accrue to dominant landowning castes while wage labourers bear the risks, the countryside carries a permanent potential for conflict.
Ecological factors have sharpened the crisis. Over-extraction of groundwater, declining soil fertility and dependence on an increasingly erratic monsoon have made cultivation more precarious. Regions of intensive Green Revolution farming now face water stress and diminishing returns, and climate variability adds an unpredictable burden that falls hardest on those with the fewest reserves.
Social and political factors convert distress into organised unrest. The sense of relative deprivation is acute — as urban India and its new middle class visibly prosper, rural populations perceive themselves as left behind, and this comparison fuels grievance as much as absolute poverty does. Caste tensions persist in the countryside, sometimes overlapping with agrarian conflict where landowning and labouring groups belong to different communities. At the same time, the rise of the new farmers' movements, which D. N. Dhanagare and others have analysed, has given rural discontent an organised political voice, framing demands around remunerative prices, loan waivers and secure procurement. Recent large-scale farmer agitations demonstrate the capacity of these movements to mobilise across regions.
Finally, the changing relationship between the countryside and the state matters. Policy shifts towards market-led agriculture, uncertainty over procurement and pricing, and the perception that reforms are designed without rural consent have all provided flashpoints. T. K. Oommen's work on agrarian mobilisation shows how the state's role is itself a variable — a source of both grievance and redress.
Examined together, these factors reveal rural unrest as the outcome of economic squeeze, structural inequality, ecological stress and political mobilisation reinforcing one another. No single reform addresses it, because the distress is simultaneously material, structural and cultural — a crisis of livelihood, of class relations and of dignity in a rapidly urbanising society.
Examiner's perspective
The weakest answers simply list farmer grievances; examiners reward candidates who categorise the factors and show how they interconnect. Two moves lift a script — grounding the analysis in Indian agrarian sociologists rather than generic development language, and using the concept of relative deprivation to explain why distress becomes unrest. A common omission is the ecological dimension, so including water and climate stress signals range. Close analytically by stressing that the crisis is multi-dimensional, which discourages the examiner-irritating tendency to propose a single tidy solution.